KrisKeeney

Wait a minute: are you saying you are 21 years old and still live at home?

Wow. That's gonna leave a mark.

rahulanand1130

None taken cylinder head. I agree with you that i could benefit from attending a racing school, many people could. I just feel that an accident like this one was more than just lack of skill but a lack of judgement on the people involved. Im definetly not trying to say all young drivers are good, because i do know that most aren't, but that doesnt apply to every driver 16-25.

Blacksport350

Sorry, I must disagree. Look at the picture in my signature, that is my race car. I am a decent driver and a pretty good judge of driving skills. We race with 16 year olds that are very skilled with lightning fast reflexes and good judgement. We also race with 40 year olds who happen to be able to write the check and get in the car only to become rolling obstacles and endanger those around them.

My point is that with proper training, a young driver can be a safe driver and in fact, an excellent driver. An older driver is not a better driver because of age, it is experience based and in many ways, learning through trial and error and being unsafe along the way. Many have continued to be unsafe and unskilled through their driving years and own fast cars that they have no business owning.

Bottom line....EVERY young driver should be required to attend basic driving instruction classes that teach car control and limits. EVERY older driver that has not done so and owns a fast car should do the same. It would make the roads much safer.

Statistics don't lie but saying a young driver is an idiot and can't possibly be able to drive is a false statement.

Go on a Ferrari owner's club (or similar) drive sometime and you may witness some of the most irresponsible, dangerous, and reckless driving that you can imagine out of any group of 40+ year olds. No better then a BMW club drive with a bunch of 20 year olds.

Carl Lassiter

Old cars lack passive safety to protect loved ones when 20 year olds with 469bhp cars lose control. A new VW Jetta 2.5 (150bhp) is the ideal car for anyones children, whether they're the offspring of a restaurant manager or the Sultan of Brunei.

C43AMG

He's a college student, cut him a break.

Jon2007E63P30

Yes, I agree we should all take driving classes to become better drivers.

But that is just the skill aspect. Forget the safety aspect of it, but Lewis Hamilton should not have been driving on public roads at 120MPH if for no other reason than the bad publicity and getting a suspended license for 1 month. That is bad judgement.

Those 40yr olds on the track may have poor skill and slower reflexes, but as a group they are far less likely to try and use what they learn on the street. The street is a far different environment than the track. Being lightning quick on the track does not mean you are a good driver on public roads.

When you are going 120MPH and something unexpected happens, skill helps you recover without killing yourself or someone else. It was poor judgement to be going 120MPH. Skill can sometimes protect you from poor judgement, but it will catch up with you.

That is one of my biggest concerns for those on this forum.

C43AMG

Well put , I agree.

E55BKS

It never fails, someone finds a way to bash someone else no matter what the topic is...truely incredible! Give the guy a break, I would've stayed at home until I was 23 if my parents had let me. There's nothing wrong with saving money while you're young. Bashing young people because it makes you feel good is immature, at least he's here talking about the subject, that tells me he has opinion and possibly wants to learn something.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the lives that were lost and the familys that have to deal with there lost.

sdunham

Nothing quite so effective in getting people to think twice about speed as seeing a fatal crash and the remains of it's victims... Those last few seconds of life must have been pretty surreal for those victims...

alumar

Neglecting Air resistance the calculation goes as follows:


Horizontal distance (x) = 200feet
vertical distance (y) = -15feet
t = time
downward acceleration due to gravity = 32.2 feet/second^2

Time taken to travel vertical distance of 15 feet:

-15 = -(0.5*32.2)*t^2

solving for t = 0.965 sec

Take t and substitute it into the equation for horizontal distance.

x = Vx*t

Assuming the car left the road horizontally and not at an angle we can just solve for the horizontal velocity:

200 = Vx*(0.965)

Vx = 207.25 feet/second =>141.3 mph****

Therefore the instant they left the road they were doing approximately 141 miles per hour.

....

But reports are now saying due to the skidmarks on the runway, he pitched the car sideways before he went airborne, causing the car to spin and rotate...so the final collision was upside down and on the side of the car...

