Darth Wong wrote:It's also interesting that the car turned sideways before leaving the runway. Once you reach speeds of 150mph or so, you need a long distance to slow down again. It's most likely that they realized far too late that there was no way they could stop in time, and desperately tried to save themselves by cranking the wheel, only to discover that the car's momentum was far too great to change significantly even if the car was turned to the side.
You're missing some information here, Mike. There is a Dumb, Stupid Activity called "drifting" where idiots take a car up to high speed and
delibrately get it to slide sideways. In another article on this crash the local sheriff reported seeing a
series of skidmarks on the runway indicating that they had drifted
repeatedly - the fatal crash occured after they drifted over the edge of the pavement.
The sideways bit wasn't from a desparate attempt to stop, it was all part of the "fun".
Also, it has not been determined whether or not alcohol was involved. An early report had a sheriff saying there had been signs of drinking (probably an alcohol smell) but the kids' parents threatened a lawsuit so they backed off on the statement. That means waiting on the coroners' toxicology report, which takes about 10 days to get results. This will be complicated if the bodies have been dismembered, which is a real possibility at such speeds. In that case the determination will probably be made by analysis of eyeball fluid. If the eyeball tested had departed from the original resident skull you will then have the question of determining exactly whose eyeball it was, and if the original owner was the driver or not.
CaptHawkeye wrote:It's great that the FAA seperates high performance aircraft or acrobatic aircraft from the Normal/Utility category of aircraft.
I'm going to quibble in the interest of accuracy here. No, there is no separate certification or rating for aerobatic aircraft. I was legally flying a fully aerobatic aircraft before I finished my private license. It was, I must note, a
low performance aerobatic aircraft. I will explain further in a minute.
In aviation, whenever you want to expand your yourself to new types of aircraft, you pretty much need training and a certification to do so. Want to fly a Cessna? Get your private pilot's license. Simple. Oh but now you want to fly a twin engine Baron? Sorry, go get more training. Want to a fly an Extra 300S? Go get training and come back with a cert. The FAA learned a LONG TIME AGO that simply allowing people to control aircraft they didn't fully understand was a very bad thing.
Again, I am only nitpicking for the sake of increasing people's knowledge. A "Cessna" is not a particular aircraft, it is a brand representing many aircraft that range from some very slow-and-dowdy two-seaters up to twinjets that can cruise at .9 Mach. A basic private license will enable you to fly the two and four seat prop-driven Cessnas that are under 200 hp. For more than 200 hp you require a
high performance sign-off. For twins you require a
multi-engine rating (and with Cessna you have a choice of conventional twin configuration or
center-line thrust, which is yet ANOTHER thing). Jet engines require yet another round of training.
The Extra 300 you mentioned would require a
tailwheel sign off (I actually have one of those) AND a high-performance sign off (don't have that one yet). But there is NO "sign off" or "rating" for aerobatics. There is certainly training available. Those foolish enough to attempt aerobatics without training frequently eliminate themselves from the aviation world in a very final manner. But, in actual fact, I did most of my early training in a Cessna Aerobat -- I just wasn't flying aerobatically. But then, I was smart enough that no one had to tell me it was a Bad Idea. I also earned my tailwheel endorsement in an aerobatic aircraft - again, I simply wasn't flying aerobatically.
The thing is, ANY aircraft can be flown in an aerobatic manner - it's just that utility and normal airplanes are more likely to spontaneously disassemble during certain manuevers. It's the addition of more power, weight, and engines that dramatically changes the handling and capability - as well as potential mayhem if things go wrong. Likewise, even a piece-of-crap underpowered Yugo can start, stop, accelerate, be made to "drift", and perform any manuever this M5 monster could do, it's just that the Yugo's dramatically inferior power and lower overall mass limits the amount of damage you can do with it. You simply
can't get one of those up to 140 mph under its own power.
I understand that the sheer number of drivers in the modern world vastly increases the likelyhood of accidents, and that it decreases the ease of enforcing regulation. But their are times the DMV could really learn something from FAA policies.
Very much agreed.
Vain wrote:Of course, in this particular case, it wasn't even his own car. As a teenager, I would have been drooling over the chance to drive my father's $100K high performance automobile
The news articles I've seen have been mentioning an $80,000 price tag on the accident vehicle... perhaps this was not as high-end a vehicle as the kid led people to believe?
