The city has sent an essential, strong message to those who clearly need to hear it: Nobody has the right to go thrill-riding on public roads and, in fact, deserve to be punished severely for endangering the lives of others.

This variation on that theme is known as “drifting” or “drift racing,” and it robbed a young woman of her mobility. With no small measure of good fortune and hard work, the hope is that 33-year-old Lectie Altman can recover her ability to walk. It’s a heartbreaking and painful incident for someone who has been a champion triathlete.

But surely her athleticism and youth also helped the cyclist to survive the Jan. 25 head-on collision with a 20-year-old who was racing his Nissan sedan up Tantalus Drive.

Drifting is defined as a driving technique involving controlling a car through a turn while intentionally oversteering it, causing the rear wheels to lose traction and drift over the road surface.

Last week, Bill 7, introduced by Councilwoman Carol Fukunaga at the urging of area residents, was enacted with the signature of Mayor Kirk Caldwell.

The new law imposes maximum penalties for drifting: $2,000 in fines, a year in jail or both. Those are stiffer compared with the existing, applicable ordinance barring reckless driving. The maximum penalty for that is a fine of $1,000 and 30 days in jail.

In addition, according to police officials, the new law makes it easier to prosecute those engaging in drifting.

Meanwhile, the driver in Altman’s accident was arrested on suspicion of first-degree negligent injury; he has been released and the criminal case is pending.

This is not a new phenomenon; anyone who has hit a patch of wet road may have experienced the rear wheels swinging to one side. That’s drifting. It’s been a skill valued in car racing for years, enabling a driver to take a turn more efficiently than a competing driver less able to manage the drift.

But drift racing as a sport in itself evolved a few decades back in Japan and caught on in the U.S. and elsewhere in more recent years.

Beyond the hardening of criminal penalties as a deterrent, other steps could be taken. Seven years ago, the Makiki-Lower Punchbowl-Tantalus Neighborhood Board, already pressing for improvements, urged the city to install a nonskid coating on the road to discourage drifting.

The city set aside $175,000 for the installation of the sandpaper- like coating, which was installed soon thereafter, said John Steelquist, board chairman. It was applied in a few places on Tantalus Drive and did reduce the area’s appeal as a drift-racing drag strip, he said, but it ultimately wore off.

Since then, Steelquist added, the board has come across a new kind of substance, a “high friction surface treatment” (HFST).

According to a Federal Highway Administration document, HFST “involves the application of very high-quality aggregate to the pavement using a polymer binder to restore and/or maintain pavement friction at existing or potentially high crash areas.”

Transportation agencies in Pennsylvania, Kentucky and South Carolina reported total crash reduction of 100 percent, 90 percent and 57 percent, respectively, for their tests of the product, according to the FHA. This sounds promising and should be investigated for use here.

Community groups such as the Tantalus Community Association have been pitching in with clearing the brush along the long, sometimes unkempt stretch of roadway. But Steelquist said removing those visibility barriers is not the principal issue; reckless speeding is.

Some racing enthusiasts have said this practice would subside if racers had an established track to use. That would be helpful, if the private sector would support it. But its absence does not excuse this bad, dangerous behavior. Those who engage in it must be held accountable.