Wonder if he took it straight and hit the facing forward if it woulda mattered any...

RIP Josh, epically bad decision ...

Cylinder Head

iTrader: (1)

I knew someone was going to do the math. He probably would have had a better shot at surviving if he'd stopped in a straight line. That's a big maybe. Big.

RJC

It's amazing considering the weight, speed etc or the car (and how well built a new M5 is) that the tree is still standing and the car is split in two. Mother nature is amazing...

Carl Lassiter

A very good point.

alumar

There are countless amounts of variables that coulda reduced the collision impact, but with no real resistance short of air/drag their speed stayed pretty constant through the 200ft.. so in the event that there was a level runoff they woulda had enough friction to slow the car down enough to live through the impact.

Airborne and Vehicles negate most design stress/impact test... Technology or not, not much woulda helped them at any angle of impact....

DCarrera

That was pretty close to what I estimated, but I think the speed may have been slower based on the large cement blast deflector at that end of the runway. Actaly, vertical distances was 70 feet. It was 85 feet to the ground, car struck object 15 feet off the ground (85-15=70 last time I checked).

Let me know what number you get making that correction, I'm wondering if my ~120 estimate was at all close.

Yacht Master

CH how many stop and go segments (0-155-0) could an m5 do in 1.5 miles?
3? or would 3 be just a little too much? And how many till the brakes get a little fade going on?

DCarrera

I actaully fired off a rough estimate back on post 15.

https://mbworld.org/forums/showpost....0&postcount=15

regor60

take a little over 2 seconds to fall 70 ft...equates to 65 mph to travel the 200ft

Cylinder Head

iTrader: (1)

Ahh here's something that hadn't been entered into the equation yet, you raise an excellent point there sir. Brake fade. The single-piston units on the M5 are awesome to haul you down from 150 once, or twice even. But they fade QUICKLY after being stressed out. That is the single largest criticism (aside from torque) against the M division, if you're going to track your M car, you need to upgrade your calipers.

To answer your question, I'd say it takes about a half mile to get the car up to 150, maybe more. It'd be a real stretch to get 3 runs of that sort in on a 1.5 mile course.

DCarrera

No, it's about 1.47 seconds give or take a few fractions.. (damn you for making me do the math).

alumar

Even taking brake fade into account, the car woulda slowed down enough to not launch off the end of the runway to hit that tree in the fashion it did.

What im figuring, based on reports of them being out there running it up and down a few times " according to witnesses ", he probably got disorianted and did not realize how far he was down the runway, overdriving his lights by more than 110mph. By the time the lights hit the edge of the runway, he prob paniced, slammed on the brakes and pitched the car sideways.

Things that conspire to this are obviously high speed driving @ night; more than likely looking at the speedo and not the road, considering your covering nearly a football field every 2 seconds...

alumar

Just a bad situation all the way around, i know first hand how easily you could misjudge distances @ highspeeds on a runway, hell my signature below is a shot of my C32 at a multi staged event on a runway, that shot happend to be at the 100mph to 0 braking contest... If they didnt have brake markers it would be hard to know when to brake @ those speeds, and hell to do it at night?!?...regardless of experience.

Wonder if:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8PjH_m0F_8

was inpiration? ** note i dont mean the cause, and or anyway related to

M5 = night = airport

regor60

nooo....you missed the 1/2 component of 1/2at^2 = x; it's not at^2=x . thus endeth the physics lesson for the day

ItalianStallion

It also depends on how intoxicated he was. That could be the ultimate factor in why they crashed. I remember once when I was 16 and drunk, I stole someone's car which had girls in it and I went for a ride and I had no idea how to get the car from drive to reverse when I wound up in the parking lot of a library and almost went into a creek. I was also told I did a burnout and went out of a one-way street.

I am expecting a few people on here to post about how retarded the above is. I obviously agree, but the problem is, when your friends are just as drunk as you are and you don't know right from wrong because your judgement is way off, you will do illogical things. Thank God, nothing happened and nobody called the cops. But it was a lesson well learnt and I'm glad it will never happen to me ever again.

RJC

bump