Vrooom

A little-known fact: Steve Levitt is a pretty big NASCAR fan. As for my interest in auto racing — well, I spent five years in North Carolina, both up in the mountains (where, as lore held it, racecar drivers got their training by running moonshine down the mountain roads) and also in Winston-Salem (where the Friday-night roar of cars from Bowman Gray Stadium, NASCAR’s longest-running weekly track, was so loud that it hums still in my ears today). NASCAR is the subject of our latest “Freakonomics” column, in the upcoming (Feb. 19) New York Times Magazine — specifically, NASCAR crashes and what they may have to tell us about auto safety in general. Here’s a bit more info; the link to the article will go live late Saturday night on the Times website.