8 ms·

The Cannonball Record has been broken again

97 points by slowhand09 7y ago

ablation 7y ago
The tech is interesting, granted. And I find the overall idea of it quite beguiling from an outlaw/risky/renegade POV. But I can't help but feel it's still massively irresponsible from both a public safety and environmental perspective. It's one thing to drive your car into a tree in the middle of nowhere at 120mph, quite another if you drive it into someone else obeying the speed limit and going about their day.
- Filligree 7y ago
  Agreed. Well, presumably they're going to be arrested soon.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    I'm pretty sure they would be in the UK. There have been convictions where idiots took pictures of their speedo then posted them on social media.
  - millzlane 7y ago
    Some of these guys post the footage years after it's completed to try and avoid prosecution.
    - dole 7y ago
      Statute of limitations is a year; the run happened more than a year ago and they delay in publishing exactly for this reason.
- Stubb 7y ago
  I'm happy to accept the slight increase in risk when I leave the house to know that people are undertaking great adventures like this. As for the environmental impact, I'll run the hot water a couple minutes longer before stepping into the shower tonight as tribute these kings.
  - jeffwass 7y ago
    Ok, You are happy to accept this risk. What about all the drivers NOT willing to accept this risk for themselves and their families?
    - ddunkin 7y ago
      What about all the drivers who take major risks daily by playing with their phones? This makes even legal speeds dangerous, at least these guys were looking ahead and aware of their situation.
      - gpderetta 7y ago
        Isn't playing with your phone while driving also illegal?
        ddunkin 7y ago
        In theory, if enforced. That has not stopped the behaviors of a majority of the population.
    - ProAm 7y ago
      If were okay accepting that self driving autonomous cars will occasionally kill people Im okay with drivers like this occasionally killing people too, its the same in my book.
  - andybak 7y ago
    It's easy to accept a small risk of a catastrophic outcome but you'll probably feel rather differently about the wisdom of your choice in hindsight.
  - namdnay 7y ago
    I don't understand your second point - how would that negate anything?
    - 7y ago
- ncmncm 7y ago
  No question but that it is massively irresponsible, and deserving serious jail time. But the question remains: will there be anyone else more massively irresponsible? Answer: sure, any Trump voter.
  - chasd00 7y ago
    I have to say, this is my new favorite comment of all time. So perfectly ridiculous.
    - ncmncm 7y ago
      A cannonball runner can only kill one or a few innocent people.
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't post flamebait to HN or turn threads into partisan battles. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- nodesocket 7y ago
  > environmental perspective Rolling eyes. Going insanely fast sustained > 100mph and putting other peope's life in danger I agree with. The drive being a detectable impact on the environment I'm suspect.
  - namdnay 7y ago
    That's the tricky thing about the environment - nothing we do individually has a detectable impact on the environment. And yet all of us doing it has a massive impact. So maybe the best is to just try to be a good person and not pollute unnecessarily
  - ablation 7y ago
    It's a completely needless long journey, in an uneconomical vehicle. The impact of one single person may be negligible but it's precisely this sort of collective tragedy of the commons approach that is proving problematic in regards pollution.
- turk73 7y ago
  I'm amazed it could even be done given the huge amount of gridlock and traffic in US cities today. It takes me 1hr to go 14 miles most of the time where I have to get to. I don't think there's an "environmental perspective" here. In fact, it's a sad testimonial to the effectiveness that enviro-propaganda is in infecting people's minds and altering behaviors. You believe you must change your behavior and cede individual rights for environmental reasons. I say, that is extremely dangerous. If you have studied how effective German propaganda was, and how effective Soviet propaganda was, and how it was used to enslave people and bludgeon any effective opposition, you might care to give the greenies a bit more scrutiny as far as their totalitarian aims go. Instead you believe that one car racing across the US at high speeds is somehow an environmental issue.
LeonM 7y ago
VinWIKI (its founder is the former record holder) did an excellent video where they interviewed the team [0]. I guess it's congratulations to the team, but I would never endorse such record attempts. It's just to dangerous to do. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6s9o6uIWZw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6s9o6uIWZw
- nodesocket 7y ago
  > At first glance, the AMG looked more like a mid-2000s Honda Accord from the rear, not like a car that would be cruising at 160 mph or faster. When the police on the radio don't know the make and model because they removed all the Mercedes Benz badges and covered the carbon fiber is great. "A silver passenger car..."
  - LeonM 7y ago
    If you look at the pictures, you'll see they blocked off a portion of the rear lights with a plastic wrap that matches the car's color. This makes it pretty hard to recognize the make/model from behind. The typical MB front (the grill) would still make it easily recognizable, but at the speeds they are driving I doubt many people had time to take a look at the front.
blakesterz 7y ago
"... L.A.'s spiderweb of interstates for a total of 2825 miles—Toman and Tabbutt were able to maintain an overall average speed of 103 mph..." I've driven cross country a few times and I was always happy if I could average more than 50mph over any long amount of time driving. I can't understand how they averaged 103, that really seems impossible without getting incredibly lucky!
- vidanay 7y ago
  Yeah, I've made several 20-22 hour trips from Chicago to a fishing cabin 8 hours north of Winnipeg, and it's HARD to keep your average speed north of 50. If you make a stop for gas or food, you can literally watch your overall average drop by a few MPH.
  - AshleyGrant 7y ago
