'Cannonball' speed record broken – New York to LA in less than 29 hours | Hacker News Reader

'Cannonball' speed record broken – New York to LA in less than 29 hours

cnn.com

50 pointscodezero53 comments

> He concedes his endeavor was a dangerous one, especially when you consider Bolian slept only 40 minutes of the trip, and co-driver Black slept an hour. But Bolian went out of his way to make it as safe as possible, choosing a weekend day with clear weather and a full moon -- and routes, when possible, with little traffic or construction.

It's interesting how people justify things to themselves. "Okay, sure, I'm an asshole, but at least I made efforts not to be terrible". Travelling at a weekend might just mean a much higher number of inexperienced drivers making rare journeys, thus making weekend racing more not less dangerous.

And isn't the point of having a co-driver to let one of them sleep while the other drives? Driving while tired is very dangerous.

I agree with the rest of the thread - these people should be prosecuted. Take this stuff to a race track where other people have made a choice to be there.

I don't know about you, but with enough caffeine (which really isn't that much) I can easily stay up for 30 hours with little to no side effects.

Enjoy that while you're young ... I once spent a month sleeping every other night to complete a project (note: not everyone loses focus after x hours and I did take Edison style 20 minute naps a few times a day).

Now that I'm older, I find it hard to stay awake when it's approaching midnight, but I'm often back up by 0330 to 0430 in the morning. I probably sleep less in total than I used to.

> I can easily stay up for 30 hours with little to no side effects.

You think you can stay up for 30 hours with little to no side effects. Maybe you can when you're not driving, but being behind the wheel adds a bunch of stuff that causes tiredness. It's boring, there's a monotonous sound from road surface, the road is hypnotic.

Try it - get a game console and some driving game (like Forza or Gran Turismo) and do the very long races for 30 hours.

>> I can easily stay up for 30 hours with little to no side effects.

I can drink 6 beers without it affecting me.

Hopefully at least one of us knows neither of those statements are true

What about wholesale speed limit violations on major expressways and freeways in and around major cities?

As a motorcyclist I'll take someone driving 100 mph over someone txting and driving any day of the week.

I'm sorry to spoil the fun here, but if you want to drive a race, rent a race track and don't do it on public streets where you endanger innocents.

Agreed. I wonder how this article jeopardises him in terms of getting arrested for this. It's basically a public confession isn't it?

The guy who did it in the M5 (Or that might have been someone doing the gumball rally record) had to research statute of limitations for all sorts of driving offenses he might be charged with in each state before he went public.

It looks like he averaged 85 miles an hour [1] - above the speed limit pretty much anywhere in the US. That's pretty indicting, but I bet he can't get a ticket since no individual agency knows that he sped in their jurisdiction. I'd personally love to see some effort made to peg him with at least a speeding ticket by looking through, say, toll road logs.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+from+LA+to+NYC...

Yeah. Hopefully these assholes can be criminally charged; their identities are known, after all.

Yeah! Hopefully! Because despite the speeds they were going, there were absolutely no casualties, accidents or incidents. Let's charge these bastards anyway. That'll stop them not killing anyone in the future.

It could discourage the next team from attempting it, and make "going public" less appealing. "If you break the record and go public, you'll be arrested"

So it's fine to behave this way because they didn't kill anyone?

That's the Non Aggression Principle at work, or at least a pretty common and equally stupid interpretation thereof:

They clearly did not initiate violence against anyone, therefore, any intervention limiting their freedom to recklessly drive at insane speeds for nearly 29 hours with basically no sleep would be immoral.

"And here I stand accused of a crime I didn't even commit! I mean 'Attempted murder'... Do they give nobel prizes for attempted Chemistry?!" - Sideshow Bob

You might want to reflect on the concept of legality. I know, thinking hurts sometimes, but it's totally worth it!

You ever see the first episode of Homicide: Life on the Streets (great show, and largely based on actual incidents, at least for the first two seasons) where a guy confesses he accidentally shot some guy, but it's OK because he meant to kill someone else? I think you and he want to live in the same country.

I agree with you but in this case it wasn't about racing. It was about breaking a specific record.

[EDIT] To all the people who are downvoting; I am pointing out that I agree that it was a stupid thing to do but just saying "go on a race track" is pointless because he wanted to do something that cannot be done on a race-track. It is like telling someone to go to a climbing gym instead when they really want to conquer Everest.

I wonder how much it would cost to get enough roads closed/with police cars as a rolling roadblock to make a proper race legal? I expect the city start and end would be tricky.

That's no excuse. If breaking the record involved endangering others, leave it. Break another record if you have to. Do a higher jump than Baumgartner or swim across the atlantic, I don't mind - just don't race a car on public roads and use "I made it as safe as possible" as a pathetic excuse.

I am not offering it as an excuse and like I said I agree with you.

