AS THE tachometer red-lines, the girl racer yanks up the handbrake and spins her Honda Civic 180 degrees into the oncoming traffic that is shuffling out of the Universal film studio north of Hollywood.

She is screaming along to a punk band on the radio as commuters pull abruptly into the kerb, horns honking, a Los Angeles Police Department cruiser glimpsed and then left far behind in her dust as she speeds away at almost 80mph.

“Cops are too smart to chase me, but these Universal boys are my favourites. They have the Porsche, but they don’t have the balls to beat a real angry Asian chick,” said this tiny veteran of a dozen illegal street races known as “cutting up” contests, weaving around startled families in sedately moving Volvos and 4x4s.

The girl, who calls herself Jackie Q, pays heavily for her adrenaline rush: thousands of dollars “tricking out” her little red car, which she tunes herself, a shattered skull from a sliding manoeuvre that ended in a super-market wall and a criminal record. She is 16 years old.

Jackie Q, the daughter of a South Korean oncologist, is a straight-A high school student who dreams of studying medicine at Stanford University, California. She stands 5ft 2in tall in her driving stilettos. At weekends, unbeknown to her doting parents, who believe her car obsession is safer than boys, she is a high-octane force among a new wave of young Asian women who are causing death and mayhem on the wide avenues and choked boulevards of Los Angeles.

In a city shaped by automobiles, the illegal street race is a time-honoured macho tradition. The quarter-mile straight-line drag race altered little between James Dean in 1955s Rebel without a Cause and Vin Diesel’s more muscular cars in The Fast and the Furious in 2001. But police say girls such as Jackie Q and her friend, who calls herself Daisy Dooks - after the Dukes of Hazzard character played by Jessica Simpson in the recent remake - are changing the rules.

“The Asian girls are a new thing,” said Chris Ortell, a police sergeant in east Los Angeles. He is dealing with a 17-year-old Asian girl who raced her Ford Focus through a crowded street at 80mph before striking another car and killing its teenage occupant.

That racer escaped with scratches and, as a minor, will probably be put on probation for three years, the police officer said wearily. Street racers are causing more than 100 deaths a year in Los Angeles county, twice as many as 10 years ago. For the first time, many such deaths are being caused by teenage girls.

“The Asian girls are not copying Hollywood movies,” Ortell said last week. “They were raised playing their brothers’ video games, a dozen titles which feature street races, and believe that they can hit a wall and walk away. In the past they would have Nadine Toyoda, above, has gone legit but - along with characters such as Daisy Duke, right, played by Jessica Simpson - is a big influence on illegal racers been spectators, but now they are drivers. And they are killing themselves and others.”

Jackie Q says she is “starting to calm down” but cannot imagine giving up the driving life for ever. She can win £2,000 on a Friday night bet in a cutting-up race, in which she will weave around rush-hour traffic, occasionally driving along pavements to avoid traffic cameras.

“I managed 90mph along Sunset Boulevard, blowing off Lindsay Lohan and her paparazzi posse at 3am. My parents thought I was staying with friends,” she said, adding hurriedly: “But those days are over.”

Like many young Asian women in Los Angeles, Jackie Q and her friends - who call themselves “the Valley Bitches” - have been inspired by Nadine Toyoda, a Scottish-Japanese driver who was a champion street racer until she got pregnant at 17 and then “went legit” in public races.

Toyoda helped to transform Californian street racing with fresh tricks imported from Japan such as “drifting”, where cars “drift” or spin on their rear wheels as they turn up the ramps of multi-storey car parks.

Toyoda is the leader of Drifting Pretty, America’s first all-girl drift-racing crew, which includes a nurse and a mortgage broker. She is unnerved by the antics of younger fans who tear up the streets. “This is serious - this is not playing with Barbie dolls but with lives,” she said.

Two weeks ago Californian lawmakers raised the penalties on both illegal street racers - who can now be forced to witness their Nissan 240SX or Lancia being destroyed by a scrap-yard crusher - and spectators, who can be fined for encouraging them.

Los Angles police, who have set up legal races in stadiums to channel the driving passion, have been trained to identify the typically small, cheap cars fitted with fuel boosters.

“We can usually spot a racer. But if two teens insult each other and take off down a busy street like Sunset Boulevard, racing for pinkies [pink car-ownership papers], then we are going to be cautious about chasing them,” said one veteran traffic officer.

“Sometimes all you can do is pray these children, who often don’t even have a driving licence, run out of gas before they kill someone.”

its not girls (you cant see the driver) and it might not be LA (doesnt specify) but it does show that the speed reading thingy in the car goes up to 140mph

Video: street racing

Trailers from street racing film "2 Fast 2 Furious". Trailer 1 ; Trailer 2

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