Driftin’

The Norwegian license funded radio station NRK P3 has been out and about and made a web documentary about the Norwegian street car sub culture. When media turn their searching eye towards this particular sub culture, they always look at my hometown of Notodden, Norway, and this time is no different.

The general theme of the documentary is drifting, and as far as I know, that activity wasn’t too common when I lived at home with my parents. Then again, that is hundreds of years ago and I’m even sure if drifting were invented back then. The street car buffs where probably too busy driving their cars slowly up and down the main street anyway. But there are some areas in Norway where drifting is quite popular, at least according to the documentary. I hope the amateur they interview about drifting doesn’t have any family or friends that care about him, because he’ll be dead soon.

Or maybe he’ll kill someone else. He is talking about drifting on public roads where he is a danger not only to himself, but other people as well. I know I’m sounding like an old fart here, but please get these people off the road and onto closed circuits. There the only car they’ll smash is their own and the only person they’ll kill is their self.

Just to follow up on the “old fart” image I’m currently building, I’m not sure if NRK is making our streets any safer with their “How to drift”-guide. Some idiot will see it and think that it’s a good idea to try it out on a public road somewhere. That said, if we were to remove everything that could harm people from the internet there would be very little left. Perhaps /r/aww/.

There are a few videos used in the web documentary, including the one below, which shows off Arab drifting, where crazy Arabs go mental on public roads. It looks pretty damn dangerous, but apparently they have some sort of control.

What NRK has opted not to show is what happens when things go wrong, so I found two videos that show just that. Viewer discretion is advised1, here be dead people.

Still want to go drifting on public roads? Probably not. Instead, check out Powerdrift.no for information on how you can go drifting on closed circuits in Norway.


  1. But it’s never really expected. ↩︎


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