IT may sound like high jinks, but the antics of boy racers plaguing a private car park off Worcester's Hylton Road is nothing of the sort, so far as many people are concerned.

While bosses at Homebase and McDonald's are looking to each other to take decisive action, members of the public are being put at risk and those who think they've found Silverstone-by-the-Severn are laughing all the way home.

On the face of it, we have most sympathy with McDonald's.

Homebase has installed barriers at the car park exit, but can't use them because the fast-food restaurant stays open later than the DIY store.

But McDonald's insists its neighbour redesigns the car park instead because, if the gangs are already in the car park, the barriers either have to be shut then or the drivers asked to leave - and that has implications for staff safety.

The two parties are due to meet next week, when McDonald's will propose speed-bumps or other traffic-calming devices.

The most appealing thought would be a police operation to snare the drivers, not just to scare them off elsewhere.

The site's status as private land complicates that, we know, but we can't force one terrible thought from our minds.

For every night these young drivers race around, the chance of a person being seriously injured or killed increases. If that's one certainty, then here's a second.

Someone reading this somewhere in the Faithful City, or its surrounding communities, knows a person who might only have a few days or weeks to live. One way or another, and end must be put to this stupidity.