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Geek and Gadgets Set Cross-US Speed Record
Brikus writes "And you thought your car had gadgets. In this story from Wired magazine, we hear about Alex Roy and his quest to break the record time for a cross-USA road trip. One of the biggest roadblocks to breaking the record: highway patrol officers, about 31,000 along the way. So Roy decked out his E39 BMW M5 with a thermal camera, radar/laser detectors, GPS devices, police scanners, and other high-tech gadgets and toys."
This guy's brilliant although he does have his share of rough spots with the cops.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Step 1: Speed across the United States while at the same time documenting your lawbreaking for all to see
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit???
...deck out your car in sponsor logos. I imagine every cop who sees this thing will follow them for quite some time.
Wow. If this guy doesn't get warrants out for his arrest because of this story I'll be really surprised.
:P
Congrats, Roy, I guess. Try not to drop the soap
(I woulda called the highway patrol on him too.)
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
How about: "Geek sets record by breaking the law and endangering innocent men, women, and children in selfish quest to do something pointless"
Seriously, this doesn't push any boundaries of technology or vehicle science. It tests two things: being able to stay awake, and being able to break laws and get away with it. Here they are tearing across the country in a car filled with distracting devices, sleep deprivation, fatigue, driving at unsafe speeds near vehicles filled with normal people trying to get to work or school.
There must be a safer way to compensate for your small penis than endangering people on the highway across the entire USA.
I have done my share of speeding on U.S. highways and have gotten my share of tickets too. But I don't claim to be anything other than an ass myself when it comes to driving. At least I did it mostly on a motorcycle and likely would only take myself out, which somehow to me seems a little more considerate.
If he really wants to break the record he should do it on a motorcycle. You can bypass any traffic situation entirely with ease. You can even split through traffic going 75+ at 90 if you want to, which I did on a long straight hot boring trip down highway 5 in northern CA on the way back from Oregon. Of course I got a speeding ticket too, from a rather irate cop who couldn't catch me for miles because I kept splitting through traffic (even though I wasn't trying to outrun him, I didn't even know he was there). Like I said, I am an ass too. And I know when when I see one. And that dude is an ass.
Well some speed limit fines are based on income, at least in some parts of Europe. I remember a few years back when a top Nokia executive was fined the equivalent of US$103,000 for speeding on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, because in Finland, traffic tickets are based on violator's income.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Don't mistake haemorrhoids for testicles. He might be a dick, but he's definitely an asshole.
If you want to do something gutsy, go skyjumping, base jumping, downhill mountain-biking. Something that doesn't run the risk of injuring or killing innocent bystanders who want nothing to do with you.
What a fucking bastard.
To call him a geek is an insult to me and all other geeks i know of.
To endanger other people's lives like this is utterly despicable.
Obviously, he doesn't care if he kills someone along the way. If he did, he wouldn't do this.
Or what, is he a superhumanly safe driver is some non-imaginative way? Not fucking likely.
Put that asshole in jail(it would be OK to lose the key) right now, for showing that he has the obvious intent to go out try to kill people.
And why Slashdot sinks to the depths of publishing such a positively toned article about this psycho is far beyond me.
Baboons are cute.
The article forgot to mention that he needed to install blue tail lights so they appeared red to those behind him after Doppler shift.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Commence acceleration.
The Schwartz space ain't from Spaceballs.
I vaguely remember something similar. Looking about on Google I think it was either the The Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, or the gumball rally.
My probably fractured memory is that one particularly decisive win was not by a supercar, but by a Japanese king cab mini pickup. The drivers filled the be with a fuel tank and were able to drive straight through without ever stopping or breaking the speed limit. IIRC the win margin was tremendous.
The man is trying to be cute and generate publicity by using a method which might be intended to be viewed as "cool", but if he was really going for time this very well might not the right way to do it.
As a side note, Family legend has it that as a teenager my grandmother once participated in the north south trans U.S. speed record. IRC the average speed was something like 15mph and change. My father was born in 1925, So I'm suspecting this was around 1920 or so. High quality 20's vehicles such as Cords and Auburns could still comfortably do 70 or 80mph so I suspect the pickup method has merit.
32h07m divided by 31,000 highway cops means driving past one patrol officer on average every 3.7 seconds. How can the gadgets help under such circumstances? Go-go gadget donut-thrower!
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Speed limits are there for a reason, so stick to them! Traffic tickets should be depending on income/wealth instead of being fixed like they are now.