    There's two big things they did: First, they minimized their stops to four fuel stops. Second, when they were moving, they were moving FAST whenever possible. Well north of 100 mph.
    - vidanay 7y ago
      Third, don't drive a F150 loaded with enough food and beer for four fat guys for 10 days while towing a boat. :-)
  - jcranmer 7y ago
    When I was in grad school, my trip home for breaks was 720 miles routinely driven in 12 hours, all stops included, for an average of 60mph. About 5 miles of this entire trip was on non-interstate, and travelling through the cities could be arranged to miss all the rush hours, which means that you can maintain speed limit the entire freeway trip (which is mostly 70mph).
- ncmncm 7y ago
  I used to congratulate myself for a Portland - Seattle run in two hours, back in the '80s. I never was able to account for seeing a full moon dead ahead, on a slower run.
nickthemagicman 7y ago
That's awesome. It seems like one could up their chances as well by having a caravan ahead of you as sacraficial police lambs.
- sgfdsagfsagf 7y ago
  It is awesome. Note that they start in NYC just past midnight, therefore they arrived in LA before 4:30 am. You can't really do better then that for traffic.
  - nickthemagicman 7y ago
    Excellent attention to detail. I imagine this was meticulously planned. I would have loved to read more about their planning of this.
- LeifCarrotson 7y ago
  They did have spotters along the way: > In all, they managed to rustle up 18 lookouts along the run. These were people who drove hundreds of miles in many cases just to scout the road ahead of the fast-moving AMG for a stretch and let the team know of any police activity or other hazards ahead. And, of course, they were familiar with that idea from the classic movie "Smokey and the Bandit" as referenced in the article, so they probably had a good reason for not doing it that way. I'd guess that hiring a caravan of people willing to get jail time, lose their licenses, and having their expensive, fast cars seized would be really, really expensive and would only keep a few officers busy for a few minutes. Plus, in hindsight, they were successful without it. However, I find the downvotes on your comment interesting having read the "Help me ask 'Why you didn't just'" article posted yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21675717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21675717 You met several of the criteria for reducing the insult factor: Your comment is impersonal, forward-looking, and not condescending, without being passive-agressive. But you were still downvoted.
  - mikepurvis 7y ago
    Alex Roy's book (which is excellent) has a bunch of details of his attempts and the eventual Roy/Maher success. Same as this one, it was basically two nights and one day. They had an IR camera in the car to see the heat from idling cop cruisers hanging out behind overpasses and such, and then for the daytime section there was a small airplane that flew ahead of them for a stretch and scouted out the route.
ncmncm 7y ago
The fuel cell remark confused me, being followed later by mention of turbos. What is the fuel cell for?
- Stubb 7y ago
  Not a fuel cell in the electrochemical sense, but one to store additional gasoline for extending the car's range.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    I see: "Not a fuel cell", full stop.
    - flyingfences 7y ago
      "Fuel cell" is the technical term for "gas tank" used in motorsports; it's literally a cell that holds fuel. In the techie/green community, the term has come to be used as a shorthand for "hydrogen fuel cell" but that's a more recent development.
      - ncmncm 7y ago
        Apollo missions used hydrogen-fueled fuel cells for primary mission power, 50+ years ago. The fuel cell is a catalytic converter of chemical to electrical energy. The hydrogen for it comes from what is called -- even in an interplanetary spacecraft -- a tank.
        flyingfences 7y ago
        I'm not saying that hydrogen fuel cells are a new technology, I'm saying that the use of the shorthand "fuel cell" to refer to them by default is a comparatively recent development limited to certain circles.
        ncmncm 7y ago
zaroth 7y ago
> “When all is said and done, there will be three kinds of reactions to an achievement of this kind. One will be outright indignation that anyone would endanger public safety by traveling at such speeds... To date, no one has been killed or seriously injured doing a Cannonball or setting a cross-country record in the U.S., but American motorists don't expect such high speeds, and truckers usually resent it. There's potential for disaster.” > “The other responses will be from another crowd—Cannonballers and motorheads of all stripes who believe that driving skill, and not traffic law, is more beneficial to actual safety than simply slowing down. From this side of the aisle there will be unadulterated joy that such a cross-country time has been posted, as well as begrudging appreciation from former record holders and disappointed fanatics who may have been planning record runs of their own...” > Was it a good idea? No. It never has been and it never will be. But like Everest, it presents itself as a risky challenge that is, to some, irresistible. To those who think it was irresponsible to attempt such a feat, a lot of what we do as humans—at our best—is frankly irresponsible. Humans acting perfectly responsibly, obeying all the laws of their local jurisdiction, never willing to put themselves and even perhaps others in harms way, and worried more about their carbon footprint than whether they can accomplish some mythical (to them) feat... I imagine that without the traits that lead to these types of attempts, and without a society that is willing to at least tolerate (if not celebrate) their achievements, we would lose out on a lot of inventions, discoveries, freedoms and social progress that stems from people with the same basic instinct to leave a dent.
- jeffwass 7y ago
  On the Everest comparison, the difference is Everest climbers primarily risk their own lives as people who agreed to make the climb. Whereas Cannonballers risk the lives of everybody sharing the road with them. Ie, regular drivers who have not agreed to let someone charge up behind them at >100 mph.
  - celticninja 7y ago
