Yep. They probably weren't accelerating perfectly and were more than likely gloating when they hit the limiter, albeit for a very short time.
And BMW speedos and limiters have a lot of slop in them. I noticed Jeremy Clarkson brought an M5 Wagon to 170 and I've had my M6 in the mid 160's(I did this very safely only risking my neck).
This kind of crap makes me ill. I'm glad I don't drink.

 

In this scenario, any reasonable human being would not find the parents responsible for this type of illegal activity. Especially if it was carried out by adult children without parental consent.

Unfortunately, there are too many brilliant but misguided attorneys that can persuasively argue otherwise.

 

+10000000

See yeah

 

I don't remember the length of the stopping area. Didn’t we have .4 mile or about 2,100 feet of "performance demonstration" area? If so, then the stopping area was just a few hundred feet. It was considerably shorter than the acceleration distance. Or, I seem to remember it that way.

 

Not really. No matter how fast any type of vehicle is, there is always someone with one that will go faster. There is an old saying that a person (or car for that matter) will go as fast as the amount of money that one is willing to spend to get there. In the case of the M5s that were present that day, I don't think any of them were stock. They were modified quite extensively and should have run faster than the stock E55s. I will say that they weren't all that much faster, though. i believe that they were going fewer than 10 miles faster at the end of the .4 mile distance. I would not consider that to be a big deal. Definitely not a good enough reason to drive one of them. at least not for me.

Now, this is a different story altogether

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu...deoid=18207512

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v4...=GTvsViper.flv

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vea__AfzFIg

And here is a comparison of one of the M5s and a 2003 CL55

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k27Olqkimx0

 

As am I....in fact, I could barely sleep last night, so mortified was I that the towering intellect of "MRAMG" disagrees with me.

FACT: neither you nor I know whether item 2) is a fact or not, as toxicology reports have yet to be released.

FACT: if it does turn out to be a FACT that he was DUI, *and* that the parents at this party illegally served him and the others alcohol, then they WILL be subject to criminal prosecution, and civil proceedings.

Deservedly.

It's amazing how little respect you seem to have for the law. I guess ideology comes first, eh?

I always vote. And hey, how 'bout that McCain, eh?

I believe it was you who took this thread with a rant against the right of grieving parents to seek retribution against those who (if it turns out to be true) illegally served their underage children alcohol.

 

Yeah, I remember that distinctly; it was 0.4 miles.

I think it had to have been longer than that, because the Viper managed to get stopped, and it was (I believe) clocked at 160+, so it'd need 800 ft. or more to get stopped.

Of course, this assumes that my failing memory managed to cling to that piece of info correctly!

Actually, if it was a half mile runway, that would make sense....wow, I just had an epiphany, in the form of google!! Can't believe I didn't think of this before....

OK, they have three runways: two at 4000', one at 1400', which we can rule out as we are still alive. So, given that we had 0.4 miles for the "performance demonstration", that leaves 2112 (wow, I remember that album) ft to stop, *although* the starting point was probably 1-200 ft in front of the end of the runway, so it was probably more like 2000'.

 

In that video you can see that the CL55 spun bigtime (smoke!) at the beginning, which cost him plenty in the race as he was spinning while the M5 was leaving.

Had he gotten a better launch, the run would've been *much* tighter, but that's the way it goes.

 

Yeah, definitely.

Know what you mean...these days I keep a three-drink limit unless the wife's driving or we're walking.

Yeah, those speedos are normally about 10 mph fast at higher speeds, so 170 indicated sounds about right, as it'll hit 160 or so...

So if they hit an indicated 160, which was 150 actual, they'd have probably hit that in about one mile (assuming the engine wasn't too hot from any previous runs, not a certainty), and had more than enough time/space (200 ft or s0) to get slowed down enough to save their bacon if the brakes weren't badly faded, and if he got on them pretty hard within a few seconds...i

If otoh he really went for the rev limiter they'd have never gotten slowed down in time. Again keeping in mind that the added passenger weight would put its weight/hp in about the same range as an E39 M5, consider (source: fastsaloons.com)

E39 M5:
0-130 in 19.9 sec
0-140 in 23.8 sec

E60 M5:
0-130 in 15.6 sec (diff: 4.3 sec)
0-140 in 18.1 sec (diff: 5.7 sec)

I don't have 150 for the E39, but the gap seems to grow by about 1.5 econds per 10 mph of speed increase, so let's assume for the sake of argument (and to keep the math easy for poor moi) that there is about 8.5 seconds difference between the two from 0-160.

And let's assume that it takes the E60 one mile to get from 0-160, driver only.

Again to keep the math easy for moi, assume that the acceleration is nice and linear from 150-160, so that its average speed over this range was 155 mph, or 227.3 ft/s.

So if it took that loaded down M5 8.5 more seconds to hit 160 than an empty one, the distance would be 5280 ft + 8.5s*227.3ft/s = 7212 ft. Add 125 ft for reaction time and to hit the brakes, and now you're at 7337 ft.

The Jumbolair runway is just over 7400 ft. long.

This left them with less than 1.8 of the distance they needed to stop.

Game over.

 

I am thinking that the Viper shut down before the last cones to have more room to slow down. If not, he would have ended up in northeast Louisiana. Man, that thing was a bullet.

