The people at Orana Park have had a gutsful of boy racers because animals there have been getting really spooked by the noise the boy racers are making when they’ve been meeting up outside the park to do skids and burn-outs.

You’ll know the type of noise they’re talking about. All the revving and screeching of tyres. And what’s been happening, is some animals have been so freaked out by it, that they’ve panicked and they’ve been running around their enclosures and getting injured.

The Orana Park people are also concerned about the animals being so stressed by the noise that it’s not just physical injuries they’re worried about. They’re also worried that some of the animals might have some form of long-term psychological damage.

And where that would really impact on things is the breeding programme they run at Orana Park. They’re saying today that all the stress from the boys racers could have an impact on some of the endangered native birds they breed out there.

They breed them and release them into the wild. But they say this kind of stress can affect breeding behaviour and can even have an impact on egg quality.

So the animals are stressed. And the staff at Orana Park are stressed. There’s concern too that doing burn-outs in areas where there’s a lot of vegetation is a fire risk.

The Police seem to be on to it. They’ve identified 16 vehicles that are being used to do burn-outs outside the wildlife park. Of these, 10 have been impounded and they’re on the hunt for the other six.

But it raises the question, doesn’t it, as to whether we’re fighting a losing battle here and whether we should just give up on the idea that we can bring them under control.

I reckon that, from what we’ve learnt over the years, anyone who thinks they can get rid of boy racers is in la-la land.

Because there have been boy racers in some way shape or form forever. Haven’t there?

When I was growing up, they were called “hoons”. Before that, they were called “bodgies”. Although, I think bodgies had motorbikes - as well as cars. But you get what I mean.

Boy racer. Girl Racer. Hoon. Bodgie. All the same thing. Generally, young people, who love their cars and love using them to make a spectacle.

But so do a lot of other people. Not just boy racers. I saw a guy on a motorbike go so fast down Colombo Street the other week that he got speed wobbles! So boy and girl racers aren’t the only ones who can be real bozos on the roads.

Which is why I think this whole idea of cracking down on boy racers is a pipedream.

We’ve tried over the years. In Christchurch, they brought in the “no cruising” zones. Which are still there.

A concrete pad was built at Ruapuna Speedway too, wasn’t it? The idea being that they could all go out there and fill their boots doing skids and burn-outs. But no one was interested.

Because meeting-up to let rip in the car isn’t about being part of society. It’s about not following the rules. It’s about taking over a piece of road and making it your own.

So that was never going to work. Just like the “no cruising” zones only pushed the problem somewhere else.

So that’s why I think it’s time to wave the white flag. Time to tell the boy racers that we think they’re a bunch of muppets with some of the stuff they get up to. But the fight to get rid of them is over.