Camaro driver and navigator die in Silver State Classic crash

First, RIP to 2 the guys. Their choice, informed or not to go out there.


But, re: the Camaro:

Aside from a hood bulge to possibly house a blower, and a roll cage (cannot see that too clearly) the car looks pretty stock, even to the OE wheels....not particularly low (suspension mods)....

Even if the motor was a 6-800 hp monster, I can't see this car even approaching the alleged "200 mph". Driving skill aside, wouldn't it become pretty unstable at closer to 140 - 150?

I have a couple of cars designed to go 150>200 mph, and I know how different they are from a 1994 Camaro...

 

Yes they had a cage, but whether or not their cage was built to withstand an accident at the speeds they were travelling is a very different and very important detail. r.i.p.

 

Oh, relax. Plenty of folks have run those speeds in modified "domestics" as you put it for years now. Stock bodied Camaros/Firebirds have run over 200mph for years at Bonneville, Lingenfelter and others have built Vettes that ran well over 200 as well. Endless carnage for the owners? Not so much. It is entirely possible to engineer a proper cage and safety devices to provide some measure of survival if it all goes wrong.
Crashes have occured at those speeds with survivors-regularly. The TR driver survived a 170+ crash in a stock vehicle with NO safety equipment. You may think the TR possessed some inherent "magic" built into it at Maranello-I know better.
As to the road being designed to run 200mph, maybe not. But, I've driven that road at very high speeds as well as racetracks designed for speed. That road is smooth, well paved(better than many tracks, btw), there isn't anything to hit if you leave the roadway(unlike tracks) and plenty of pros have run that course. Are they "idiots" as well?

As to biking, I realize to you that may very well mean riding a beach cruiser around your house. Those I ride with don't consider that riding. Actually, there have been a couple bike racer fatalities these last couple years(both mountain bikes and road riders). A very dangerous activity to those that ride at those levels.

This activity is enjoyable to me.I'm not a candidate for Darwin awards, nor are the thousands like me that enjoy open road racing or other dangerous activities. Enjoy your sofa.

 

I have encountered multiple blow outs at 100mph and above. I can assure you it is survivable. Especially since NONE of them resulted in a crash.

 

I competed for the first time in this SSCC event Sep 18, 2011. I wouldn't classify it as a casual "weekend warrior" event. As an SSCC rookie I was limited to 110 mph average, max 124. This was the 24th annual running of the SSCC. This year there were 144 cars. They have had upwards of 225+ cars enter. Richard and Merle were the event's 3rd and 4th fatalities in 24 years.
Infidel, I think your statistical analysis sucks. I'm no statistician by any means but...4 fatalities / (24 yrs * a modest 150 cars/year * a guesstimated 1.75 occupants/vehicle (not every vehicle has a navigator) = 4 in 6,300 or .0635% (only ~4 times as risky as "your odds at dying in normal driving is 1 in 6,500 according to the National Safety Council"); nowhere near the 1% or 50% as you've alluded to IMO.

For those curious, here are *some* of the tech requirements for the 180 mph class Richard and Merle were in:
(exerpted from http://sscc.us/docs/2011%20RULES%20rev%201-19-11.pdf)

VIII. UNLIMITED DIVISION (and 180 Target Speed Super Sport)
Class: 180 and Unlimited
Technical Speed: 180 + mph
The following are the Minimum Requirements for the Unlimited Division:
1. In order to enter at a speed greater than 180 mph, the Driver must have successfully completed at least one previous SSCC open road event at an average speed of 165 mph or higher, or received a waiver from SSCC.
2. All Drivers and Navigators must be at least 21 years of age.
3. A competition approved fire system and fuel cell. See Fire System & Fuel Cell, Section XV, pg 22.
4. No Nitrous Oxide Injection or similar power increase is allowed. If the vehicle is such equipped, the bottle must be removed from the vehicle.
5. No parachutes. If vehicle is such equipped, the parachutes must be removed from the vehicle.
6. A five or six point safety harness system that includes three inch (3”) shoulder and lap belts as a minimum. See Restraint System, Section XII, pg 18
A. All belts must be dated and may not be more than two (2) years old.
B. Some sort of head support is required (headrest).
C. Arm restraints or window nets are mandatory.
7. A competition approved Roll Cage. See Roll Cage Specs. Section XI, pg 17.
8. Approved racing tires. See Tire Specs, Section XIII, pgs 19 & 20.
1. A padded steering hub and collapsible steering column is required.
2. 2011 events will require a SNELL Foundation FULL FACE SA 2005 (or later) helmet in good condition as the minimum standard. Motorcycle helmets will NOT be accepted.
A. The use of a full face helmet is mandatory.
B. A padded helmet support is required (headrest).
C. Helmet Restraint System, such as Hans, Hutchins or similar, is mandatory.
3. See Section IX, page 14 for clothing specifications.
4. A drive shaft loop for front engine rear-wheel drive vehicles is required that would impede a ground strike by the front of the drive shaft.
5. Recommendations:
A. A larger steering wheel is recommended. (The intent is to slow steering response at speed).
B. A radio scanner is recommended. Any scanner capable of receiving the 144 MHz – 148 MHz frequency range.
C. A 10 lb. Fire Suppression system and dual interior nozzles for those in the SS and Unlimited classes who are carrying passengers is recommended.
D. A Blow Proof Bell housing is recommended for those in the SS and Unlimited classes.
Revised 1/2011 - Page 13-