However your suggestion will not help because he was not after the experience of a race track, he was after the experience of breaking the record of the canonball run.

It is a time-trial, a race against the clock.

From an aesthetic point of view I really like the cannonball. From a practical point of view I suppose doing it does make you a bit asocial.

> From an aesthetic point of view I really like the cannonball.

I can relate. It's the kind of stuff that movies are made of. But one important property of being a responsible adult is that we're able to distinguish between fact and fiction and keep everything that's fiction safely on that side. So let's keep cannonball and all those other races on public roads where they belong: in the movies. If you really think a race across the states on public streets is great I guess you can get those roads blocked by the police - which would be totally fine with me. I really enjoy watching the Tourist Trophy.

You're not spoiling the fun at all, only sensibly trying to ensure that everyone else can have theirs without a sleep deprived moron canonballing into them at 100 mph. Its all fun and games until you kill someone.

Considering how many deaths there have been at Le Mans (closest comparable organised race I can think of), this is certainly irresponsible. I wonder if they went through a jurisdiction where the minute by minute trace from the tracking company would be enough to prove they broke the law.

3 deaths in the last 30 years. It's a race that tops out at 250mph whereas these guys only got to around 100mph less. That's quite a lot less. I get your point, but I'm not sure these are really comparable.

They don't compare at all. There's a couple of reasons that races on dedicated tracks are significantly safer than road races, chief among them:

* Everyone on the track is doing a race. No mother with a crying child on the back seat having a momentary lack of attention, getting in your way.

* Everybody is roughly on the same speed scale. No slow lorry around the corner or behind the slope, doing a third or a quarter of your speed.

* No bikes or pedestrians.

* The track is known to be free of obstacles. If an accident occurs or any obstacle ends up on the track, people with huge flags jump out and signal danger.

* The track is surrounded by safety zones designed to stop you moderately gently, especially in danger spots. So if you loose control, there's first green, then stone-beds, then hay and last a hard barrier. This allows even motorcyclists on the track to have a significant chance of survival. It's not the fall that kills you, it's the high speed impact on an immobile object.

So when you race, be responsible to you and others. Stay on the track.

I have driven across the country a few times. There's not much traffic once you are beyond the suburbs around the major cities. Even in densely populated areas it's common for highway traffic to cruise at 75+. 100+ in a high-performance car is not too extreme.

As a Brit I find this quite hilarious. On our motorways the speed limit is 70mph, but pretty much everyone cruises along at 90mph+.

Depends on the motorway. And while there are plenty of people going at 90+ that's not most people. I'd guess most people are doing about 80.

Unless there's a police car visible, when everyone drops to 68 and there's a huge tailback.

Or they're on the M25.

As a German, it's even more hilarious. I do 100mph on the Autobahn most of the time and still get passed by Audis, BMWs, Porsches, Mercedes driving 125mph. I never understood why you can drive only 70mph in the States in perfect conditions with looong roads, extremely long view distance, nothing in the way. Makes no sense to me.

There's quite a bit of discussion about the driving cultures of the US vs. Germany. In particular, Germans appear to think that you should pay attention when driving. The US attitude to driving is best exemplified by the fact that most family cars now have 2-3 cup holders per seat and two or more video screens.

Not all of the roads, out west, for example, are as well engineered as the Autobahn.

But you do have a good point--this doesn't account for all of the difference.

There isn't THE Autobahn anyways. Autobahn is just our word for Interstate and not all of them are equally well-maintained. There are speed limits where it makes sense. There are speed limits in certain conditions (rain, ice, windy bridge, worn-down road), there are flexible speed limits (rush hour).

Recently, I drove from NYC all the way down to Miami. Speed limits make sense on the Blue Ridge Parkway, because of all the wildlife. But we were also passing endless roads that went just straight, perfect view, perfectly wide. This would be a typical spot in Germany where there's simply no speed limit, because it doesn't make any sense.

I noticed something else in the States: People on Interstates and highways stick relatively close to speed limits. However, once you get into city limits of bigger cities, everyone seems to drive at least 10mph over limit, if not more. In Miami, there was a point where not a single car(!) was driving the maximum allowed speed, but at least 10mph faster. But I noticed a similar thing in other major cities as well.

I never understood that.

Agreed.

In Chicago, 10 over would be slow. On the tollway that skirts Chicago, the limit is 55, but 80 is not uncommon.

I think the speedup is kind of a natural thing. When commuting, everyone on the road knows the road and conditions very well and are all in a hurry to get to the office or home. And from a practical standpoint, this speed tends to maximize the overall flow of traffic. And the thinking is that you stand out on the road in the rural area, but in the city, you are one of zillions.

In addition to the points raised in sibling replies, the standards for getting a driving license in the USA are very low.