Carelessly damaging your parents' valuable possessions shows a complete lack of respect for them. What kind of person does that?
Young, dumb assholes I'd say.
aerius wrote:Sephirius wrote:ASM would have helped a little, if not outright kept them going in a straight line, and iirc the race mode turns off ABS too.
They might have survived this if they didn't go RAR! Hardcore mode on the iDrive settings.
So instead of literally flying off the runway sideways and into a tree, they would've launched off the raised end of the runway while going straight, and still gotten themselves killed on landing when the car either noses into the ground or flips and rolls 20 times after the suspension bottomed out. Read the article, the car launched off the
raised end of a runway and flew 200' through the air, driving aids would just ensure that they launched front first and maybe taken 10mph off the lauch speed. Either way they're still dead, and only a shitload of dumb luck would save them.
Again, there are indications that they were
delibrately skidding the car instead of driving in a straight line.
I haven't looked up the specs on the particular airport, but the embankment was reported in several places as being 80 to 85 feet in height. If so, it wouldn't make a goddamn bit of difference whether they were going straight or not, once they were airborne they were going to die. Even if the drop was only half that height death would have been pretty certain under those conditions.
aerius wrote:As long as they only kill themselves and other stupid teens, I'm all for it.
The world could use a lot more stupid teenage organ donors.
The problem is, you have to still be breathing when you arrive at the hospital in order to have usable organs. They aren't even useful for THAT.
PeZook wrote:You know, a Boeing 737 takes off at 150 mph.
I wonder if they tried to outdo it?
Maybe they were hoping to drag-race John Travolta's B-707 (it's based at that airstrip, Mr. Travolta owns a home there).
Dargos wrote:Can anyone explain to me why anyone needs an insanely overpowered car in the first place?
As far as I understand, most places have speed limits, correct? Even in Germany, land of the unrestricted speed Autobahn the recommended safe driving speed is 130 km/h, anything over that and an accident happens, your insurance might have a problem with paying.
Why have street legal cars capable of driving 200+mph?
Well... I had a co-worker who owned an "insanely overpowered" Porsche (I'm not a car person so I don't remember the details). It was street legal and while on the street he drove it in a very sane, law-abiding manner. And on the weekends he'd take it out to a private track (supported by a club of like-minded enthusiasts) where he could legally let it rip at full speed. Then again, we are talking about a responsible adult who had gone through a number of training programs to acquire the skills to safely drive such a car in such a manner. Why did he do it? Hell, why do I fly airplanes? He did it because he found it enjoyable and he could afford to do it. Of course, you almost never hear about people and car clubs like this because they don't get in the news. Why not? Generally, they aren't doing fucked-up shit and they rarely have accidents.
Oddly enough, the former Formula 1 driver I know
also drives on the public streets in a sane, law-abiding manner. Gee, go figure - the people who have the most training and experience in high performance, high speed vehicles seem to be the most law-abiding on the regular roads. Gee, why is that? Hmm... maybe it's because they actually know what the fuck they are doing, rather than letting their egos and insecurities drive.
And finally - while my local airport hasn't had anything automotive quite this fine crash on the runway, we do have occasionally fatalities of this sort. Typically, in this area, it involves a "crotch rocket" motorcycle. Now, I sort of understand some of the attraction - a runway is a wide strip of pavement that is built to accommodate vehicles traveling well in excess of 100 mph (that's 160 kph for you metric types), that is, it's pretty smooth and level. Very little traffic on most of them. Frequently more than a mile in length. The problem is, they are generally
less than two miles, which, as Mike Wong points out, is less than prudent for acceleration/stop distances at such speeds.
Generally, what happens in my area is some dumbshit(s) zooming down the runway at full throttle discover too late that YES, there is an end to the pavement! They either impale themselves on the runway end lights (and also frequently remove said lights from the ground anchors) or shoot off into the swamp/trees where they demonstrate in a bloody and graphic manner how the sudden stop is what kills you. If you think a sedan traveling at 140 mph hitting a tree leaves an awful mess, a human body doing so is even worse. A helmet and bike leathers will not help under those conditions, other than to provide a handy sack for body parts.