Karma to burn, so I bite the bullet.
You suggest that speed limits are there for a reason, then provide the reason: quick cash for the municipalities.
Some limits are ridiculous low in some cases: I have a 30 km/h sign right in front of my window - and my condo is in front of a freeway! Often they are just a trick to further tax car owners, without resorting to the politically unpopular word "tax".
Here (Italy) there's a huge scandal about similar behavior by the police enforcers, and one that is quickly making some heads roll.
At some specific, usually not dangerous crossroads, the traffic lights have been reprogrammed to have a very short "yellow" time - around two seconds. It has been documented in a broadcast inquire on TV, with actual videos and SMPTE'd times. With two seconds from green to red, it's materially impossible to slow down and stop at the crossroad, even sticking to the very low speed limit.
So you WILL cross the crossroad with a red. And of course, that crossroad has this new CCTV system to recognize plates and automatically issue tickets in case of crossing with red. There was an outburst of enraged citizens against this practice: in a two weeks period, they received in excess of 13'000 tickets, all at the same crossroad. In a town with around 50'000 people, not a major city either...
Speed limits and absurd, often intentional, road laws are demonstrably used to sanate local administrations' budgets and balances. Disguised as "think of the children" policies, they are just another way to transfer resources from citizens to public administrators.
While traffic violations do cover a number of items, you can apply non-traffic-specific laws as well. How about "reckless endangerment" or any variety of other laws that might still be within the limitations?
I'm not a huge fan of the "think about the children" type arguements, but would we be cheering this guy on if he'd hit a pedestrian, wrecked some property, or something else that may have occured had he not been lucky?
This guy's not a geek, he's just rich enough to afford some expensive toys, a fast car, and not enough common sense or respect for others.
"Agreed, but he's also got a point. BMWs (at least the M5) are not built for this kind of stuff. Perhaps a Porsche 911 would've been more appropriate." "
Apparantly you own and/or maintain neither.
Despite all this rhetoric, he did it.
As somebody who has a stable of oldish German cars, one of them being a BMW (633Csi) and one of them having 700,000 kms on the clock that can still top 120mph (300SD) I'd argue vehemently that they are built for all day high speed runs. Not Italian cars and certainly not British cars. The Autobahn is partly the reason for this. German enginerring is another. They are meant for this sort of flogging, it's desinged in.
Given the attention to detail in the rest of the trip, my uninformed guess is the car was in as perfect a mechnaical condition as possible, quite possibly better than "factory new".
And as I said, the proof was in the pudding. He made it.
Need Mercedes parts ?
That's terrible.
How does it benefit anyone to crush a car? You just end up with a pile of mostly unrecyclable car parts, a waste of resources and possibly the destruction of an item of historical interest. Sounds like jealousy of the rich. You'd get a lot more benefit to society if the cars were auctioned.
Let's see: It's very spectacular, quite a bit of a deterrent, and it makes it clear that it is an actual punishment and not just an attempt at adding more money to the citys coffers.
Sounds like jealousy of the rich.
Well, in theory, the law should be the same for everyone ? So if you speed in your <$1000 rustbucket, it'll get crushed too.
You'd get a lot more benefit to society if the cars were auctioned.
Yeah, and you'd have all the sports car drivers whining how speed limits are only put there to transfer their money to the local government.
No, let's just crush the thing and avoid that discussion altogether.
There are those and there are those. Yes, those "speed limits" you describe exist, and they get more and more by the day. Most of the time you have some suspiciously well hidden or badly lit little sign , most of the time on top of a hill, just before it starts the dip, that tells you that instead of 70, you only may drive 30 here and, well, guess where your friendly and helpful law enforcement guys are sitting? Actually, these things make traffic less safe, not more, because, well, have you ever tried hitting the breaks on the top of a hill?
Neither do I understand an arbitrary speed limit of 55 mph which exists pretty much across the whole USA. Yes, it might have made sense in the 50s when cars could often go not much more than 55, and more often than not 55 was already a rather unsafe speed in said cars. We're now half a century further down the road and cars got heaps safer. At much higher speeds. Even my old and quite quirky Mazda 626 could easily handle the 130 (kph, around 80mph) speed limit without falling apart.
Still, there are speed limits that make sense. I wouldn't want to be a road worker trying to repair damages when right behind me cars zip by at 100 kph. Observing a speed limit of 70 would have saved me a car, right behind that limit was a rater narrow corner.