FEI, the driver in this video of a 200+ mph crash in the Nevada Open Road Challenge in May 2006 (same highway and same organizers as the September SSCC event) walked away:
http://www.streetfire.net/video/silver-state-classic-350z-crash-at-over-200mph_57095.htm

-- end of rant --

 

Do people not exceed 150 mph every day on the auto bahn. It is a matter of equip experience and conditions. A car drivenb fast everyday probably has good tires suspension etc.

For years i lived in South Africa which has good open roads. For an 18 month period i commuted to a plant in the countryside. I used a 91 vteet with a 383 in it 440 hp 450 lbs of torque. I would say I exceed 150 4 times per week ans sustained that speed for 10 mins or more. The highest speed in that car and my all time high speed was 183mph. I can tell you that there is a vast difference between 150 and 175in pretty much any car, just due to aerodynamic influences. But if you run the road regularily know its nuances and have the right equip then the speed can on certain days be edeged up.

Being more mature I then got a volvo 850 turbo. It would not go past the 157mph speed limiter, but I once sat at 155 for 30 mins on a arrow straight road with hardley any cars. I also regularily drove to the countryside with wife and kids between 100 to 120. I knew the road the car and there was little to no traffic.

This all contrats with someone not calibrated to high speed (ie youre used to going 80), then line of soght ios calibtated differently and braking distances are longer. the key to sustained high speed driving is to stay well within the envelope, ie no max cornering, leaving really big braking zones and reduced speed for passing, plus knowing the road and car intimately. The SSC is on roads that most driovers do not reg run, and most even the racers are not used to sustained high velocity, then you also have the mentality to push limits. This will lead to more than average problems. But still no reason why a high speed car cannot be enjoyed safetly on the road.

Any newer fcar can be driven 150-160 for sustained periods safetly on the right road, not to mention BMW's Mers Vettes etc. The probelm comes from pushing corners etc at high speed. In any event it is quite an experience to traverse large distances faster than a cessna.

Lastly the vette anbd it was a 91, may have been loose and rattly but at speed it was very stable and buttoned down, far more so than my friends countach.

It brings us back to the argentine fighter pilots in the falklands war who flew their a4's so low and fast they went right through the bbritish fleet. The explanation was that they grew up in an enviroment where they raced and drove without restriction from a young age. Yes this is a statisticaly dangerous way to grow up, but real skills are developed young. sadly in the us driving skill is for the most part the opposite.

And yes if people are going to drive at very high speed say over 175 more than average are going to die, but same with flying helicopters fighter jets etc. Doesent mean we souldnt do it, provided there is informed consent no bystanders in danger and equip is reasonable. Hey people ride motorcycles every day.

 

Grabber,

Not only does your statistical analysis suck, but your reading comprehension does, too.

Firstly, I didn't say a blow out at 100MPH was unsurvivable. I said it was "damn dangerous." I did, however, state that a blow out at 200MPH was a "guaranteed fatality", specially referring to a passenger car equipped with a few safety goodies. A bit of an overstatement, perhaps, but the point remains: A fuel cell, roll cage, safety harness and helmet won't prevent a passenger car from turning into a crushed and flaming incinerator and killing its occupants. Exhibit A: Our recently departed driver and navigator.

Secondly, I'll dumb-down the point I was making about the 180MPH+ class: Speed kills. The fact that lots of people have competed in this weekend warrior event without death is meaningless, for most of them compete at speeds far slower than the 180MPH+ category. As speed increases, the level of danger rises exponentially, not linearly.

