Just having harmless fun.

Last Saturday night a large number (by ChCh standards) of young people (they certainly were not all "boys") drove their cars around Christchurch.

As a professional driver working that night I had ample opportunity to observe these young people and their behaviour.

What I saw was people enjoying themselves, doing pretty much what young people have done since young people existed i.e. doing their best to attract others the same age as themselves for the purpose of mating.

My observations showed that they were generally law abiding and courteous to other road users.

The standard of their driving was as good as, often better than, the standard seen on an average day on Christchurch streets.

As an aside is the fact that these young people are so much better drivers overall the reason so many old farts hate them?

At times the noise levels of these vehicles was too high but that is a complaint young people have been prone to receiving since recording and playing of "music" in vehicles became prevalent - and having sat at traffic lights beside certainly not young people blasting out god-awful "classical" type crap or cowboy-bawling, not something that should be levelled at the young alone.

The slime have, of course (and we all knew they would) highlighted complaints from various groups about these young people's activities.

To the forefront of those complaints appears to be a group of Motelliers who are complaining that these young people were using the roads outside of their establishments for the purposes these roads were built.

It would never cross these motelliers' minds that they themselves are to blame for any disruption their "guests" suffered due to traffic noise, having built or purchased buildings next to a main thoroughfare that do not have sufficient sound/vibration proofing for that location.

It's always someone else's fault.

The vast majority of the young people were doing no wrong.

Let them alone.

Note: The main traffic disruption on Saturday night among these young people was caused by a gang in (more often than not) fancy painted, souped up, large engined cars adorned by pretty but blinding lights and driven by cowboys with no consideration, when driving, stopping or parking, for other, legitimate, road users.

This gang has publicly stated their aim was to harass these (mainly) harmless law-abiding young people.

That harassment by police caused a great deal of disruption for all road users.

Meanwhile the very poor driving, very drunk and very dangerous older drivers around Christchurch found their way to their destination unhindered because the police were busy trying to stop these young people having harmless fun once again.