But one thing is true (and that last example illustrates it perfectly), when speed limits are imposed arbitrarily, as they are today more often than not, people start ignoring them. It's like with any laws, when you learn that a law makes no sense in 90% of the time, you start ignoring it in 100% of the time.
The roads would be much safer if speed limits existed only where they make sense. People would observe them because they would understand their need to exist.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Iron Butt riders do this during a yearly event. They have a course laid out with many extra stopping points that are worth bonus points. There really isn't anyway to complete the course doing the legal limit let alone getting sufficient rest.
See http://www.ironbutt.com/about/default.cfm for a big pack of loonies (yes I ride).
They do coast to coast in 50 hours which still isn't relying on doing the speed limit or getting all that much rest. There are coast to coast times two (going there and coming back)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
First off, for all the negative posts that name-call this gentleman for being "unsafe" and "reckless", I hope you do some homework and inform yourself about the German Autobahns. For those of us who have driven on the autobahns faster than this man did at anytime in his journey, we know that safety is how you are paying attention and driving, not that you are following the laws of the US roads. The man planned with extreme detail, drove a car that was designed to drive this speed for much longer durations, and obviously from the videos it is clear they were "paying attention". Just because the name callers on these posts are not capable of driving the speeds and distances safely does not mean that that team could not do it. And they proved it.
So please stop whining about the "danger" to society. There are many countries with faster speed limits (or little or no enforcement which equals the same thing). And by the way, in this country if he were to have had an accident, he would have been sued into bankruptcy. But fact of the matter is who cares he did it safely!
Real men don't need signitures!!!
That's because you're bad at physics and biology. Here's a few hints:
1. Braking distance is a function of velocity squared. Same goes for kinetic energy.
2. Human reaction time is about one second, give or take a few hundred milliseconds. There's no way to get it significantly lower than that.
Neither do I understand an arbitrary speed limit of 55 mph which exists pretty much across the whole USA. Yes, it might have made sense in the 50s when cars could often go not much more than 55, and more often than not 55 was already a rather unsafe speed in said cars.
Actually, the 55 mph national speed limit was put in place in 1974, and for fuel efficiency reasons, not safety.
The speed limits in the 50s (in many places) were still determined by the old 80% average method, IIRC. Let a bunch of people drive on the road with no speed limit, cut out the top 10% and bottom 10%, and average the speed of the remaining, and there's your speed limit. It makes sense, because that's the speed most people feel comfortable at.
Nowadays, most of the states I've seen just make a state version of the old national speed limit. Here in Oklahoma it's 65 on two lane highways, 70 on some four lane highways, and 75 on turnpikes. The speed limit on some of the county roads have gone up in response, which helps matters (some small towns are only accessible via county roads), but I still feel the old 80% system made more sense.
Bear in mind though, many cars manufactured between 1974 and 1995 were made for 55 and 65 mph speed limits. Going faster than that is exceeding the design limits of the vehicle. Sure, they'll do it, but engineers didn't have to take into account states like Montana where you could go as fast as you like and still be legal. So while those cars may have had better safety features, in theory they weren't designed for today's speed limits. There's still a lot of those cars on the road today.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
One thing that has to be considered on cross country trips is the ramifications of traffic violations in the different states and what is does to your license back at home. Today, almost all states communicate with each other on traffic violations committed by non-residents. There are only 3 states in the Union that don't consider minor offenses from other states - CO, NY, PA (no points, no record - NY will assess points for Ontario and Quebec Tickets by special agreement). A few states (MD, WI, NV) will post the violation to your record but assess no points and most states will assess points for out of state offenses. Major offenses would be a different issue such as alcohol related. The offenses that could be written up include reckless driving and I am not sure how those states that don't assess points for out of state offenses would deal with reckless driving.
There are a few states that treat speeding very harshly such as Virginia (automatic reckless driving over 80 mph or greater than 20 over the limit), North Carolina (over 80 mph or greater than 15 over the limit earns a form of license suspension) to name a few.
Assuming Alex has a NY driver's license, he would not to worry too much especially if he has an attorney to plead down major charges. I myself have a CO license and have a share of out of state tickets but not doing something like 120 mph but doing something like up to 25 mph over the limit. In fact my last two speeding tickets were something like 10 mph over the limit in Missouri and Indiana. I have family back in the midwest such as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois so usually my tickets are received between CO and Ohio. We even got pulled over in Ohio for tinted windows.
