Gearheadotaku said:Competing in an open road race is about as close as you can get to this and be legal. Sadly there are very few of them and the longest is about 90 miles.
BBORR is 118 miles (2 X 59 miles). Just saying ...
Gearheadotaku said:Competing in an open road race is about as close as you can get to this and be legal. Sadly there are very few of them and the longest is about 90 miles.
BBORR is 118 miles (2 X 59 miles). Just saying ...
Gearheadotaku said:Competing in an open road race is about as close as you can get to this and be legal. Sadly there are very few of them and the longest is about 90 miles.
Even these sanctioned events have accidents with cars leaving the road. And they require all kinds of safety equipment to run in the big speed class.
In the old old days when Fangio and the rest would run thousands of kilometers from Buenos Aires to Caracas and back with tube tires, McDoo-doo headlights and drum brakes thru the Andes. That must have been insane.
dculberson said:spitfirebill said:I feel the record deserves an asterisk **.
I think that all previous records probably prepared to the best of their abiilties and budget. Being prepared is not in any way justification for an asterisk.
They were more than prepared. They had 28 spotters and others that scouted routes. I stand by my statement.
I’m all for people endangering themselves. Not so much a fan of them endangering others...
parker said:I wasted some time reading Alex Roy's book a few years ago. Called himself "the driver" and promptly crashed the first time he goes to a track. He comes off as very, very full of himself and how great he is in his own mind.
Before Roy the record had been held by people who approached the challenge with all the delicacy of a hammer.
Roy was the first of the modern cannonballers, sure some before him may have used a fuel cell or a radar detector but he was the first to bring an attempt into the 21st century.
Bolian was able to complete what he did because he studied Roy's successes and failures.
The new guys had a pretty close friendship with Bolian by the sounds of things and did the same.
Roy was in some ways the bridge between the old and new school. He was a party animal, had a larger than life ego and was successful because of obsession.
Bolian, did it like an engineer. He knew his budget and focused on controlling all the parameters he could. Used decision trees to make calls on the fly and was ultimately successful where others failed.
I understand the motivation, and I understand the objections. However... I'd rather get passed at 140 by these guys than deal with the typical celphone yakking makeup applying video watching shiny happy "motorsists" ya see all the damn time. I wish that more shiny happy folk would be influenced by their example to, like, yaknow, pay attention when they're driving but that ain't gonna happen..
And I am pretty sure those videos can be used in court against them, and how the heck can they ever ever ever get car insurance ever again?
Patrick said:I saw a shot of their gps, l believe they topped out at 197. On public roads. With no safety gear, and likely no firewall between them and the trunk mounted fuel cell. One fraction of a second of a deer jumping out and they're dead.
You probably shouldn't hear about what street racers used to do on I-480, then!
I’m not a fan. Guys that do this are shiny happy people in my mind.
I'll take three trained guys in a well-prepped AMG doing 160mph on the same highway I'm on any day rather than the idiots I share the road with on a daily basis.
ebonyandivory said:I'll take three trained guys in a well-prepped AMG doing 160mph on the same highway I'm on any day rather than the idiots I share the road with on a daily basis.
me too. But I see no evidence of well trained or well-prepped (beyond mega hp).
In reply to A 401 CJ :
Ok, maybe you have a point but at least they seem very dedicated to the task at hand and that's more than I can say for the majority of the drivers I see every day.
Theyre hyper-aware of their surroundings and what's in front of them. I'll stand by my statement as a general rule.
In reply to A 401 CJ :
If you think you can hit that time without huge amounts of planning you are fooling yourself.
Hp is one of the least important factors. Sure you need a car that can cruise at 120-140 and sprint to much more but that's only a small part of it.
Fuel efficiency, spotters, radar, lidar detectors, gyro mounted cameras. Fuel stop planning is huge, pretty sure the latest guys had people waiting for them at least at one station so they didn't need to wait for the pumps to start. Don't even start weather considerations , or time scheduling to miss high traffic areas at peak times.
All 3 of the new record holders also did prep events, going so far as to mark speed traps and high risk areas on gps so they could be extra vigilant.
Trust me these guys didn't just grab a fast car put a fuel cell in it and blast from the redball to the Porto fino.
So, they spent a lot of time and money preparing to be shiny happy people who put a lot of others at risk. Not sure if that makes it better or worse. Being an shiny happy person on purpose may be worse than just being a regular shiny happy person.
T.J. said:So, they spent a lot of time and money preparing to be shiny happy people who put a lot of others at risk. Not sure if that makes it better or worse. Being an shiny happy person on purpose may be worse than just being a regular shiny happy person.
If you wanna have a debate about the ethics of it I can bust out my old ethics textbooks and go all teleological on this thread.
I'm not sure I can condone this as more than an act of law breaking.
But I can't deny what they have done is truly impressive.
They pulled off the equivalent to a well organized bank heist but without a victim. And people always line up for bank heist movies.
I've had two giant SUV-totaling crashes. One was a distracted texter and the other from a DUI drug-addict.
Again, give me a world with these guys on the road. I'll take that all day long over the textinganddrivingdrunkdoingmakeupeatingdoingdrugs type of drivers that populate the interstate today.
In reply to 1SlowVW :
I agree they put in a lot of planning and effort and managed to pull off a difficult task better than anyone else has done it, but I am not impressed.
ebonyandivory said:I've had two giant SUV-totaling crashes. One was a distracted texter and the other from a DUI drug-addict.
Again, give me a world with these guys on the road. I'll take that all day long over the textinganddrivingdrunkdoingmakeupeatingdoingdrugs type of drivers that populate the interstate today.
Agreed. I see far more dangerous driving from nervous, incompetent, or distracted drivers than from aggressive drivers. Usually when the aggressive drivers do something, it's deliberate, planned and they know they can make it (and often comes with warning from their prior driving). The clueless, nervous or incompetent ones do something dangerous without even realizing they're being dangerous.
And there's way too much bashing of "people with money" as if having more money than you is shameful.
Yeah, it would be much safer if only poor people were doing it. That makes sense.
If you want, I can show you thousands of cases where middle and lower class people HAVE ACTUALLY KILLED INNOCENT PEOPLE and it wasn't their excess of money that killed them.
Could you imagine the derision here if these Cannonballers drove an SUV or God forbid, drove a 4x4 pickup (that wasn't used for towing) across the country? Some here would have them swinging from a rope just for that!
Who do you want coming at you on the undivided highway, an AMG with three hyper-vigilant drivers/spotters focused solely on driving or the guy in his work van who says "I've only had a few beers, berkeley it"?
In reply to ebonyandivory :
Not shameful, but when you have money it's way easier to buy your way out of trouble
In reply to Patrick :
So you're jealous that they can do it but you can't because of money? I thought it was strictly about safety.
Rich people can do a lot of things I can't. I just don't hold it against them.
In reply to ebonyandivory :
You're reading a whole lot into very little. I'm happy where i am in life. I don't want what anyone else has.
In reply to Patrick :
Not reading into anything. I just read what you wrote. I apologize if I'm misunderstanding what you wrote but there was only the mention of some sort of disdain because rich people have the money to assist in their breaking the law, not breaking the law per se.
In reply to ebonyandivory :
No disdain implied. The stunt is irresponsible no matter who does it or their economic status. It's just easier to pull off if you have the money to buy your way out of the potential trouble. It's not the fault of the offender that the system is set up to take money in lieu of prison time.
Patrick said:
The stunt is irresponsible no matter who does it or their economic status.
That I agree with. But that's not what I've been reading in this thread.
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