 

Yeah, that thing was unreal...if you look at that vid of him running the CGT, you can see that he spun like a **** for the first few seconds, and still assassinated that thing. Crazy fast car!

 

Stop torturing me!
They were brand new tires with 100 highway miles on them, still slick with release compound.
I was monkeying around with the TC off!

LOL. I hate being immortalized with a loss!

 

Yeah....well, I did put in the comments that you'd spun wildly off the line, so hopefully that registers with the viewers!!

 

I wonder at what point braking distance overtakes headlight illumination? I think its well below 100mph.
Driving at those speeds at night is really really stupid.

 

I didn't mean for it to end up like that. I wanted to point out that a modified M5 that has had a lot of money spent on it could barely beat a much heavier (and certainly nicer) car. I didn't think it was very far in front of you at the finish line. The fact that you had so much tire spin only adds to the performance that your car "demonstrated".

 

You are quite marque oriented aren't you. First my joke goes over your head and now subjectivity in the form of the "nicer car" rears it's ugly head. I'd rather not play these games but here goes; for the record, a stock E60 M5 is faster in a straight line than a stock CL55.

 

Ain't no thang, he smoked me. Thankfully all of us lived to play another day.

Back to the original idea, kids and fast cars don't mix.

 

Im only 19 years old, and i have a 211 E55. Thank god ive never crashed or had any bad luck with my car. But from what ive personally seen, it has a lot to do with age as it does with maturity. I know my limits, i know how hard i can push myself and i know what i can get away with. Its very unfortunate that anyone would ever have to lose their children to something like this (when i was 7 i lost an older cousin to drunk driving and he was like an older brother to me). recently in the Beverly Hills area where i live, there was a high school kid who totalled his brand new M5, a few months after totalling his fathers 750i, and after the M5 they got him a new M6!!! But i dont think that stupid driving has to do with only age, i think it has much more to do with maturity than even skill. Good luck to the families of the deceased.

 

I threw together a spreadsheet to calculate the minimum speeds at which an M5 would have been traveling after 2, 2.5, and 3 seconds after maximum braking, ABS on, in a straight line, in 10 mph increments from 120 to 160 mph.

Note that the vehicle in question was probably *not* getting maximum braking at the time of this accident. This is not due to the extra weight (in researching this, I discovered that added masswill not lengthen braking distances as the extra mass increases traction, offsetting increased momentum of extra mass), but rather from the fact that the vehicle's ABS and traction control appear to have been disabled, judging by the facts that the vehicle left skid marks and went sideways at the end of the run.

Drivers will sometimes disable their traction control to obtain slightly faster acceleration times, but as we see this is done at their peril, as it will dramatically increase braking distances and prevent the vehicle's lifesaving skid control from doing its thing.

In any case, here are the absolute minimum speeds at which this vehicle would have been traveling after braking between 2 and 3 seconds. Table is in the form speed at which braking started, followed by its minimum speed after 2, 2.5, and 3 seconds. These are based on the M5's maximum braking rate, which is about -9.75m/s. These are truncated, not rounded.

120: 76, 65, 54
130: 86, 75, 64
140: 96, 85, 74
150: 106, 95, 84
160: 116, 105, 94

I also calculated minimum distances from these speeds as well. Here is a second table with speed, followed by minimum distances in feet traveled after 2, 2.5, and 3 seconds:

120: 288, 340, 384
130: 317, 377, 428
140: 346, 413, 472
150: 376, 450, 516
160: 405, 486, 559

Note the extreme distances involved. And note that they still had a huge distance to go to stop. Here are total minimum stopping distances from these speeds, *excluding* reaction time, which when one has been drinking can easily be one full second (up to 250 added feet at these speeds!):

120: 484
130: 568
140: 659
150: 756
160: 860

Again, these are with traction control and ABS *on*, which from appearances they may not have been in this case. With them off, distances would have been far greater, particularly with wheels locked.

 

Unfortunately you may never know your limits or what you thought you could get away with until it's too late...
Be safe

 

Can you disable ABS in the M5? If you cannot then why does the car veer sideways? I thought ABS prevents a lock and keeps your car straight.... as long as you haven't changed the steering input.

Is it possible that at 150+ MPH the front end was so light that just the slightest directional change by the driver caused the car to veer and go sideways?

 

Great post, I did read the link "researching" but have some reservations regarding the authors ability to discount the kinetic energy.
Can you do time & distance graph on braking alone?

 

Improviz, very interesting post on braking. Just one quick point; dynamic stability control (DSC) was likely disabled to enable the engagement of S6 but the ABS remains on.

 

Yes, but you first must convert the vehicle's speed (V) into meters/second. Then, equation wrt time (for the M5) becomes x(T) = V*T - 4.875*T^2 , where x(T) is the vehicle's position in meters at any time T.

ex) V is 50 m/s, T = 2 seconds, so x(2 seconds) = 50*2 - 4.875*2^2 = 100 - 4.875*4 = 80.5 m.

You can plug this into excel and it'll plot out quite nicely.

 

Thanks!

Ah, so this explains how he got sideways! In this case, there'd be two sets of skid marks, then: the first being the normal pulsed marks from the ABS at full lockup, the second being yaw marks from the vehicle going sideways. Thanks for the info!