    Honestly that's not true anymore. Very few people are climbing it unaided and it is Sherpas who help that are also killed alongside these climbers. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48464030 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48464030 https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/04/14/599417489/one-third-of-everest-deaths-are-sherpa-climbers https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/04/14/599417489/...
nabla9 7y ago
These people are assholes endangering others in the public roads.
- turk73 7y ago
  Oh please, there are so many bad drivers, it's a drop in a very large bucket. The US imported millions of people who didn't grow up driving and gave them cereal box driver's licenses so spare us all, okay?
nkrisc 7y ago
Going 120mph with other traffic just going about their day is dangerous and anti-social. Nothing commendable about it. It's all fun and games until someone gets killed. I hope they have good long think about why they chose to endanger everyone they passed for some silly record.
- sgfdsagfsagf 7y ago
  Well it's been 100 years and no one's gotten hurt. I wouldn't (couldn't?) do it, but there are people who are amazing drivers. The difference between most drivers and someone who just cares about driving as a skill is huge. These guys are the cream of the crop. Plus they had taken precautions that are insane to avoid collisions. Heat detecting cameras to avoid deer? Do you know how hard it is to stop in time after spotting a deer? These guys are far less likely to crash then someone on their cellphones.
  - nkrisc 7y ago
    > These guys are far less likely to crash then someone on their cellphones. Yes, that is also dangerous and anti-social, but I don't see how it makes what they did less dangerous. It's dangerous not because they're bad drivers, they're not, it's because no one else is expecting a car to come barreling up from behind them at 120mph. And yes, thankfully no one has been hurt yet, but it's a totally unnecessary risk for some silly record.
  - froindt 7y ago
    >Well it's been 100 years and no one's gotten hurt. I'm curious if this is true. If there was a high speed crash anywhere along that path, the best move for the driver is to definitely not mention they were doing the Cannonball Run. Participating in the Cannonball Run is a guaranteed way to get 0 sympathy from a jury for a civil claim, and get the max sentence from a judge for whatever criminal charges you'll be facing. I think it's entirely possible people have been hurt/killed without much fuss getting linked to the race.
hans_castorp 7y ago
Isn't that article enough proof so they could be convicted for speeding? After all they publicly admit of having broken the law.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  One suspects they don't live in a state on the route. In the US, speed limit laws are administered by states, under state jurisdictions.
- rtkwe 7y ago
  Very few laws have an unlimited time you can be charged under the statute of limitation. Also most traffic tickets aren't even misdemeanors and it appears many places require those to be witnessed by a police officer of some sort so you'd have to prove both that they were speeding at a particular time and who was driving because you can't just charge the vehicle [0]. So in a strict sense the state has no hard evidence that they actually violated the speed limit other than their own word and no way to prove who was actually driving. [0] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-statute-of-limitations-for-speeding https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-statute-of-limitations-for...
- ng7j5d9 7y ago
  Can't imagine it would be. If you were a member of say, the Utah State Police, and you saw this article, what would you do? Ok, a photo claims these guys drove cross-country averaging 103mph with a top speed of 193mph. Can you prove they didn't slow down to the speed limit while they were in Utah and only drove incredibly fast in the other states? Also, which one of these guys was actually driving while they were in Utah? I believe the police would have to cite a specific individual for driving at an illegal speed at a specific location within their jurisdiction. Sort of like how everybody new Al Capone was a mob boss, but it was a struggle to actually charge him with a specific crime.
- slowhand09 7y ago
  I publicly admit to launching a massive pile of trash into space. The dump was closed and better to have one big pile in space than two small ones. I cannot tell a lie Officer Obie, I put that letter under that garbage.
9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
> To date, no one has been killed or seriously injured doing a Cannonball or setting a cross-country record in the U.S ...but four people died in a (legal!) Cannonball event in Australia in 1994. Two were contestants, two were race officials. http://www.cannonball.info/other-events/cannonball-run-1994 http://www.cannonball.info/other-events/cannonball-run-1994
fredrik-j 7y ago
Is it possible for the states they traveled through to revoke their drivers licenses? I mean they've presented ample evidence that they've intentionally exceeded speed limits on average over the entire route.
- frob 7y ago
  I think they can also be brought up on criminal charges in most states they passed through. Their radar detectors and, especially, their jammers are strictly illegal in many, if not most states in the US and yet they just gave the authorities pictures of their illegal setup with their names and faces and testimony that they used said illegal setup to enact willful and flagrant violations of the law. I really do hope the authorities come knocking holding a warrant with this article as the justification for issuing it.
  - ng7j5d9 7y ago
    It looks like radar detectors are legal in most US states and territories. Virginia and the District of Columbia are the two exceptions and the NYC->LA route wouldn't pass through either. https://drivinglaws.aaa.com/tag/radar-detectors/ https://drivinglaws.aaa.com/tag/radar-detectors/
S_A_P 7y ago