Conversely, a very small number of people have competed in the 180MPH+ category, perhaps, at most, a dozen or two in the last ten years (you can review their published race results, I have better things to do.) And two of the est 12-24 are now dead. Do the math.

 

Infidel,
Please lay off the personal attacks. There is no need for that in a civil debate.

 

If what you say is true, you are lucky to be alive.

That a passenger car can be built to reach a certain top speed is irrelevant. A Bugatti Veyron is actually faster than an F1 car. Does that make it "safe" to drive at 230MPH? Let's apply some common sense here.

An F1 car is engineered to produce thousands of pounds of down-force that keep the car held to the road at high speeds. In contrast, a passenger car--especially the kind of junkyard garbage these two were operating--has no such benefit. At high speed, a strong gust of side wind can literally blow a passenger car off a two-lane road because the passenger car lacks the aerodynamics and suspension to safely operate. To say NOTHING about the braking.

As Mike Sheehan, Ferrari expert and former race car driver recently wrote in an article entitled "When is Fast TOO Fast?, "... the laws of physics and frailties of the human physiology kick in at speeds of 100 mph and faster." An F1 driver, in contrast to a weekend warrior, "... lives in a roll cage and carbon-fiber encapsulated tube-chassis cocoon and should walk away from virtually any accident. A stock Ferrari 550 will go faster (than an F1 car), but the car lacks the same downforce, the same ultra-stiff suspension and the same level of brakes." I'm firmly in Mr. Sheehan's camp.

Of equal importance is the fact that F1 cars largely operate on specially designed and prepared courses with the limits of the cars and safety of the drives in mind. Running a street car at 200MPH on a public roadway is hardly comparable.

 

Car is lowered for sure, I can tell from the pic, and those are not the stock wheels, they are 2001-2004 Z06 wheels.

I have a 2000 Camaro, basically the same body style. I did a mile event a few years ago and hit 169 mph and if given more distance I think 180ish could have been attained, and that was with numerically high gears. I am pushing about 481 RWHP and weigh in at about 3500 pounds. So if that car that crashed could have came pretty close to 200 mph IMO.

Also, FYI a '69 Camaro (which has horrible aero) hit something like 194 mph recently in a standing mile.

 

Stop playing favorites, pal.

Read his post again and tell me who is getting personal.

 

Well I guess thousands of people everyday on the autobahn are lucky to be alive. Dan Gurney is lucky to be alive after driving a daytona across country in the cannonball where they reputedly hit 175. Point is there is a huge difference between speed at the track where you corner at the limit and brake at the limit, and a truly open road where velocities may be higher but the speed is well within the limit of the road and car. I am sure a veyron at 230 is highly dangerous and the speed is just a stunt. But I am also sure that on a good road a Veyron is pefectly safe and stable at 175. In fact I will bet these cars are driven at that speed by owners in the ME all the time. An aerodynamicaly stable a car on a straight road with no-little traffic can comfortably be driven at speed. Introduce unecen surface other traffic and corners and the risk level rises. This does not mean that an open bend cannot be taken at 150, in fact if that same bend could be done at 175 150 is well within the limit.

True tires can blow out, and then it is pretty much going to be tickets for the driver if they are on a bend or go off the road. But there are plenty of good tires that can comfortably sustain 150 or a bit more. Yes equipment failure will kill at speed in a way that is unlikely at lower speeds. But high speed especialy for someone calibrated to it is not defacto a killer. Yes a track is propbably safer with roll cage fuel cell etc. But at a track you push the limits harder and other traffic around you is doing the same. On the open road you can go really fast without pushing the limits and therer are not other cars inches or feet away from you doing predictable and unpredictable things. So the risk profile is different.

The one area where I do agree with you is that a hight velocity crash on the road is far more likely to lead to serious injury or fatality than a track spec car on a closed course. But given the speeds done everyday on the autobahn we can also say that high speed on a track is far more likely to result in an accident than driving fast on the open road.

At the SSC some cars are probably being driven to the limit as they would on a track, then of course when it goes wrong people die. But at the SSC plenty of people drive safetly below 180 every year without injury. And iun any field or endevour if you really push all the limits things will go wrong. You can climb mountains your whole life without falling off, or you can climb some gnaly peaks and potetialy die 1000 ways. Most people at the SSC are just climbing mountains, just as most trackday junkies or weekend dragracers are climbing mountains. It is more dangerous than playing GT4 on the playstation, but might well be safer than going 100 on populated freeways, especialy for civillians in minivans. Hell lots of people get hurt and a few die snowskiing every year, and ssc is certainly not like base jumping, which is equivalent to your description.

