7 ms·

Incredibly childish thing to do, endangering innocent peoples lives.

• diminoten 13y ago
  How are people's lives endangered?
  • teraflop 13y ago
    I would hope this is obvious, but "driving in the dark at 50 mph over the speed limit" has a high risk of causing a fatal collision.
    • iamben 13y ago
      Not sure if it mentions it in the Wired article (and not condoning it), but he was using an awful lot of high end tech - night vision, helicopter etc.
      • maxerickson 13y ago
        The Wired article mentions they had some friends in a plane for some of the daytime segment. No helicopter mentioned.
        • iamben 13y ago
          It was probably a plane I was thinking of. It's 5 or 6 years since I read the book :-)
    • diminoten 13y ago
      [citation needed], when you take into account the technology being used.
      • austinz 13y ago
        Technology can mitigate the risks, but not eliminate them altogether. I've nearly skidded off a road a few times when misjudging the curvature of unfamiliar onramps or offramps (and taking them far too fast). I've seen a couple of other highway features which, if taken too fast by an unfamiliar driver, could easily lead to calamity. Technology also can't compensate entirely for driver fatigue or bad snap judgments, both of which are a real threat for any traveler (not just these guys). The article makes it clear that he plans ahead, relies upon support, and tries to stick to straight stretches of highway. Good for him, and if he wants to risk his life doing 130 down a deserted highway at 2 in the morning so be it. But honestly, from the article, it looks like he has a habit of weaving through traffic at unsafe speeds, and as someone who's nearly been killed by insane drivers trying similar stuff...well, honestly, I'm not impressed.
        • jlgreco 13y ago
          You're not impressed, or you don't approve? I don't find it plausible that anyone could not be impressed by this, though of course approval of this is going to be spotty.
          • _delirium 13y ago
            Does it count if my level of impressedness is fairly low? It's not 100% uninteresting, but it doesn't seem like a particularly amazing feat, either. I can believe that if you disregarded laws and drove fast, with some planning, you could do this, so the result is roughly what I would've expected. It requires some execution, but it doesn't give me the "wow! that's really possible?!" kind of awed feeling.
            • jlgreco 13y ago
              Well that is fair enough. What I find odd is claiming to be unimpressed after only giving reasons why you would be unapproving.
          • austinz 13y ago
            I think for me being impressed may be more closely coupled to approval than most people. I wanted to express my disapproval but I didn't think I could do it in a way that wouldn't degenerate into a personal attack. So, my intent was not particularly clear. Sorry. From a technical perspective, I guess I'm impressed by the fact that he was able to marshal together the resources, time, and support necessary to make this happen. He's done similar stunts without killing anyone, so I'm somewhat impressed by his driving skills (although there's also the advanced safety technologies in his car, as well as the intrinsic chance you'll find yourself in a situation that could result in an accident). His endurance is also admirable - it must have been very difficult racing the clock for hours on end while maintaining extreme concentration. But then, there are also people who drive drunk, drive while distracted, or drive dangerously badly-maintained vehicles regularly, and nothing happens to them, so I guess that makes the 'reckless driving' aspect slightly less impressive.
    • beachstartup 13y ago
      yes. it is dangerous. driving fast is dangerous. but people do FAR more dangerous things on their commute to work every morning and after happy hour. how do you compare a dedicated, concentrated driver + spotter/navigator pair with $20k of equipment and performance/safety modifications in a BMW M5 to: your typical groggy office worker fatass drinking coffee, listening to an audio book, eating an egg mcmuffin and texting on his phone doing 85mph down the interstate on his morning commute, in a shitbox Saturn with drum brakes and an under-inflated tires that couldn't brake from 85mph in a mile's distance? you're surrounded by far more dangerous things on the road every day, it just looks boring and pedestrian like some guy going to work instead of exciting and dangerous like 2 guys with sunglasses in an M5 speeding down the highway.
      • chad_oliver 13y ago
        That's a false dichotomy.
        • beachstartup 13y ago
          why? i clearly state driving fast is dangerous.
      • iblaine 13y ago
        The risks are obvious and here's a bit of proof to back that up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Gumball_3000_collision http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Gumball_3000_collision
        • gambiting 13y ago
          If anything, Gumball is a proof that it can be done safely. There are hundreds of contestants every single year and statistically it's one of the safest motorsport-events in the world.