Huge car/gear nerd here and I just cant get behind this at all. The problem with this is that while you may get drivers with great skill, preparation, network and just plain old luck to have a successful run, you can also have 2 knuckle dragging morons who just want to go fast in the name of fun and "adventure". And its not a question of "if" its a question of when something will go wrong as the record requires a faster and faster average speed. If you look at the GPS "proof", their top speed on this run was 193. At that speed, you are traveling roughly the distance of a football field every SECOND. A deer, slow moving vehicle, mechanical failure or miscalculation will cause things to go very wrong. Even cars built for autobahn travel will not survive a major crash at that speed. Other vehicles are not going to expect someone to approach them at that speed and are also likely to make a mistake as they sort this out. This is a bad idea anyway you slice it. If you want to traverse the country quickly, catch a flight...
- totalQueer 7y ago
  Then you're actually just not that much of a huge car/gear nerd, after all, are you?
- close04 7y ago
  > Cannonball drivers, including Toman and Tabbutt, claim to be hyper-focused and safe while driving two to three times the posted speed limit It's hard not to become overconfident and over-reliant on technology and subsequently assume your driving skills are close to perfection, without even realizing that even the perfect driver cannot avoid all the other drivers' mistakes. This is an achievement but it's performed under different conditions than any other driver attempting it will encounter. Getting the record because the police just felt more laid back that night for example is like beating up an old Muhammad Ali and saying you must be the best boxer.
  - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
    Yup. Plenty of drunks "claim to be hyper-focused and safe" too. You can't trust people's judgment about themselves, especially not when they're doing something obviously dangerous for their own gratification.
ben7799 7y ago
I find it hilarious the author claims the car was superbly prepared and then talks about them having engine issues at altitude. Almost guaranteed this thing had a hacked up EFI modification done by some tuner... those guys never really know what they're doing, AMG/Mercedes almost certainly won't share how that computer works since modifying it on a street car almost certainly is illegal and will cause the car to fail inspection. In general it is always interesting most of these guys seem to be from NYC and born into privilege in a car dealership family. Alex Roy fit that model. It seems like you need to be born into that privilege to end up being a professional race car driver but you also have to have more talent and hard work. The cannonball stuff seems like some kind of 2nd tier automotive fame seeking. When I was into racing & stuff I'd meet tons of guys who all thought skill was more important than following the law.. but none of them were that successful in competition and all of them had plenty of accidents. Even if you don't find any of this interesting Alex Roy's book is a great read. Having once rode a motorcycle 1000 miles in well under 24 hours I get the appeal of this but not the super illegal speeds. The increasing use of electronics and internet to escape detection is pretty interesting.
- zeusk 7y ago
  The engine issues were result of the low octane fuel. Performance engines require high octane fuel to avoid "knocking" (or pre-detonation of fuel). The 92/93 octane recommended for stock performance engines is not available everywhere, let alone Ethanol blends and 95+ octane required for tuned engines. > Almost guaranteed this thing had a hacked up EFI modification done by some tuner... those guys never really know what they're doing, AMG/Mercedes almost certainly won't share how that computer works since modifying it on a street car almost certainly is illegal and will cause the car to fail inspection. You sure as hell don't know what you're talking about either, because most of the tunes don't touch the software as much as they change "maps" or the data tables that the ECU uses for fueling/AFR, ignition timing, cam profile (VANOS/VVT/VVL etc.). The tunes themselves don't result in a failed inspection (I own a tuned BMW N54 motor myself, that passes inspection without any hacks) but if you're generating enough boost, it may be necessary to remove the catalytic converters in the downpipes after turbos for a smoother flow which results in a failed inspection. Most modern inspections rely on the ECU to report a failed/missing catalytic converter so getting around the inspection is an easy task for someone inclined to remove downpipe cats.
drivers99 7y ago
This was fascinating from a logistics, tech, information warfare, planning, etc. perspective. It’s too bad the comments here are almost all the same pearl clutching, even if someone else has already said it, and the article starts and ends with discussions of whether it is dangerous or condoned that is more in depth already anyway.
chasd00 7y ago
the authorities should set a bounty of $1,000 for information leading to the arrest of a "Cannonballer"(?) en route. Each year the person who has let to the most captures would get a $3,000 bonus. That would make things interesting.
- slowhand09 7y ago
  ... after that escalation we can have more "red flag" laws too. Perhaps arrest people who are thinking about doing such things. Take me for example. My 700HP daily driver can do 200mph, honestly. I've thought about driving that fast. Best so far is 81mph. 81mph over the posted speed limit. No other cars in sight. Straight road. Uphill. Another couple of seconds would have given me a bigger thrill, a higher number. Turn me in.
savrajsingh 7y ago
I guess law enforcement and we as a society should now be scratching our heads wondering how this is possible in 2019. If speeding laws were truly enforced they wouldn’t have gotten out of NY/NJ without getting pulled over :)
Ididntdothis 7y ago
If these guys had balls they would go on a race track and see what they really can do. This is just a competition of recklessness, not skill. They are just a bunch of idiots who mainly endanger other people. At a minimum they should deactivate their airbags and safety belts to make sure they themselves get hurt when something happens.
Merrill 7y ago
Their AMG doing 120 mph in Nebraska on I-80 on Sunday is probably a lot safer than the Governor's Chevy Suburban doing 91 on the Garden State Parkway. "Corzine's car was doing 91 mph before crash" - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-corzine/corzines-car-was-doing-91-mph-before-crash-idUSN1720648420070418 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-corzine/corzines-car-was-... >Corzine was not wearing a seat belt, the statement said, confirming earlier statements by Corzine’s officials.

