SW17LS

Oh those bikers are insane!

TangoRed

I showed up to this accident shortly after it happened: Motorcyclist presumed dead after hitting car on I-90 bridge and falling into Lake Washington | The Seattle Times. The motorcyclist was driving insanely (he had passed me earlier) and clipped a car, sending him over the bridge into a lake. The lake is deep enough to the point where they couldn't find the driver over the motorcycle. Crazy way to die.

I hope to hear how you two like it! It's one of my favorite tracks.

Stroock639

well i absolutely believe they can happen, hence why i have a strict criteria i follow and carefully pick my moments... the fact that i make my brakes last so long and get so many miles in between fill ups is evidence of that

this is a never ending back and forth since everyone has a different speed they consider "too fast", and eventually the only logical conclusion can be never take the car out of park since speed is dangerous... i take your words more seriously than most though since you actually have done a fair amount of fast driving in good cars, and know that 90 mph in a W222 is a far different matter than 90 mph in an original durango or something lol

btw here's me and the old man at pocono in the (then) 1 year old E63, so already i'm above average in experience and knowing how a car behaves at speed... i have nothing to show in terms of ability outside of gran turismo though so that'll have to remain conjecture haha

SW17LS

The issue isn’t the speed, it’s the speed combined with the roadway that wasn’t designed for the speed and surrounded by potential hazards you can’t anticipate or react to at those speeds.

No matter how incredible the car, there’s no way I can react to a deer at 130 MPH, or react to a pothole, or some other hazard in the roadway, or something else unforeseen. On a track, those variables are controlled…could there be a kid in the road who ran off from home? It’s absolutely possible. I have a friend who was driving on a dark highway in FL in a rainstorm and hit two girls and killed them. He wasn’t speeding and there was no reason to expect to find people crossing a controlled access highway in the middle of the night in a downpour…but there they were.

The car can cruise safely at 130 all day long, but you just can never know what hazards will be present.

Ask race car drivers if they would drive 130 on a public road and I bet you will find they will say no.

mmarshall

That's one significant difference between U.S. and European culture.....Europeans, particularly in countries with very high speed limits, simply don't put up with the dilapidated road conditions that we Americans do. If there is a pothole or other problem (such as lousy utility-work patching in the roads), or if there is debris in the roads, it gets fixed quickly...or there is hell to pay from the public. Here in the U.S., we're too busy driving with our heads buried in our cell-phones to care about the road-conditions underneath us. And, even if you DO complain, the highway department MIGHT get to it in six months LOL.



True...a deer, bear, or other large animal can jump out of the woods at any moment, in front of you.

Stroock639

if there's a kid trying to cross a completely sectioned off interstate with full street lighting at 1am then they've got bigger problems than my bi-weekly 3rd gear pull lol... i can't react to a pothole at those speeds either, hence why i have "my spot" where i know the road is smooth with no other converging traffic... on the handful of cases i haven't stuck to that like if i'm trying to make a video there's literally been a spotter with a walkie talkie

but i'll make you a deal steve, get me a seat on the toyota gazoo racing team and i'll happily put a rain check on the bi-weekly 3rd gear pull until then it's I-495 westbound between exits 40 and 39 (conditions permitting)

SW17LS

Its easy to say that, but that experience of hitting those girls ruined my friends life. He has never recovered. The point is anything can happen at any time...what if something happened to the road since the last time you drove on it? There are many many variables.

Toys4RJill

what are thermals? Like thermal goggles

Stroock639

yea that's horrible... i can imagine never forgetting that sight

bottom line is though crazy s*** can happen anywhere and the only way to ensure otherwise is to just not drive... but i believe that with adequate planning and restraint fun can briefly be had with a negligible increase in risk to others

i mean FAR more catastrophe has happened from people texting or being impaired than from people going to empty stretches of interstate just to hit the gas for a few seconds

SW17LS

This is a fallacy. Just because bad things can happen anywhere doesn't mean it makes sense to do irresponsible and dangerous stuff. Why not take a bath with a toaster since you could get hit by a train tomorrow? See makes no sense.

Stroock639

well again this will never be resolved here since we both have a different idea of when things become irresponsible and dangerous... i can point to my $1,200 yearly premium for full coverage on the E55 or my near 800 credit score but you'll just have to take my word that i'm almost exclusively a very responsible, defensive, and courteous driver

geko29

Unfortunately, that can happen any time and anywhere. 25 years ago a friend/coworker of mine had a Firebird Formula that was his pride and joy, his baby. One afternoon he went out to grab a burger on his lunch break, and some guy who wasn't paying attention stepped off the curb right into him. I doubt he was speeding because there was too much traffic at that time to really do so, but if he was it would have been minimal, like 38-40 in a 35, and he was not cited for anything. Unfortunately the guy died. After the car was repaired, he drove it once and then immediately put it up for sale. He just couldn't look at it anymore. I lost contact with him a year or so later, but he was never the same happy jovial guy that he had been. It wasn't his fault at all--literally the only thing he could have done to prevent it was go to lunch at a different time, or not at all. But it crushed him regardless.

SW17LS

I don't think you will find many people that think driving a car on a public road at 130 MPH is responsible or not dangerous, you certainly haven't in this thread, and if you were to be stopped at that speed you'd likely be arrested, so theres that too.

There is a line where you thinking something law, society and common sense dictates is irresponsible is okay doesn't result in "a difference of opinion". Its irresponsible, full stop. Thats the definition of "reckless" driving. If I have an opinion that giving my child a live hand grenade to take to school for show and tell is fine, does that mean if you think its irresponsible we have a "difference of opinion"?

Totally, it wasn't my friend's fault at all either. Such a horrible thing. He also got rid of the car...

The girls were for some reason crossing the 6 lane highway to get to a stadium on one side of the highway for a concert. Insane.

Stroock639

lol no i don't expect to meet many members of the general public that would, i probably wouldn't either had i never been introduced to actually fast cars and was still in the world of a camry V6 being a "fast car"

the majority of people probably wouldn't buy your 90 mph is fine because i'm going with the flow of traffic argument... i know it's completely the truth but so many people think that anything over the speed limit immediately becomes dangerous

we're both in agreement that there are times when driving over the speed limit is acceptable and appropriate, we're just splitting hairs over how much over the limit is acceptable... do you have an absolute speed amount that should never be crossed no matter what?

toasters in bathtubs and hand grenades at show and tell aside i don't think that's fair lol... we're talking about something we both agree is safe up to a point, after which it's no longer safe, and we just differ slightly where that point is

Margate330

At speeds over 100 mph, I always worried about a tire failure or someone pulling out from a side street without looking.

Most of my craziness back in the day was under 100 mph. Lol