Hooning

Hoon is a term primarily used in Australia and New Zealand to describe the act of driving a vehicle at high speed and pulling manoeuvres likely to cause excitement and cheers from onlookers.

Hoon activities can include speeding, burnouts, doughnuts or screeching tyres. Those commonly identified as being involved in "hooning" or street racing are young and predominantly male drivers in the age range of 17 and 35 years.

Hoon control laws are beginning to be extended to dangerous hoon behaviour using boats and other vessels, particularly jet skis. The State of Victoria, Australia passed legislation in late 2009 to control hoon activities using recreational vessels.

At the turn of the 20th century in Australia, the term "hoon" (and its rhyming slang version "silver spoon", and also "banana") had a different meaning: one who lived off immoral earnings (i.e. the proceeds of prostitution, a pimp or procurer of prostitutes).

Linguist Sid Baker in his book The Australian Language suggested that "hoon" (meaning "a fool") was a contraction of Houyhnhnm, a fictional race of intelligent horses which appears in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.

Hoon, when used in relation to people in motor vehicles (or associated with car culture), may be onomatopoeia. One may speak of a car, or its driver, or its occupants in general as "hooning down the road".

It could also be a clipped form of "hooligan" or a portmanteau of "hooligan" and "goon" or "buffoon".

The term "hoon" has obtained a semi-official use in Australia, with police and Governments referring to legislation targeting anti-social driving activity as "anti-hoon laws". The term has even begun to appear in the titles of legislation, for example the Transport Legislation Amendment (Hoon Boating and Other Amendments) Act 2009 of the State of Victoria.

In Western Australia, the Road Traffic Amendment (Impounding and Confiscation of Vehicles) Bill 2004, which was passed by the Parliament of Western Australia in June 2004, empowered the Western Australia Police to confiscate and impound vehicles found to be engaging in excessive speed or noise. The law was used to impound a Lamborghini that was being driven by a mechanic without the owner's knowledge. The police claim that the law does not permit them to release the car under the only legal course of action available to the owner, that of "hardship". The police retorted that, having the means to own it, "he can afford to hire a vehicle." The owner complained that the law amounted to "mandatory sentencing without trial". The Western Australian Police Minister, Rob Johnston, "admits the laws are unfair but says he stands by them". Former Western Australia District Court Chief Judge Antoinette Kennedy described the minister's reaction as "the politics of envy". After all 'hoon'-related offences, the defendant's licence is cancelled and experience accumulated on it is returned to zero.

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