97 points by slowhand09 7y ago

The tech is interesting, granted. And I find the overall idea of it quite beguiling from an outlaw/risky/renegade POV. But I can't help but feel it's still massively irresponsible from both a public safety and environmental perspective. It's one thing to drive your car into a tree in the middle of nowhere at 120mph, quite another if you drive it into someone else obeying the speed limit and going about their day.

Filligree 7y ago
Agreed. Well, presumably they're going to be arrested soon.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure they would be in the UK. There have been convictions where idiots took pictures of their speedo then posted them on social media.
- millzlane 7y ago
  Some of these guys post the footage years after it's completed to try and avoid prosecution.
  - dole 7y ago
    Statute of limitations is a year; the run happened more than a year ago and they delay in publishing exactly for this reason.
Stubb 7y ago
I'm happy to accept the slight increase in risk when I leave the house to know that people are undertaking great adventures like this. As for the environmental impact, I'll run the hot water a couple minutes longer before stepping into the shower tonight as tribute these kings.
- jeffwass 7y ago
  Ok, You are happy to accept this risk. What about all the drivers NOT willing to accept this risk for themselves and their families?
  - ddunkin 7y ago
    What about all the drivers who take major risks daily by playing with their phones? This makes even legal speeds dangerous, at least these guys were looking ahead and aware of their situation.
    - gpderetta 7y ago
      Isn't playing with your phone while driving also illegal?
      - ddunkin 7y ago
        In theory, if enforced. That has not stopped the behaviors of a majority of the population.
  - ProAm 7y ago
    If were okay accepting that self driving autonomous cars will occasionally kill people Im okay with drivers like this occasionally killing people too, its the same in my book.
- andybak 7y ago
  It's easy to accept a small risk of a catastrophic outcome but you'll probably feel rather differently about the wisdom of your choice in hindsight.
- namdnay 7y ago
  I don't understand your second point - how would that negate anything?
  - 7y ago
ncmncm 7y ago
No question but that it is massively irresponsible, and deserving serious jail time. But the question remains: will there be anyone else more massively irresponsible? Answer: sure, any Trump voter.
- chasd00 7y ago
  I have to say, this is my new favorite comment of all time. So perfectly ridiculous.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    A cannonball runner can only kill one or a few innocent people.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't post flamebait to HN or turn threads into partisan battles. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
nodesocket 7y ago
> environmental perspective Rolling eyes. Going insanely fast sustained > 100mph and putting other peope's life in danger I agree with. The drive being a detectable impact on the environment I'm suspect.
- namdnay 7y ago
  That's the tricky thing about the environment - nothing we do individually has a detectable impact on the environment. And yet all of us doing it has a massive impact. So maybe the best is to just try to be a good person and not pollute unnecessarily
- ablation 7y ago
  It's a completely needless long journey, in an uneconomical vehicle. The impact of one single person may be negligible but it's precisely this sort of collective tragedy of the commons approach that is proving problematic in regards pollution.
turk73 7y ago
I'm amazed it could even be done given the huge amount of gridlock and traffic in US cities today. It takes me 1hr to go 14 miles most of the time where I have to get to. I don't think there's an "environmental perspective" here. In fact, it's a sad testimonial to the effectiveness that enviro-propaganda is in infecting people's minds and altering behaviors. You believe you must change your behavior and cede individual rights for environmental reasons. I say, that is extremely dangerous. If you have studied how effective German propaganda was, and how effective Soviet propaganda was, and how it was used to enslave people and bludgeon any effective opposition, you might care to give the greenies a bit more scrutiny as far as their totalitarian aims go. Instead you believe that one car racing across the US at high speeds is somehow an environmental issue.

LeonM 7y ago

VinWIKI (its founder is the former record holder) did an excellent video where they interviewed the team [0]. I guess it's congratulations to the team, but I would never endorse such record attempts. It's just to dangerous to do. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6s9o6uIWZw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6s9o6uIWZw

nodesocket 7y ago
> At first glance, the AMG looked more like a mid-2000s Honda Accord from the rear, not like a car that would be cruising at 160 mph or faster. When the police on the radio don't know the make and model because they removed all the Mercedes Benz badges and covered the carbon fiber is great. "A silver passenger car..."
- LeonM 7y ago
  If you look at the pictures, you'll see they blocked off a portion of the rear lights with a plastic wrap that matches the car's color. This makes it pretty hard to recognize the make/model from behind. The typical MB front (the grill) would still make it easily recognizable, but at the speeds they are driving I doubt many people had time to take a look at the front.

blakesterz 7y ago

"... L.A.'s spiderweb of interstates for a total of 2825 miles—Toman and Tabbutt were able to maintain an overall average speed of 103 mph..." I've driven cross country a few times and I was always happy if I could average more than 50mph over any long amount of time driving. I can't understand how they averaged 103, that really seems impossible without getting incredibly lucky!

