Films drove a surge in deadly craze

LOUD music and burning rubber have been attracting scores of ‘boy racers’ to meetings across the UK for decades.

But there was a surge of interest in car cruise gatherings following the global success of The Fast and the Furious, a 2001 street racing film, which was followed by a string of sequels.

The 2013 car crash death of Paul Walker, one the film franchise’s stars, did nothing to diminish the craze.

Organised events are static, agreed by police and regulated by council officers.

However, the authorities have little control over spontaneous meets which gain traction on social media, spilling out of car parks and industrial estates and on to the roads.

In 2014 a judge banned car cruise events in the West Midlands after boy racers caused 31 accidents and four deaths, along the Black Country Route linking Wolverhampton, Walsall, Dudley and Standwell.

In March, a boy of ten and his 23-month-old brother were killed when their family’s BMW was struck by a Audi S3 street racing in Wolverhampton.