CRUNCH TIME

Two drivers weave through a crowded parking lot trying to find a space. One finally spots an opening and quickly turns for it. However, the other driver has the same idea, forcing some quick thinking to swerve out of the way. The drivers each mutter something about the other’s driving skills, and one takes the space while the other continues his trek through the lot.

Now imagine a different setting. An area that would normally be dirt has become thick mud from constant watering. A car stops so the driver can look behind. There’s a car directly in his sight. Rather than wait for the car to get out of your way, he quickly revs his engine before speeding in reverse to ram the car.

You’ve been transported to a demolition derby. A place where all of those laws about using your blinker, yielding and right of way have been thrown out the window.

That isn’t to say that there are no laws. Just different ones. This is a place where one of the worst things you can do is avoid a large collision, known here as “sandbagging.” After a driver is marked as a sandbagger, the car gets a special flag on it, and the person who knocks that car out in a heat gets automatic admission into the feature event at the end of the night. If someone knocks out a designated sandbagger during the feature, they get $50 and a plaque to distinguish their honor.

As Tim White, a 33-year-old driver in Sunday’s Boone County Demolition Derby, said, “It’s the only place where road rage is encouraged.”

The drivers manage to stay safe in spite of the premise of causing as much damage to someone else’s car as possible.

“Safety’s very important to us because we’ve got wives and kids,” Jason Brown, a friend of White’s, said, “and we’ve got jobs to go to on Monday, so we’re not going to get injured doing this.”

Brown, who turns 31 next week, said he has never been injured in his 16 years of competition beyond some bumps and bruises.

William White, 30, Tim White’s younger brother, has found demolition derbies to be safer than he and his brother’s former sport of choice, motocross.

“You don’t have near as many broken bones since you have a cage around you,” he said.

William and Tim White started competing in demolition derbies in 1997, which is when they met Brown. Since then, the three Columbians have grown close through hours spent working on cars together.

While according to Brown they try to compete in around four or five derbies a year, the friends don’t have the final say in that figure.

“It depends on what the wives will let us do,” he said.