vidanay 7y ago
Yeah, I've made several 20-22 hour trips from Chicago to a fishing cabin 8 hours north of Winnipeg, and it's HARD to keep your average speed north of 50. If you make a stop for gas or food, you can literally watch your overall average drop by a few MPH.
- AshleyGrant 7y ago
  There's two big things they did: First, they minimized their stops to four fuel stops. Second, when they were moving, they were moving FAST whenever possible. Well north of 100 mph.
  - vidanay 7y ago
    Third, don't drive a F150 loaded with enough food and beer for four fat guys for 10 days while towing a boat. :-)
- jcranmer 7y ago
  When I was in grad school, my trip home for breaks was 720 miles routinely driven in 12 hours, all stops included, for an average of 60mph. About 5 miles of this entire trip was on non-interstate, and travelling through the cities could be arranged to miss all the rush hours, which means that you can maintain speed limit the entire freeway trip (which is mostly 70mph).
ncmncm 7y ago
I used to congratulate myself for a Portland - Seattle run in two hours, back in the '80s. I never was able to account for seeing a full moon dead ahead, on a slower run.

nickthemagicman 7y ago

That's awesome. It seems like one could up their chances as well by having a caravan ahead of you as sacraficial police lambs.

sgfdsagfsagf 7y ago
It is awesome. Note that they start in NYC just past midnight, therefore they arrived in LA before 4:30 am. You can't really do better then that for traffic.
- nickthemagicman 7y ago
  Excellent attention to detail. I imagine this was meticulously planned. I would have loved to read more about their planning of this.
LeifCarrotson 7y ago
They did have spotters along the way: > In all, they managed to rustle up 18 lookouts along the run. These were people who drove hundreds of miles in many cases just to scout the road ahead of the fast-moving AMG for a stretch and let the team know of any police activity or other hazards ahead. And, of course, they were familiar with that idea from the classic movie "Smokey and the Bandit" as referenced in the article, so they probably had a good reason for not doing it that way. I'd guess that hiring a caravan of people willing to get jail time, lose their licenses, and having their expensive, fast cars seized would be really, really expensive and would only keep a few officers busy for a few minutes. Plus, in hindsight, they were successful without it. However, I find the downvotes on your comment interesting having read the "Help me ask 'Why you didn't just'" article posted yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21675717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21675717 You met several of the criteria for reducing the insult factor: Your comment is impersonal, forward-looking, and not condescending, without being passive-agressive. But you were still downvoted.
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  Alex Roy's book (which is excellent) has a bunch of details of his attempts and the eventual Roy/Maher success. Same as this one, it was basically two nights and one day. They had an IR camera in the car to see the heat from idling cop cruisers hanging out behind overpasses and such, and then for the daytime section there was a small airplane that flew ahead of them for a stretch and scouted out the route.

ncmncm 7y ago

The fuel cell remark confused me, being followed later by mention of turbos. What is the fuel cell for?

Stubb 7y ago
Not a fuel cell in the electrochemical sense, but one to store additional gasoline for extending the car's range.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  I see: "Not a fuel cell", full stop.
  - flyingfences 7y ago
    "Fuel cell" is the technical term for "gas tank" used in motorsports; it's literally a cell that holds fuel. In the techie/green community, the term has come to be used as a shorthand for "hydrogen fuel cell" but that's a more recent development.
    - ncmncm 7y ago
      Apollo missions used hydrogen-fueled fuel cells for primary mission power, 50+ years ago. The fuel cell is a catalytic converter of chemical to electrical energy. The hydrogen for it comes from what is called -- even in an interplanetary spacecraft -- a tank.
      - flyingfences 7y ago
        I'm not saying that hydrogen fuel cells are a new technology, I'm saying that the use of the shorthand "fuel cell" to refer to them by default is a comparatively recent development limited to certain circles.
        ncmncm 7y ago

zaroth 7y ago

> “When all is said and done, there will be three kinds of reactions to an achievement of this kind. One will be outright indignation that anyone would endanger public safety by traveling at such speeds... To date, no one has been killed or seriously injured doing a Cannonball or setting a cross-country record in the U.S., but American motorists don't expect such high speeds, and truckers usually resent it. There's potential for disaster.” > “The other responses will be from another crowd—Cannonballers and motorheads of all stripes who believe that driving skill, and not traffic law, is more beneficial to actual safety than simply slowing down. From this side of the aisle there will be unadulterated joy that such a cross-country time has been posted, as well as begrudging appreciation from former record holders and disappointed fanatics who may have been planning record runs of their own...” > Was it a good idea? No. It never has been and it never will be. But like Everest, it presents itself as a risky challenge that is, to some, irresistible. To those who think it was irresponsible to attempt such a feat, a lot of what we do as humans—at our best—is frankly irresponsible. Humans acting perfectly responsibly, obeying all the laws of their local jurisdiction, never willing to put themselves and even perhaps others in harms way, and worried more about their carbon footprint than whether they can accomplish some mythical (to them) feat... I imagine that without the traits that lead to these types of attempts, and without a society that is willing to at least tolerate (if not celebrate) their achievements, we would lose out on a lot of inventions, discoveries, freedoms and social progress that stems from people with the same basic instinct to leave a dent.

