It's Our Birthday

This issue marks our sixth anniversary for DSPORT. Thanks to all of our loyal readers for helping us to become the best import performance magazine in the United States. We plan to work hard each and every month to continue making each issue better than the one before. The same holds true for our DSPORT DVD. Our fourth edition was included with this issue of DSPORT. We believe it's the best yet, but we look forward to making #5 even better.

Hands-Free is now the Law

California recently passed a law requiring the use of a hands-free device when operating a cell phone within a vehicle. Many other states have already implemented these laws while others are soon to follow. Besides the expected result of making our roads safer, this law should actually have a secondary benefit that's a big plus for performance enthusiasts.

State and local police agencies that provide traffic enforcement have "profiled" import performance enthusiasts in California for a number of years. If you drive a modified import car, you've probably received a ticket at one time or another for "modified exhaust system," "emission control modifications," "missing front plate" or "headlights too low." A few of the cars that receive these tickets may actually deserve them. However, there are a great number of these tickets issues by officers that do not receive adequate training to identify legal modifications from illegal modifications. Let's hope that these officers will now be kept busy writing tickets for the illegal use of cell phones by drivers. That's something that will actually make our streets and highways a bit safer. In this way, traffic officers can get back to serving and protecting its citizens, instead of acting as "tax collectors" for the various State, county or city treasuries.



Michael Ferrara