John Green, left, and Gary Russell pose recently with their derby cars as they prepare for the Douglas County Fair's Demolition Derby on Aug. 1.

Maybe the world would be a less stressful place if we all drove Crown Victorias.

John Green swears by it.

No, the Crown Victorias that Green drives don’t have soothing sound systems nor even those luxurious beaded seat cushions. But the big hunks of Ford steel do deliver something that is hard to find in a vehicle these days. A John Green Ford Victoria won’t just get you from Point A to Point B. It’ll get you even.

“You know how you are driving down the road and someone cuts you off?” John asks.

Red Honda Civic. Twenty-third and Iowa. Driver with one hand on the cellphone, one hand on the steering wheel and both eyes on the vanity mirror. Drives all the way to the road construction barrier, then flips on a turn signal that evidently must be designed by Moses because all of us motorists who patiently have been sitting in the one lane of traffic that the orange construction signs told us to enter three blocks ago are just supposed to part like the Red Sea so this Honda Civic can get in line.

Yeah, John. I think I know what you’re talking about.

“Well, with this car, you can go chase them down and run them over.”

To save you some bail money, I suppose I should mention that Green only drives his Crown Victoria in demolition derbies, including the one coming up at the Douglas County Fair.

“It is a great stress reliever,” Green says.

It is not necessarily a cheap one, though. For $1,500 for a rear end, $3,000 for a motor that can take a licking, and $500 for the steel that surrounds you, you can have a car that looks like your teenage son has practiced parallel parking at 55 miles an hour.

Well, assuming you have the brains to build the car. They don’t sell demo derby cars at the dealership, and building them is more complex than you may think.

“There is a lot of science involved,” says Green, who is a welder and farmer by trade.

It was science that caused Green to replace the standard rear car tires with something resembling large lawn tractor tires. The smaller wheels not only allow for more tire speed, but also change the way the car bends upon impact.

Derby drivers pay attention to that sort of thing. Green spends a lot of time figuring out just where to add reinforcing welds to the frame of the car, and he even has developed his own theory about how high a bumper should be placed and at what angle it should set in order to deliver maximum impact. And while you may hear some auto commercials about new tires that will let you drive on a flat for a few miles, that doesn’t impress many derby drivers. They came up with that idea long ago. Green — who runs in about a dozen derbies a year — has a method for placing a tire inside a tire, so that a flat doesn’t take him out of the running for a trophy.

Building derby cars also certainly isn’t for the lazy. Green estimates that he spends about 40 hours a week working on his derby car. When I chatted with him, he arrived at the rural Eudora shop about 6:30 p.m. and wouldn’t leave until about 11:30 p.m.

For all that time and money, if you have the lone car to survive a derby, you can win about $2,000 at most events

But what are you? Crazy? You don’t do derbies for the money.

“They’re just a great way to keep you out of trouble,” says Gary Russell, a friend of Green’s who has been driving derby cars since 2008.

And that’s the magic of a demolition derby: You can turn a decent car into something that looks like an empty Budweiser can at a redneck party and not be in a lick of trouble. In fact, if you do it well enough, you’ll even get a trophy for it.

Green, 25, won the very first heat he entered at 14 years old, and has been hooked ever since. This Douglas County demo derby will be a bit different, though. It will be the first one without his mentor, Bruce Neis, who gave him space in a shop and a whole lot else when he needed it. Neis died earlier this year.

“A win this year would be really special,” Green says.

Win or not, it will be intense. Almost any demo driver will tell you that is the most powerful appeal of the sport.

“It is live action,” Russell says.

Green says your head is “constantly on a swivel” when you are in the cockpit. There are rules in place that are supposed to prevent collisions where a car directly hits the driver’s side door of a competitor. But rules work better on paper than in the middle of a dirt arena surrounded by cheering fans.

“Accidents happen,” Green says.

Most cars — at least in the upper division that Green runs in — have steel tubing two to three inches thick welded into the doors, dash and other areas surrounding the driver.

Almost every car in a demo derby also has something else: a story. The demo derby circuit is a tight one — Green estimates he knows about 90 percent of all the drivers at any derby — so everyone knows everyone else’s story. They know about how this guy cheated at this. Or how that guy has a feud with this other guy. Or how that guy and this guy’s girlfriend … There are all types of stories.

“There is a lot of drama,” Green says. “You know how you watch a soap opera on TV? Imagine that with cars running into each other.”

But there is a question about how much longer the show will run. Green says he remembers how there used to be about 100 derby cars in the Lawrence area. Now, he guesses that number is closer to 30. The Douglas County derby still attracts some drivers from outside the area, so there is hope that there will be a field of 50 or so.

There’s also hope that the sport is slowly making a comeback. Many derbies, including the Douglas County one, now run a “hobo class,” which is a lesser division that limits the modifications that can be made to a car, which in turn reduces the amount of money teams have to spend.

But there is another problem facing the sport. Perhaps you have noticed: Cars aren’t made out of steel anymore. The Crown Victorias are the most popular derby car currently because they were among the last to have steel bodies. But they don’t make Crown Victorias anymore, which means the clock is ticking on the sport.

But Green is optimistic that demolition derbies will still be around decades from now. After all, we all need to destroy something every now and then. And the world would be better off if it was a Crown Victoria instead of what we normally choose. So, don’t worry. Green has a plan for when Crown Victorias aren’t so plentiful.

“I figure we’ll all be out in a Prius or Geo Metros, seeing what damage we can do,” he says.

If they can catch a Honda Civic, sign me up.