In a region built around the automobile, the ritual of boys and young men racing their cars down highways and city streets was a problem long before 1950s hotrods fought for asphalt supremacy on Whittier Boulevard, Mulholland Drive and Pacific Coast Highway.
But despite decades of trying, police are still struggling to fight the dangerous practice, which has been highlighted in the last year by a string of tragic collisions.
Teenagers Pablo H. Ruiz, Javier Aguayo and Anthony O'Neil, all students at Perris High School, died while racing during a senior trip to San Diego in May. A fourth student, Jose Espinosa, died the next day.
Carlos Cisneros, 14, died in February when the car in which he was riding slammed into a Riverside light pole during what police said was an impromptu race, and three other boys were critically injured.
Two UC San Diego students died in January when the BMW they were racing down a street slammed into two trees and flipped over.
And then this week, Dora Groce and her two children -- son Robert, 8, and daughter Catherine, 4 -- died when a street racer collided with the family's car as she was pulling out of the mobile home park where they lived.
All told, according to state figures, nearly 100 people die each year in California as a result of illegal street racing.
Detectives said they are increasingly seeing a particularly dangerous form of racing, called "cutting the gap" -- impromptu speed contests in which racers weave in and out of traffic.
"It's a game of chicken -- like a real-life video game," said Det. David Millan of the Los Angeles Police Department. "They are driving souped up vehicles where their skills don't match the cars."
Trais Hand, 17, a senior at John W. North High School in Riverside, who had just received his driver's license a month earlier, found that out too late.
Hand served 106 days in juvenile hall after an impulsive midday race last October resulted in the death of Reyna De Leon.
"It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment, a heat-of-the-moment type thing, and I ended up making a bad choice," Hand said. "I didn't intend on harming anybody."
Hand was stopped at a light in his 2001 Jetta when a friend pulled up on his right with the window down.
"He said something like, 'My car's faster than yours,' " Hand said. And then it was on.
The two cars made a right at the light and then started to race on Olivewood Avenue.