 

Just to set the record straight because I see this incident referred to from time to time. I was researching a video of the race because I was a participant. If I remember correctly the couple in the TR were the Bartskis (sp?). A lovely couple whom I had dinner with the night before. They were at our table. I saw his car at the day before show and noticed that his racing seat belts were secured by some flimsy looking eye bolts through firewall with larger fender washers. Not nearly an adequate installation but ironically it probably save his life because he went through the windshield but his wife did not make it out of the car. It's a miracle he survived. When we drove by the wreck many hours later it was all balled and about the size of a card table.

The car was used with only 4K miles on it. The tires were indeed VR rated but that's misleading. They were the original tires and at that time that was the highest rated tire available and VR did not mean a limit of 150MPH for cars such as this. These tires were specially developed for Ferrari and that rating meant that they were good for the top speed of that car. There was no ZR rating in existence back then. This is how automobile and tire manufacturers handled it.

For myself and another set of entrants we investigated both Michelin XWX and XGT tires via a call to the factory engineers (both VR rated) and discussed with them the race we'd be entering, the types of cars and the vehicles weight. Both tires got their blessing. Think about what a Daytona used to run on. Those weren't ZR rated

But he didn't know the provenance of those tires. Was there a previous repair? Who knows. There have been other incidents out there with stupidity and tires.

Well this isn't entirely accurate because they did have suit's and helmets on and he was throw from the car but of course it wasn't a fully prepared race car and yes they took a huge chance and lost. He drove the year before in a Boxer. A Porsche 959 was flown in for that one and DNF. Oops

But that was sort of the point of the event. You wanted to see what your street car can do. No one is going to cut up a beautiful TR or other car for an event such as this. People also ran cars such as Turbo Bentleys! Talk about tire problems and yes they had them! No accident though. It was fun but in subsequent years they tightened up the qualifications for what you had to have in order to run at those speeds.

Even when you do fully prepare the car if you go off you can die and professional racers did. Once you begin to tumble in that desert dirt/sand/brush it's a vicious ending.

We did it four times, prepped well but in mostly stock cars. The drive to and from the event on highway 50 was more fun than the actual event with quite similar speeds being possible.

 

People will always push the boundaries, it's the human nature, I am glad events like the one above exist, their record is pretty safe considering the facts of using open road and that some of the drivers are amateurs in not professionally prepped cars.
I do have a problem though, with ******* lawyers trying to make a profit from occasional accident and haughty idiots trying to limit or prevent others from making their own choices.

 

No. I ran my 96 Camaro at that speed and other than the windows sucking out of the door seals it seemed fine.

Crash anything at 200 and chances of survival are probably not great, designed for it or not.

 

good bless america....

 

To play devil's advocate, "their choice" still affects other, right? I used to work in major Level 1 trauma centers. We would frequently get airlifted race accident victims from our local motorcycle race track. And we'd also get a good number of non-racetrack racing incidents come. Caring for those took a great deal of resources. From the helicopter ride, to head to pelvis CT scans (aka pan-scan), xrays of almost every bone, surgeries, rehab, etc. So "their choice" can end up costing a lot to local economies (our government owned hospital was never good at making money for a number of reasons).

 

Most people have health insurance. Not all, of course. But, if you're going to race motorcycles, and don't have it, you're making a conscious choice to assume the risk, and you should be billed for any services you might need. Pay to play, so to speak.

Where I live, it's very common for the 20-somethings to participate in high-risk sports like mountain climbing, mountain biking and skiing/snowboarding, and many don't have insurance, either. They end up being charged if they have an injury requiring a visit to the hospital. They usually end up settling in cash, over time, for $.50 on the dollar. Which, you have to ask whether the insured are being over-charged, at that point, in order to cover the costs of those uninsured. Or, maybe, there's just such a huge mark-up that they still cover their costs at collecting half. The truth is we don't really know, as consumers, what the costs of provisioning health services are. Several dollars for an aspirin, though, would seem to be excessive to me, though.

That said, these "externalities" that you're referring to are real, and I don't disagree. But, I also believe that if you can't pay somehow (either by insurance or out of pocket), you shouldn't be admitted. There are all levels of healthcare providers, as well as plans. Pick and choose accordingly. But, that's a choice, too.

CW