          • Someone 13y ago
            Irrelevant. This is not about comparing motorsport events for safety.
    • coldtea 13y ago
      >I would hope this is obvious, but "driving in the dark at 50 mph over the speed limit" has a high risk of causing a fatal collision To which I call BS. How come German highways (that do not have such BS low traffic limits as Interstates, and are actually unlimited in large stretches) are safer than the interstates? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_autobahns#Speed_limits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_autobahns#Speed_limits http://www.thinktransatlantic4.com/2012/04/is-autobahn-safer-than-us-interstates.html http://www.thinktransatlantic4.com/2012/04/is-autobahn-safer...
      • salgernon 13y ago
        Because people expect that style of driving. This race thing would be fine if it was all on closed roads, but what happens when he blows by me 16 year old daughter, doing 95 in a 25 when she lacks the experience to deal with his behavior? 95 is great as long as we all agree that that is what the road should be driven at. But you don't get to unilaterally decide the speed limit.
        • rdl 13y ago
          A controlled access highway (e.g. interstate), even with a 55 mph speed limit and most traffic at 60-70mph, is probably far safer at 165mph than a 25mph city street with intersections is at 75mph. Cars you can see are relatively easy to predict (particularly when you're going 3x faster than them); pedestrians, other vehicles emerging from hidden alleys, etc. are a lot harder. It's still irresponsible, but tech, training, and such can mitigate risk at absurd speeds on an interstate, but not so much downtown. (I used to do 140-160mph in UAE, Kuwait, etc. pretty frequently, on roads which were 60-70mph speed limits, but would never exceed the speed limit in cities. Then I discovered camels.)
        • stygianguest 13y ago
          The more immediate problem is 16 year olds going at such speeds. Driving fast on the German highway requires a good driver and a good car. I am not a good driver and have a tiny car, so I go slow (130-160 km/h).
        • nicholassmith 13y ago
  • 6d0debc071 13y ago
    In an uncertain world, people's lives are always endangered on some probabilistic level - knowledge isn't absolute. That said: The most dangerous times, driving, tend to be when you don't have enough time - not necessarily when you're close to someone but in terms of the amount of time you'd have to make an observation, make a meaningful decision, and react to unexpected developments - this is something like a function of the number of decisions that must be taken for a given distance in a given environment modified by the speed you're doing... (I'll just call that your time horizon.) If you're going faster than the vehicles around you, then you tend to have a lot of small time horizons where the decisions you have to take are potentially quite dense (the other guy does something requiring your reaction, you don't have a lot of space - decisions/space go through the roof, speed remains high.) Take here for instance: http://youtu.be/hMjKiP6Xup8 http://youtu.be/hMjKiP6Xup8 If that guy had rolled, they'd have been too close. Or here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nghau2LfjmE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nghau2LfjmE Hear the sound of their engine where they've shifted down while/after braking? Or here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kx1zNTQpzmo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kx1zNTQpzmo Visibility's awful. Their horizon's what? A few seconds? One of the people is telling the other guy that they're going too fast and to ease off. Driving fast, of itself, isn't particularly dangerous as long as you have good sight lines - driving at a different speed to traffic around you on the other hand is. I mean we've, I assume, all driven. We know that people do stupid things and you have to drive in a manner to account for that. I think their actions pretty much unquestionably increased their risk compared to their not driving above the speed of surrounding traffic. Now, whether that makes them more dangerous than your average driver is highly debatable. They seemed to know what they were doing, which lots of people don't really when you start thinking of how far out to potential hazards they start taking action and use that to infer how often they're taking observations or predicting. In other words, how bunched up their OODA loop is compared to the speed they're doing. Lots of people drive in a very rushed fashion rather than driving fast but smoothly. -shrug- Personally I think that driving in the rain stuff was very dangerous. But, if someone has to do something irresponsible, I'd rather it be people like them than some idiot kid who's just figured out the accelerator goes all the way down :p
• speeder 13y ago
  That does not prevent it from still be hell cool. EDIT: I see these people as sort of vehicular hackers, like computer hackers do lots of illegal things to learn, or for glory, or because it is cool, but with no real malice, these people do these things likewise. Of course, does not stop it being dangerous... But for example they choose a holiday weekend to do it, to ensure the risk to strangers was low, as traffic was minimal.
