Yet another tragedy on Scottsdale Road

Because street racing has a lot of attention here in NSW Australia ... very high on our local news at the moment.

I personally have a big issue with street racing, and get very upset when some family looses a son/daughter/dad/mum all because the the street racers (losers of low IQ) did not have big enough balls to test themselves on a race track.
Pete

 

Just guessing its a Road Warrior obsession......
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How very politically correct. Many would argue that it takes bigger balls to race on a street because of the greater variability of conditions, the added danger/excitement of legal prosecution, gang elements, stakes such as pink slips/street cred, whatever. Not saying I think like this, just that I am not going to jump on the politically correct bandwagon to score quick points. That's how we have ended up with ridiculously low 55mph speed limits. Today, they make no sense in light of CAFE and road and car safety improvements, yet still remain oppressively and stupidly low. Society doesn't need to be dumbed down, and you don't need to lecture others on how it takes "balls" to go to the track. In reality, it doesn't. You just need to have the desire, time, and money.

Unfortunately, and I don't mean this as a dig at Aussies, I have been reading how driving has become so overly regulated and restricted with all the oppressive anti-speeding laws that it makes no sense to be a car enthusiast in many parts of Oz. I suspect that a lot of Aussies who are car enthusiasts have little choice but to enjoy their hobby msotly through the internet, and that might explain the interest in this type of news snippet from AZ. Happy to be corrected.

Scud, I really hope that things go better for you this year.

 

I am highly offended by this comment. I couldn't give 2 tosses about scoring any points. I stand by what I said and will continue to say: "Street racers have no balls".

Why do they have no balls?

Because with street racing you always have excuses. On a race track you either win all lose. You can create excuses if you like but the chequered flag does not lie. I also know some street racers and I know they are scared to look slow (as they will) amongst real drivers.

I cannot believe how juvenile your response was. There is NO racing on a street, and when you grow some and take it to the track you will find out just how slow you were and how much faster you can go on the track. Once I started racing on a race track I realised that you just can never go anywhere near as fast on ANY street, never. There is no 110% on the road, impossible.
Pete
ps:

BTW: Speeding does not make you a car enthusiast ... and again I don't have an issue with speeding, but racing on the street. A very different thing.

 

Fair enough, but it's stupid to equate it with having "balls"... It's just a matter of who is interested enough in racing, and mature enough, to pursue it properly and who isn't. Running into a burning building to save a life, now that is ballsy to me. With reference to street racing, having excuses has nothing to do with having balls, or vice versa, unless I am misunderstanding the phrase. But I don't think I am.

Racing on the street is not really racing, and it's stupid and pointless. That has nothing to do with this incident, unless it's proven that they were racing. So, to keep harping on about street racing and saying that it is stupid and pointless just seems like scoring points to me. We all agree that it is dangerous and stupid. But you are the only one keeps making this pronouncement as if it's some great revelation you have had. Spare us. You are coming across as someone who desperately wants to be a schoolmaster. I am not one of your students. So please don't lecture me. I already know it's stupid to race on the street. It doesn't really matter how many times you say it. It won't make it any more valid.

I didn't say that speeding made you a car enthusiast. I was simply making the point that driving has become so heavily regulated and the laws so strictly enforced and draconian in Australia that a lot of the car enthusiasts, who would otherwise buy a performance car (which could be used to speed) are now simply enjoying their hobby vicariously. I have gotten this impression from reading various Aussies complaining about the declining motoring freedoms on various chat boards such as Pistonheads. However, I am happy to be corrected. When it comes to driving, I am just glad I don't live there, or in speed-camera infested England.

 

great movie , not even tainted by a yank as the lead role .

 

in the NT until recently, there was no speed limit , so we enjoyed what most in the world could only dream of . then they introduced a speed limit , which soon , should be thrown out for the old system again.

and thanks for your concern , ended the year with a new car purchase , so it started pretty good.

 

I must agree with Mr. A
and to play the devil advocate I would see our good Australian man to state exactly what the speed they were driving? Not measured so court won't have the number of the speed value.

 

Just a few facts to get in the way of your nationalistic fervor - Mel Gibson was born in the USA and only moved to Australia as a 12 year old. I guess that makes him a Yank by any accepted measure of birthright
Oh, it appears he has relocated back to the country of his birth and is now a resident of the small enclave of Malibu in the Great State of California, one of 50 such Great States making up the United States of America

 

there are many on many boards that are saying the speed was over 100 mph before impact , and i tend to agree . i don't care for the speed at impact , but to throw a guy 75 feet from his car indicates an impact speed over the limit . someone had posted somewhere that the car he was in may only of had a lap belt , and not a 3 point belt like the ones that are standard today . someone may add about this car ?

 

I'm not sure the denizens of Malibu would agree with you.

 

You tend to agree...oh, ok, that's that settled then. If you agree, well then, it must be fact. And you don't even care about what the speed was at impact...wow! A human body can be flung over a hundred feet if impacted by a car traveling at the speed limit...but don't let the facts get in the way, ok? Physics major, were you? If a car weighing a couple of tons and doing 70mph slams into your car, which is stationary, and you are propelled out of the stationary car while the moving and stationary cars only move a few feet further before coming to rest, guess how much momentum gets transferred to you. Guess how far that is going to fling your 70kg body if only air is slowing you down. A lap belt would not have allowed him to be flung out sideways either. We will leave out the cosine of the ejection angle (needed to figure out when gravity will pull it back to the earth's surface) for the next accident too.