jeffwass 7y ago
On the Everest comparison, the difference is Everest climbers primarily risk their own lives as people who agreed to make the climb. Whereas Cannonballers risk the lives of everybody sharing the road with them. Ie, regular drivers who have not agreed to let someone charge up behind them at >100 mph.
- celticninja 7y ago
  Honestly that's not true anymore. Very few people are climbing it unaided and it is Sherpas who help that are also killed alongside these climbers. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48464030 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48464030 https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/04/14/599417489/one-third-of-everest-deaths-are-sherpa-climbers https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/04/14/599417489/...

nabla9 7y ago

These people are assholes endangering others in the public roads.

turk73 7y ago
Oh please, there are so many bad drivers, it's a drop in a very large bucket. The US imported millions of people who didn't grow up driving and gave them cereal box driver's licenses so spare us all, okay?

nkrisc 7y ago

Going 120mph with other traffic just going about their day is dangerous and anti-social. Nothing commendable about it. It's all fun and games until someone gets killed. I hope they have good long think about why they chose to endanger everyone they passed for some silly record.

sgfdsagfsagf 7y ago
Well it's been 100 years and no one's gotten hurt. I wouldn't (couldn't?) do it, but there are people who are amazing drivers. The difference between most drivers and someone who just cares about driving as a skill is huge. These guys are the cream of the crop. Plus they had taken precautions that are insane to avoid collisions. Heat detecting cameras to avoid deer? Do you know how hard it is to stop in time after spotting a deer? These guys are far less likely to crash then someone on their cellphones.
- nkrisc 7y ago
  > These guys are far less likely to crash then someone on their cellphones. Yes, that is also dangerous and anti-social, but I don't see how it makes what they did less dangerous. It's dangerous not because they're bad drivers, they're not, it's because no one else is expecting a car to come barreling up from behind them at 120mph. And yes, thankfully no one has been hurt yet, but it's a totally unnecessary risk for some silly record.
- froindt 7y ago
  >Well it's been 100 years and no one's gotten hurt. I'm curious if this is true. If there was a high speed crash anywhere along that path, the best move for the driver is to definitely not mention they were doing the Cannonball Run. Participating in the Cannonball Run is a guaranteed way to get 0 sympathy from a jury for a civil claim, and get the max sentence from a judge for whatever criminal charges you'll be facing. I think it's entirely possible people have been hurt/killed without much fuss getting linked to the race.

hans_castorp 7y ago

Isn't that article enough proof so they could be convicted for speeding? After all they publicly admit of having broken the law.

ncmncm 7y ago
One suspects they don't live in a state on the route. In the US, speed limit laws are administered by states, under state jurisdictions.
rtkwe 7y ago
Very few laws have an unlimited time you can be charged under the statute of limitation. Also most traffic tickets aren't even misdemeanors and it appears many places require those to be witnessed by a police officer of some sort so you'd have to prove both that they were speeding at a particular time and who was driving because you can't just charge the vehicle [0]. So in a strict sense the state has no hard evidence that they actually violated the speed limit other than their own word and no way to prove who was actually driving. [0] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-statute-of-limitations-for-speeding https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-statute-of-limitations-for...
ng7j5d9 7y ago
Can't imagine it would be. If you were a member of say, the Utah State Police, and you saw this article, what would you do? Ok, a photo claims these guys drove cross-country averaging 103mph with a top speed of 193mph. Can you prove they didn't slow down to the speed limit while they were in Utah and only drove incredibly fast in the other states? Also, which one of these guys was actually driving while they were in Utah? I believe the police would have to cite a specific individual for driving at an illegal speed at a specific location within their jurisdiction. Sort of like how everybody new Al Capone was a mob boss, but it was a struggle to actually charge him with a specific crime.
slowhand09 7y ago
I publicly admit to launching a massive pile of trash into space. The dump was closed and better to have one big pile in space than two small ones. I cannot tell a lie Officer Obie, I put that letter under that garbage.

9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago

> To date, no one has been killed or seriously injured doing a Cannonball or setting a cross-country record in the U.S ...but four people died in a (legal!) Cannonball event in Australia in 1994. Two were contestants, two were race officials. http://www.cannonball.info/other-events/cannonball-run-1994 http://www.cannonball.info/other-events/cannonball-run-1994

fredrik-j 7y ago

Is it possible for the states they traveled through to revoke their drivers licenses? I mean they've presented ample evidence that they've intentionally exceeded speed limits on average over the entire route.

frob 7y ago
I think they can also be brought up on criminal charges in most states they passed through. Their radar detectors and, especially, their jammers are strictly illegal in many, if not most states in the US and yet they just gave the authorities pictures of their illegal setup with their names and faces and testimony that they used said illegal setup to enact willful and flagrant violations of the law. I really do hope the authorities come knocking holding a warrant with this article as the justification for issuing it.
- ng7j5d9 7y ago
  It looks like radar detectors are legal in most US states and territories. Virginia and the District of Columbia are the two exceptions and the NYC->LA route wouldn't pass through either. https://drivinglaws.aaa.com/tag/radar-detectors/ https://drivinglaws.aaa.com/tag/radar-detectors/

