The Pedal-to-the-Metal, Totally Illegal, Cross-Country Sprint for Glory (2007) | Hacker News Reader

The Pedal-to-the-Metal, Totally Illegal, Cross-Country Sprint for Glory (2007)

wired.com

96 pointsnsp72 comments

In the end, Roy never attempted the 25-minute Manhattan Rendez-vous. But he claims to have raced a 27-minute "practice run." He proudly estimates that he hit top speeds of 144 mph [through downtown New York]...

Christ, what an asshole.

This meant running dozens of red lights at absurd speeds and left little time to react to sudden contingencies like pedestrians. [page 3]

Yeah.

Most accidents require multiple simultaneous factors: bad weather, a tire blow out, a bad night's sleep, a crying baby in the back seat, a deer in the road. The driver of any one car has control of only a fraction of these. By operating at high speed, you add another factor and decrease your capacity to respond to the others. It increases the risk of an accident by at least an order of magnitude, if not more, and commensurately increases risk of death to the driver and to innocents. The whole thing reeks of douchebagerry.

Incredibly childish thing to do, endangering innocent peoples lives.

How are people's lives endangered?

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.

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.

The Wired article mentions they had some friends in a plane for some of the daytime segment. No helicopter mentioned.

It was probably a plane I was thinking of. It's 5 or 6 years since I read the book :-)

[citation needed], when you take into account the technology being used.

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.

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.

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.

Well that is fair enough. What I find odd is claiming to be unimpressed after only giving reasons why you would be unapproving.

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.

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.

That's a false dichotomy.

why? i clearly state driving fast is dangerous.

The risks are obvious and here's a bit of proof to back that up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Gumball_3000_collision

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.

Irrelevant. This is not about comparing motorsport events for safety.

Then what is it about? In the end,we are just a bunch of guys on the Internet, every comment is irrelevant.

The point is that the bar for "safe" for a motorsport event is way lower than for public roads.

I don't particularly care to crunch the numbers or look up the figures, but I am going to go ahead and guess that one deadly incident for hundreds of drivers driving several thousand miles, for several years, is in the general ballpark of the standard fatalities per mile in America. Doing some quick "fermi-math" here, I'm guessing it is about the same.

Again, that is irrelevant for this case, where the guys racing are out on the street with its curbs, lamp posts, uneven paving, manholes, etc, and where they choose to be on the same 'track' as people who aren't volunteering to be in such a racing condition, and who aren't all, at the moment, physically or mentally prepared for it (in many cases, they aren't even capable of being physically and mentally prepared for it. Not everyone is born a racing driver, and those that are, grow old, too)

Formula one is relatively safe nowadays because all cars are safe, the drivers have superhuman driving ability, are physically prepared, and wear safety gear, because the circuits are smooth and without things you can hit that will kill you, and because medical assistance is close by when needed.

Actually I think the bar for safe motorsports events is far higher than public roads. Nürburgring is considered one of the most dangerous and deadly courses to race on and it has had 68 fatalities since 1928. Per mile driven I believe that is probably an order or two of magnitude below the fatality rate of most highways, let alone ones that have been around since the 30s.

Interesting. That's not something I had considered. I will need to update my views.

"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."

Yeah, and driving a pen into your eyeball is FAR less dangerous than shooting yourself in the head with a .45. I'm not sure why I should care about the distinction, though. Your shithead texting at 85mph and Mr. "I'm Too Rich To Obey The Law" here are both assholes endangering innocent people with willful carelessness. Fuck 'em both.

>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

http://www.thinktransatlantic4.com/2012/04/is-autobahn-safer...

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.

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.)

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).

If someone blows by you at 95 you just drive your line and don't react, that's what my driving instructor taught me anyway.

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

If that guy had rolled, they'd have been too close.

Or here:

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Children rarely endanger innocent lives, so why are you calling it childish?

Children also aren't very good at driving. Really this couldn't be any less childish.

I think he is indirectly calling the driver selfish for endangering innocents for his own excitement, and selfishness is a hallmark of children.

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.

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?

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.

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 tops that signfiicantly. Also - note - street driving, closed course.

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.

Having survived several accidents at the hands of other drivers going too fast

Hmm. Maybe time to move out of the fast lane, then.

I was a passenger in all of them.

Also.. This is a shameful display of a wealthy person using their wealth to simply disregard the laws.

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.

Shameful because their behavior put so many people's lives at risk - that's not an opinion, it's a fact.

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.)

Every normative statement is an opinion. What is the point of bringing that triviality up?

"shameful" is an opinion based on your personal belief systems.

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.

id rather have him on the street than the regular driver - for safety's sake.

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.

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.

Without reading the whole article, I'm guessing this is an abridged version of Alex Roy's great book 'The Driver'?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Driver-Dangerous-Pursuit-Outlaw/dp...

Definitely worth a read if you're into that kind of thing.

Yeah its a pretty old article (2007) so it was probably published in the lead up to that being released.

added year to the title. I believe the drive took place a couple years prior to that, and publication was delayed while they waited out statutes of limitations

Yeah, he explained that in the book. Again - brilliant read :-)

I really enjoyed that book as well. Around that time, I came a across a documentary about both his run as well as the old Cannonball and US Express races. It was still being made at the time, but it's been released since.

http://www.32hours7minutes.com/

I haven't seen it yet, but it looks quite good.

Ah great stuff! It was still being made when I read it! Will check it out...

Same here. I was really excited when I first found out about it, but then it didn't come out for another few years. I'm sure I'll be ordering a copy soon, though.

There is a documentary about this that has finally been released: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1329299/

There are also several documentaries out there about the "Gumball 3000" mentioned in the article.

I've read this story a few times and always love it. Yeah, driving fast inherently carries a lot of risk, not only to yourself but to others around you, but it's a risk dependent on how well you know your car and how well you can drive it. You can't mitigate all the risk, just a chunk of it.

The likelihood is motorway speeds will be pushed out faster at some stage, so the record might be easier to break. However, 6 years on there's even more eyes in the sky so if you try it you're going to jail.

I didn't read the entire article, did he beat the record? What speed do you need to average to hit 32hours cross country? 90mph? I wonder if now it could be accomplished more easily using 2013 traffic and weather data apps. Like waze and Stormpulse and dark sky and maybe google glass or other augmented reality apps paired with night vision and other sensors.

Yeah he beat it by a full hour and three minutes, using a spotter airplane and a new co-pilot. Man, what an awesome story. Completely reckless, but completely awesome.

In one page — http://www.wired.com/cars/coolwheels/magazine/15-11/ff_canno...

The author of Simcity, Will Wright - was involved in a similar activity in 1980 http://www.wired.com/cars/coolwheels/news/2007/10/will_wrigh...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Wright_(game_designer)#Per...

Yet another asshole in a BMW.

Whats with the BMW drivers? Really?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com