A lap belt would have prevented him from being ejected too, in all likelihood, too. He was not buckled up, period.

You keep harping on about how this would never have happened if these guys had not been racing (which we don't know to be actually the case). Yet you seem incapable of acknowledging that if the old guy had not been blocking their paths, it would also not have happened.

Do Aussies call traffic lights robots too, or is that only done in NZ?

 

i hope you don't eat your words...

info from another car forum that you should chime into , they'd like your comments.

They just had the story on the News again. They buried the old guy, and then focused entirely on Van Drakel. They said he has a background in Speed including pleading guilty to 91mph in 04 and 4 other traffic violations. They showed his E63 and listed how it has 507hp, and showed MBWORLD posts, including his signature showing 12.87@112 in the 1/4. Not even a mention of the Mustang driver.

as another user has already said , " he ****ity **** ****ed ".

that made me laugh.

 

Unless an aftermarket seatbelt was installed, the Camaro which was hit would only have a lap belt, yes. However, I would be very surprised if the Camaro's driver was belted in at all given how far he was thrown.

 

i would find it interesting if the old guy was thrown out of the passenger window . i wonder if he had a clear shot through the window , or whether the window was closed , or that a part of his body hit the frame on the way out , taking some of the momentum out of him . lucky shot if you ask me that he was thrown out of the car without touching any part of the car on the way through.

here is another poster from another forum , his views not mine.


"Big thanks to ***** for actually going out there and doing this - the deceased man deserves the respect and dignity of the truth coming out. Also to echo all that ******** said, the MB guys who want to say these cars were going 45mph or 60mph are out of their minds. The camaro was punted 170 or so feet. The driver was tossed 75 feet. I've seen accidents at a close rate of 45mph.... the cars are beat up fairly good but not demolished like that. And from what I know and have seen and experienced, there simply is not enough kinetic energy in a 45mph crash to destroy a Camaro to that extent and push it 175 feet while also letting the Benz travel another 150 or so feet and toss a driver 75 feet from the car. And the fact that the Mustang also hit the Camaro (lets assume it cause 1/2 the damage) then slid 200 feet. A car sliding on it's roof slows at about the same rate as it can with all 4 tires on the ground at max braking. So lets say you are in a Mustang and you slam on the brakes and it takes you 200 feet to stop. Well most cars can stop from 60mph in 130 feet or less. So maybe 70-75mph. But that's how much speed the Mustang had AFTER it hit the Camaro. And since it scrubbed off a lot of speed upon collision I am sure it was at >100mph when it hit. And I assume there was SOME braking... I mean there's no way they didn't brake at all so how much do you want to bet they were at 120mph or so, maybe even a hair more.

The scenario from the MB crowd and Juice is just retarded. They want us to believe the Mustang and Benz are side by side (because the reaction time at 60mph is not that far in tems of distance) and the Camaro "suddenly" pulls out. But that doesn't hold up... if the Benz is on the left (looking at it from behind the 2 moving cars) and the Camaro is turning in front, then the Camaro makes a sudden turn giving the Benz driver no time to react... well unless the Benz was moving super fast or unless the guy in the Camaro floored it, then the simple time it takes the camaro to make 1/2 the turn and cross one lane would be enough for the Benz to stop - it would only be 120 feet. Look at it this way... you are going along at 60mph next to another car. A car cuts you off... he had to be less than 100 feet in front of the benz if the benz was only going 60...lets say it was 50 feet. 50 feet is nothing... there's NO WAY an old Camaro can cross two lanes while 2 oncoming cars only move 50 feet. So if the Camaro driver turned at the last moment then the Benz would have hit the front corner of the Camaro. If the Camaro had started the turn sooner then the Benz could have stopped.

Also who believes that 2 cars just both "happen" to be speeding side by side together? No way. And the witnesses were all lying too right?

Truth is these guys were running hard on the street, I bet they were going 100-120mph. They are going at such a high rate of speed that as ******** says, they are covering 100-200 feet in a second. 4-5 seconds before impact the Camaro driver checks and sees no cars (or at least cars far away). He starts his turn. It takes him 2-3 seconds before he starts to go into the intersection. Only when he is 200-300 feet away does the Benz realize someone is making a turn. He thinks "OH SHIIIIIIIT!!!!" and MASHES the brake... but he is going so fast that by the time he reaches the Mustang he has only scrubbed off 20-30mph of speed and he impacts the Camaro at 70-100mph. He imparts so much energy to the Camaro that it just get tossed back and the driver (being loose in the car) gets violently tossed out the passenger window - the car is either punted back (if it hit in the middle) or spun around like a top if he hit at the front or rear. It spins into the other lane and the Mustang hits it at an angle, flipping the mustang over and sending it 200 feet into a ditch.