S_A_P 7y ago

Huge car/gear nerd here and I just cant get behind this at all. The problem with this is that while you may get drivers with great skill, preparation, network and just plain old luck to have a successful run, you can also have 2 knuckle dragging morons who just want to go fast in the name of fun and "adventure". And its not a question of "if" its a question of when something will go wrong as the record requires a faster and faster average speed. If you look at the GPS "proof", their top speed on this run was 193. At that speed, you are traveling roughly the distance of a football field every SECOND. A deer, slow moving vehicle, mechanical failure or miscalculation will cause things to go very wrong. Even cars built for autobahn travel will not survive a major crash at that speed. Other vehicles are not going to expect someone to approach them at that speed and are also likely to make a mistake as they sort this out. This is a bad idea anyway you slice it. If you want to traverse the country quickly, catch a flight...

totalQueer 7y ago
Then you're actually just not that much of a huge car/gear nerd, after all, are you?
close04 7y ago
> Cannonball drivers, including Toman and Tabbutt, claim to be hyper-focused and safe while driving two to three times the posted speed limit It's hard not to become overconfident and over-reliant on technology and subsequently assume your driving skills are close to perfection, without even realizing that even the perfect driver cannot avoid all the other drivers' mistakes. This is an achievement but it's performed under different conditions than any other driver attempting it will encounter. Getting the record because the police just felt more laid back that night for example is like beating up an old Muhammad Ali and saying you must be the best boxer.
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  Yup. Plenty of drunks "claim to be hyper-focused and safe" too. You can't trust people's judgment about themselves, especially not when they're doing something obviously dangerous for their own gratification.

ben7799 7y ago

I find it hilarious the author claims the car was superbly prepared and then talks about them having engine issues at altitude. Almost guaranteed this thing had a hacked up EFI modification done by some tuner... those guys never really know what they're doing, AMG/Mercedes almost certainly won't share how that computer works since modifying it on a street car almost certainly is illegal and will cause the car to fail inspection. In general it is always interesting most of these guys seem to be from NYC and born into privilege in a car dealership family. Alex Roy fit that model. It seems like you need to be born into that privilege to end up being a professional race car driver but you also have to have more talent and hard work. The cannonball stuff seems like some kind of 2nd tier automotive fame seeking. When I was into racing & stuff I'd meet tons of guys who all thought skill was more important than following the law.. but none of them were that successful in competition and all of them had plenty of accidents. Even if you don't find any of this interesting Alex Roy's book is a great read. Having once rode a motorcycle 1000 miles in well under 24 hours I get the appeal of this but not the super illegal speeds. The increasing use of electronics and internet to escape detection is pretty interesting.

zeusk 7y ago
The engine issues were result of the low octane fuel. Performance engines require high octane fuel to avoid "knocking" (or pre-detonation of fuel). The 92/93 octane recommended for stock performance engines is not available everywhere, let alone Ethanol blends and 95+ octane required for tuned engines. > Almost guaranteed this thing had a hacked up EFI modification done by some tuner... those guys never really know what they're doing, AMG/Mercedes almost certainly won't share how that computer works since modifying it on a street car almost certainly is illegal and will cause the car to fail inspection. You sure as hell don't know what you're talking about either, because most of the tunes don't touch the software as much as they change "maps" or the data tables that the ECU uses for fueling/AFR, ignition timing, cam profile (VANOS/VVT/VVL etc.). The tunes themselves don't result in a failed inspection (I own a tuned BMW N54 motor myself, that passes inspection without any hacks) but if you're generating enough boost, it may be necessary to remove the catalytic converters in the downpipes after turbos for a smoother flow which results in a failed inspection. Most modern inspections rely on the ECU to report a failed/missing catalytic converter so getting around the inspection is an easy task for someone inclined to remove downpipe cats.

drivers99 7y ago

This was fascinating from a logistics, tech, information warfare, planning, etc. perspective. It’s too bad the comments here are almost all the same pearl clutching, even if someone else has already said it, and the article starts and ends with discussions of whether it is dangerous or condoned that is more in depth already anyway.

chasd00 7y ago

the authorities should set a bounty of $1,000 for information leading to the arrest of a "Cannonballer"(?) en route. Each year the person who has let to the most captures would get a $3,000 bonus. That would make things interesting.

slowhand09 7y ago
... after that escalation we can have more "red flag" laws too. Perhaps arrest people who are thinking about doing such things. Take me for example. My 700HP daily driver can do 200mph, honestly. I've thought about driving that fast. Best so far is 81mph. 81mph over the posted speed limit. No other cars in sight. Straight road. Uphill. Another couple of seconds would have given me a bigger thrill, a higher number. Turn me in.

savrajsingh 7y ago

I guess law enforcement and we as a society should now be scratching our heads wondering how this is possible in 2019. If speeding laws were truly enforced they wouldn’t have gotten out of NY/NJ without getting pulled over :)

Ididntdothis 7y ago

If these guys had balls they would go on a race track and see what they really can do. This is just a competition of recklessness, not skill. They are just a bunch of idiots who mainly endanger other people. At a minimum they should deactivate their airbags and safety belts to make sure they themselves get hurt when something happens.

Merrill 7y ago

Their AMG doing 120 mph in Nebraska on I-80 on Sunday is probably a lot safer than the Governor's Chevy Suburban doing 91 on the Garden State Parkway. "Corzine's car was doing 91 mph before crash" - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-corzine/corzines-car-was-doing-91-mph-before-crash-idUSN1720648420070418 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-corzine/corzines-car-was-... >Corzine was not wearing a seat belt, the statement said, confirming earlier statements by Corzine’s officials.