The German Autobahns (Motorways) are something else beyond that. No legal speed limits there. Going along at 150 kmph (~90mph) and being over taken by cars going way faster than you is something else.

I would say 90+ is the target speed of a lot of cars, however the actual average is probably still in the 70s due to congestion. I'm trying to gather some data on this at the moment.

To say "pretty much everyone" is false.

This is quite an incredible feat. I thought after reading Alex Roy's 'The Driver', that this record would stand for a long time. Certainly not be broken by a full two hours.

What is interesting here is that these guys have decided to go public almost immediately. Roy and his team were sworn to secrecy for something like 2 years while the statute of limitations in the states that they committed crimes expired. I wonder how these guys think they will get away with not seeing the inside of a police cell.

For those interested in what this kind of thing takes, I recommend this talk by Alex Roy at Google NY: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQpg0tvap4A

Do you consider a diamond heist to be an incredible feat because as it turned out no one was hurt?

The reason they succeeded is they didn't get caught. Everything else is irrelevant. Next time they should fly to Germany and fuck about on the autobahn for a couple of days, at least people will be prepared for drivers to be doing that speed.

Edit: I do think 55mph is a pretty dumb limit though.

> Next time they should fly to Germany and fuck about on the autobahn for a couple of days

Please don't. We have enough idiots over here mistaking the autobahn for a racetrack. I'll tell you a secret: It's not. People get killed here just as in the USA, for example the accident when a professional test driver for Mercedes cannonballed his prototype car into a previous accident. Despite darkness and bad visibility he was going beyond 190km/h and impacted with 170km/h, killing the driver of another car - despite the fact that that person was already out of their car. Two people that were out on the autobahn trying to help other victims of the crash narrowly escaped death. I remember that quite well since I passed there like half an hour before.

If you want a race, take your car to the Nürburgring for a weekend. It's still legendary and still dangerous, but at least people know what they signed up for. It's actually affordable: 195 EUR for 4 laps with instructor: http://www.service-zum-nuerburgring.de/details.php?id_nr=306...

Edit: Picture of the accident: http://www.nq-online.de/index.php?&kat=56&artikel=5699 There's not much left of the car.

I'm impressed because having read that book (did you?) I have an idea of how much work went into planning and preparing for the task. If a diamond heist was as equally elaborate and was pulled off successfully (with no one hurt) then yes I would probably be equally impressed.

I wouldn't consider not getting caught their biggest feat by any means. I think there is probably a larger risk of hurting someone than getting caught in the method and approach they used. The feat is in anticipating and minimising the risks they were taking.

I think whether or not you believe what they did was right is irrelevant. You are allowed to be horrified by what they did and yet still acknowledge that it took a huge amount of effort and dedication.

This is a great story, quite dangerous, but all the comments here scolding this event, I suggest that you take a drive during the morning commute on the illinois tollway, say around Lake Cook towards ohare and let us all know how many are driving at the speed limit, which is 55. If you go 70, you are likely to get run over. Or if you drive the posted speed limit in a construction zone, you are likely to get honked at.

Similarly, on the Edens where the expressway begins, at 0600 on a work day, if you want to drive 70, you better be in the far right hand lane.

So according to a tracking company whose officials asked not be identified because they were unaware that Bolian would be driving so illegally when he hired them. Seriously? The tracking company thought that they would be driving just a little illegally, not so illegally??

Everyone drives a little illegally ;-)

> The mark? Alex Roy and David Maher's cross-country record of 31 hours and 4 minutes, which they set in a modified BMW M5 in 2006.

If you want to read more on Roy/Maher's record race that beat the previous record by an hour and three minutes, put this well-writen piece in Wired on your weekend reading list:

http://www.wired.com/cars/coolwheels/magazine/15-11/ff_canno...

They need to subpoena those external gps records and give them a ticket and suspend their license for every state they went through over 100mph.

Think about how many lives they endangered.

Jalopnik has a detailed article, too:

http://jalopnik.com/meet-the-guy-who-drove-across-the-u-s-in...

After reading this thread I feel very few commenters have actually driven across the USA. It is easy to go 100+ mph for a few hours and see maybe a dozen cars (esp in Texas and New Mexico or any stretch of I-10 for that matter). I actually feel it is more dangerous for people on SF's 101 that go 60mph instead of 90mph.

For some reason, this reminded me _The Last Chase_ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASCmH1HdG6g

For every moron to break the 'Cannonball' record, there will be a hundred other morons who, in an attempt to break the record, will plow over pedestrians and animals.

Not a proud moment to be a human.

Source?

You speak with much certainty. As the original record was set over 25 years ago, surely there have been incidents of people trying to break it and "plowing over pedestrians", no?

I wouldn't encourage people to try this, but your statement "there will be a hundred other morons... who will plow over pedestrians" is hyperbolic. Especially since we can look back to the original record.

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