The Crash

On the way home from work the other night we passed the scene of a car accident. The vehicle in question had both its front and rear ends smashed in and it was positioned across two lanes. There were no other cars involved, although one could easily be mistaken considering the amount of broken glass strewn across the road.

It must have taken extraordinary skill to crash the car in such a spectacular way, especially since the road was dry, well lit, flat and very straight.

As we passed by, I glanced out the window and noticed the driver sitting on the road barrier. I know it was the driver because he was inhaling his cigarette smoke so deeply that, if he let go, the cigarette might get sucked down his throat. His foot was also rapidly tapping the floor. Two sure signs. What also struck me was that the barrier was twisted horizontally, creating a perfect place to sit. How convenient. Why not make the most of a bad situation, sit down and have a smoke?

Wait a minute, this sounds a little too convenient, don’t you think?

I never studied the skid marks, car wreckage, road barriers, paint scrapings or the satellite images, but I have a strong feeling that the accident happened like this: the driver was drinking a coke from an over-sized open cup while talking on his cell phone to a friend about a passionate subject like, say, sport. The increasing speed of the car matched the increasingly heated debate about the effect of brand-name sport shoes on performance. The friend then dropped a bombshell: the driver's favorite player just announced that he will be switching to a rival team. In shock, the driver fumbled his phone, which fell on the floor and slid under his chair, just out of reach. That’s when the driver swerved across multiple lanes and lost control.

The front of the car clipped the barrier on one side of the road and spun around, narrowly missing an elderly pedestrian, a child with a ball and a family of cute yellow ducks. In his panic, the driver couldn’t remember what a relative who had taken an advanced driving course in the 1970s once told him about how to come out of a spin: should I brake hard, pump the brakes, accelerate into the spin, turn into the spin, turn out of the spin, keep the wheel straight…? So he tried all options and managed to increase his speed as his car collided with the barrier on the other side of the road, ricocheting off it like an elastic projectile.

As the scenery went by anti-clockwise, the driver realized that when the car finally comes to a halt, possibly upside down, he will have to be at the scene for some time. He then stopped groping under his seat for the phone so he could concentrate on maneuvering the car to impact the barrier at just the right angle. He managed to point the car at the barrier and flatten the metal sufficiently so that it would serve as a seat where he could wait comfortably until the tow-truck’s arrival.

Just a hunch.

Speed Demons

Recently, Wired Magazine Online ran a story about a man and his friend whose dream it was to beat the record of 32 hours and 7 minutes driving from New York to California. The title of the article was “Totally Illegal Cross-Country Sprint for Glory.” Their mission was to travel at crazy speeds along public roads through various states, risking their own and everybody else’s lives in the process (I suppose that’s the “for Glory” part).

The amount of planning it took to set this whole thing up is extraordinary. Police scanners and radar detection devices are only the start. 150 hours spent devising a series of complicated Excel spreadsheets detailing fuel stops, routes and detours proves their obsessive determination, not to mention the spotter plane they arranged to feed them information from the air about police, construction and other obstacles up ahead. Planned down to the very last detail, two men and their tricked-out BMW headed off to break a 20-year record.

My first reaction was to envy these people for their daring, bravery and skill. Then I thought about it and realized that they are actually probably two of the most stupid people on the planet. Firstly, the “independently wealthy” brains behind the operation poured real dollars into the project. I mean real dollars – top of the line GPS and bumper-mounted night vision cameras don’t come cheap. Once you have considered the obscene waste of money, think of the danger in which these two hooligans put the public. Traveling at an average of 90 miles an hour means, at times, exceeding the speed limit by 30, 40 or 50 miles an hour. Even the author of the article admits “For occasional spurts, 90 is not uncommon on the highway. But for a day and a half of barreling across the United States, 90 miles per hour is essentially insane”. Overtaking 16-wheeler trucks on a single-lane highway in inclement weather at double the legal speed limit is way past dangerous. It’s an open miracle that they didn’t kill anyone.

All that aside, the legal consequences of their actions are tremendous - two guys on a premeditated traffic-law-violating-extravaganza. Of course, they boasted about it to their friends and family. After all, what is the point of going through all that with nobody to greet you at the finish line? If their fancy equipment were to fail, what sort of defense are they going to be able to propose if they get caught? At one point the article points out that, “Sitting in the passenger seat, Maher now looks around at the piles of GPS units, the maps and plans and scanners, the squawking boxes. He's sitting in an electronic crime scene”. What could they possibly say at their trial to convince the judge to set them free or, at least, minimize their sentence? They planned and committed crimes and then had the adventure published in Wired Magazine. See you in 15 to 20, boys.

Yet, despite all of the potential dangers, the two rev-heads made it to their destination. Racing from New York to Santa Monica Pier in 31 hours and 4 minutes, they broke the record by 1 hour and 3 minutes. Congratulations.

And Wired Magazine has a lot to answer for. The article was written in such a way that it might possibly inspire others with lesser skills, equipment, backup and experience to attempt breaking the record. Heck, even these two maniacs shouldn’t have risked the lives of the driving public, despite their expertise. Look at some of the comments left by readers of this article, “This is really cool…” and “Records are meant to be broken” and “I did it in 35.5 hours back in 1991…” Video clips of the ride and a video-tour of the modified car only help to increase the romantic notion that breaking the law and avoiding the police is a cool thing.

Call me a wet-fish, but endangering lives just to beat the clock is not admirable. It’s foolish, irresponsible and reckless. “Wired” should not have run the story. At the very least they should have published it before the statute of limitations expired on the crimes committed by these two lunatics. Now that would have been sensational.