Then all the retarded motherf*ckers at MBworld blame the guy and say stupid stuff like "at least the benz won" and try to make excuses for a 42 year old MURDERER.

I bet the guy will get 5-7 years."

 

Yo, Scud, isn't it the day before yesterday down under? Chill, man... time will tell.
Fact is, I'll bet alot of folks are now thinking twice about hi-speed hi-jinx on the hi-way. Unfortunately, not all of them.

 

Reading it carefully, it doesn't say the guy was thrown 75 feet from his car. Rather, he separated from his car at 75 feet from the impact, while the car continued to travel for another 100 or so feet from the point of impact. That makes a lot more sense than a body being flung out of a car for 70 feet, without sustaining insane levels of damage (like horrific separation of limbs) from the windows/frame/impact itself. If you want to see what kind of damage is done to a body that sustains an impact that throws it "just" 20 feet, go look at a few pictures on liveleak. It looks more like mincemeat than a human body...

I disagree with the analysis on a few key points. For instance, the coefficient of friction for a car sliding on a smooth metal roof is far, far less than four reasonably grippy tires under full braking or threshold braking (which the ABS systems would have them at in such a situation). I cannot believe he would even think such a thing.

Also, it seems both cars impacted the old guy's car. That's two sets of kinetic energy being imparted onto one car, and if the car is already lifted from one impact when the second one occurs, well, it's gonna travel. It is absolutely retarded to compare that to someone's personal experience of a 45 mph crash.

Also, the poster is estimating speed based on ABS-assisted braking distances under controlled conditions--they have ZERO relevance to sliding cars after an impact...where all tires may not be in contact, contact patches are definitely not 100%, tread patterns are offset to direction of travel, we don't know the reaction times and intensity of braking or the ramp-up to max speed attenuation or the direction of travel and amount of energy absorption due to deformation--all related calculations would be fractional in both planes, not 100% (there's that damn cosine again).

I am just trying to show you the pointlessness of this debate, as neither you nor I know what happened. I would agree that they were probably speeding. But I disagree with the conclusions that they were racing, or that the old guy was 100% not at fault. More importantly, what is the point of crucifying those involved at this stage? Does it give you some kind of pleasure, make you feel self-righteous, or what? Even if they "posted on chat boards" or "pleaded guilty to speeding before" or "boasted about their cars' performance" NONE of that makes them guilty of racing. It is IRRELEVANT. The only thing that is relevant is what eyewitness accounts say, assuming they are unbiased. Fine, they say they were speeding. I can believe that. Let the accident investigators determine what happened, to the extent they can, and let the lawyers and judges take it from there. I don't understand people's motivation in excoriating these guys online at this point. Or in taking bets in how long they will spend in jail.

Do be sure to obey all speed limits when you drive. Having an accident in a Murcielago might make some people jump to some incorrect conclusions about your speed and attitude. And we wouldn't want that, would we? Also, when I said that I hoped 2008 would be a better year for you, I wasn't talking about material things.

 

i couldn't give two ****s about it , but when someone defends the driver , the old innocent till proven guilty trick , who will defend the guy who is dead ? oh , that's right he's dead , so who gives a **** , right ?

and i thought we were a good 12 hours in front of you boys.

 

if it was my wife and children in the car , the ****head would already be dead . if it's broken , and it can be fixed , i don't give a **** . but he's broken ( dead ) and he can't be fixed. put someone you love in the camaro and see if you would have the same view.

 

Sure, but put someone you love in the MB...wouldn't you want them to get a fair shake? What if you were driving a truck and hit someone and they started screaming that you own a Murci as well so obviously you were speeding. And because you own a Murci, they assume you are rich enough to be able to pay for them to live comfortably for the rest of their lives? Fair, huh?

Even if someone killed your wife and kids, you don't automatically get to dispense frontier justice, sorry. If you killed him, you would end up in prison. This is why we have a justice system (imperfect as it may be).

The dead guy's interests are being looked after, if my reading of the case is correct. What else would you like to see done? A massive memorial?

I don't really understand why you are so worked up over this? Sorry for repeating myself, but when I hoped 2008 would be a better year for you, I wasn't talking about material things.

 

i couldn't give a **** , you're the dude posting all the words , and what i would do if it was my family is my business , no one elses . and was 2007 a bad year for me ? this is getting confusing .

 

Seems like you do give a ****.

If it's your business, keep it to yourself. What's the point of screaming and ranting and raving halfway around the world? And actually, if you do something to someone else, you will find very quickly that it will no longer remain just your business. Even in Australia.

Try yoga.

 

Just wait till the prosecution introduces Exhibit A: the speed the vehicle was traveling when the air bag deployed.

100+, a good guess.

 

Armchair quarterback a few posts back seems to think they had slowed to 70 by the time there was an impact.

 

...based on police statements in all the news reports.

But check this out:

http://www.newsday.com/other/education/ny-news_91404,0,2264948.story

If they can fish the event data recorders out of these cars, they'll know the exact speed at impact. Whether it's admissable or not is a different story. For the record, in the case linked to above, the event data recorder was ultimately ruled admissable and both drivers were convicted and sentenced to 1 to 3 years in prison.