  • opminion 13y ago
    Many people, particularly those who had a bruise with death in a car, will be puzzled by anyone finding playing Russian Roulette with other people's lives "hell cool" and without malice.
    • jlgreco 13y ago
      Malice isn't just a word that means "bad" or something. Malice is a desire to cause harm; there is certainly no malice here. At most what you have here is gross negligence.
• SamReidHughes 13y ago
  Children rarely endanger innocent lives, so why are you calling it childish?
  • jlgreco 13y ago
    Children also aren't very good at driving. Really this couldn't be any less childish.
  • sliverstorm 13y ago
    I think he is indirectly calling the driver selfish for endangering innocents for his own excitement, and selfishness is a hallmark of children.
  • deleted 13y ago
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  • venomsnake 13y ago
    You don't know many children then - I have personally endangered mine and that of friends while I was around 10-12. The most telling example - a close friend (we were both 12) wanted me to attack him with knife to show me how to block. It was pure luck I tried to stab him at much slower speed than I was able so the whole story ended with his very deeply cut palm instead of blade in the guts. Children are not stupid but they have some very vague concepts of what is safe.
• ramirez60 13y ago
  Are you just boring? It's obviously not something that should be done everyday but that doesn't detract from how awesome it is. Were you never young? Did you not try to go for glory on something that had risk?
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • chad_oliver 13y ago
    It is natural to want to go for glory, but it's just plain selfish to pursue personal glory by risking other people's lives. It's awesome in the same way that the Conquistadors were awesome.
  • ghshephard 13y ago
    You can do things that are risky, and require awesome amounts of skill, without risking innocent lives. I watched the Rendezvous Video described in the article - but, the skill demonstrated in something like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuDN2bCIyus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuDN2bCIyus tops that signfiicantly. Also - note - street driving, closed course.
  • the_cat_kittles 13y ago
    Having survived several accidents at the hands of other drivers going too fast, I can say I don't find it awesome at all. I think it's more just ignorant, particularly of how stupid and horrible you would feel if this kind of driving resulted in injury or death of anyone.
    • CamperBob2 13y ago
      Having survived several accidents at the hands of other drivers going too fast Hmm. Maybe time to move out of the fast lane, then.
      • the_cat_kittles 13y ago
        I was a passenger in all of them.
• everyone 13y ago
  Also.. This is a shameful display of a wealthy person using their wealth to simply disregard the laws.
  • jlgreco 13y ago
    Not disregard.. evade; it only takes a few dollars in gas money to disregard traffic laws, anyone can do it. And "shameful" is just your opinion.
    • ghshephard 13y ago
      Shameful because their behavior put so many people's lives at risk - that's not an opinion, it's a fact.
      • jlgreco 13y ago
        That does not seem to be what he is calling shameful in that particular instance. He seems to be calling out the use of personal wealth to evade the law as shameful, not the reckless nature of the stunt. (And yes, that is still an opinion.)
        • jamesaguilar 13y ago
          Every normative statement is an opinion. What is the point of bringing that triviality up?
      • a3voices 13y ago
        "shameful" is an opinion based on your personal belief systems.
        • ghshephard 13y ago
          If all (for any reasonable definition of all) belief systems are in agreement with the concept that "Putting innocent lives at great danger just so that somebody can experience some sense of excitement", then that behavior being "shameful" is closer to "Fact" than "mere" opinion. There are many, many things that people find shameful that are more a reflection of their personal belief systems than they are of universal applicability - That 10 minute drive through the streets of paris was not one of them.
• zobzu 13y ago
  id rather have him on the street than the regular driver - for safety's sake.
• Orva 13y ago
  Same thing what we do, we just don't ever see the people whose life we shorten or end to fullfill our need for nice gadgets and fast connections around the world.
• k2enemy 13y ago
  I think most people would agree that this is dangerous and irresponsible and would not condone it. That said, it is still fun to read about the excitement and live vicariously through it. There's a reason why most people like Han Solo more than Luke Skywalker.