On the reciprocity part especially with today's computers, if you get your license suspended in a different state, more than likely, you will get suspended at home. Your name will be posted on the National Driving Registry/Problem Driver Pointer System (NDR/PDPS) if you get suspended by your home state or a differnt state. The NDR/PDPS would be a tool to prevent you from getting a license in a different state. For myself, I have points in Missouri for a ticket I got more than a year ago (May 2006). Some states in addition to reporting the ticket to your home state will also open up a point file on you as well. This can snare poeple like out of state college students. Ohio does this as well. My brother went to school in Ohio, held an Indiana license back in the early 1980's. Ohio at the time didn't report tickets to other states. He was a ticket away from being suspended in Ohio but he had a clean record in Indiana. I got a speeding ticket myself in Ohio back in 1986 right before Ohio joined the compact.
Coming down the pipe unfortunately and the Real ID Act has something to do with this is the requirement that states communicate with each other - share databases. Don't know how extensive this will be yet since it is still being worked out. Another item is the Driver License Compact (DLC) and Non-Resident Violator Compact (NRVC) will be replaced by the Driver License Agreement (DLA) which is more harsher. The DLA will require states to share their whole databases not only with other US juridictions but also must share with Canadian and Mexican jurisdictions as well. In addition, there are no loopholes for blowing off parking violations unlike today with the NRVC. The sharing with foreign countries combined with identity theft was why the DLA was the most controversial element of the Real ID Act. The mandate for states to sign the DLA was removed from the final bill that was signed into law. Connecticut has signed the DLA and they will pull your license for blowing off an out of state parking ticket. In addition, some states don't like tinted windows
You've missed the point. Alex Roy was giving up the freedom of others to not be smeared down a freeway for his own freedom. Alex Roy was the guy giving up freedoms, only they weren't his to give up. Just as murderers don't have the right to kill people (even if it's their dream), people don't have the right to endanger others for their own indulgences. The PATRIOT act and talk of a "police state" has nothing to do with this. Nothing at all. People are upset about the PATRIOT act and the "police state" punishing those who are not hurting anyone else. Alex Roy endangered everyone he was near during his stunt.
Being a geek (in the sense of the word we use it here) is more about values than anything else:
I should point out this point includes ethical constraints: it's a greater accomplishment to do something better than anybody else, whilst doing it ethically. In fact, making intelligent decisions about which constraints matter and which ones don't is central to being a geek. When I was a young, rule-breaking hacker at MIT, we had a rule -- or rather a sense of style -- that demanded we do dangerous things safely and illegal things responsibly. If we were some place we didn't belong, we didn't interfere with the legitimate users' activities. Leave the place better than you found it, or at least no worse.
These values are not a moral philosophy in themselves, but they can inform whatever moral philosophy you subscribe to. Insofar as it is easy (observe the note of contempt here) to reconcile being a geek with being an ethical egoist, the particular stunt being done can be called a geek stunt. But it is not a hack.
Eluding the authorities whilst doing a hack can add to its stature, but only if what you are doing is strictly reasonable. Otherwise there is a good chance that you're not a hacker, you're just a scofflaw. Scofflaws use technology to avoid the authorities too. It's not much of an accomplishment.
Now, setting the record for crossing the country with the requirement that you don't exceed the speed limit even once -- that would not only be a hack, it would be an epic one. Naturally, you'd have to develop a technological method for documenting your feat, one that would convince a skeptical rival. That would be a hack too.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I am curious, as any time that I have done 120 plus MPH, my reaction time was affected by adrenaline
Or was it your perception of your reaction times that was affected? "Look at me, I'm going so fast, I'm so cool". Please.
On the highway, you are in one mode: Avoid everything.
Actually, this guy was probably in many modes. Look at GPS, look at radar detector, drink more coffee, try to stay awake. Oh, and maybe glance ahead every so often.
Assuming dry pavement
So it never rained on this whole trip? There were guaranteed to be no oil patches on the highway? No loose gravel? No glass that could cause a blowout? The highway is not a racetrack and is not maintained to the safety level of a racetrack.
That M5 likely would stop from 100 MPH in in under 200 feet
Awesome. So now he just has to make sure to stay 200ft behind any other vehicle at all times. Think he actually did that? Nah, me neither.
Speed doesn't kill. Bad decisions do.
People make bad decisions every day. Everyone does. When it comes to driving, speed invariably makes the results of those bad decisions much worse. He wants to throw his ass around a racetrack at high speed he's got my blessing, but stay the hell off the roads my kids are on.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Ah, that must be why it's stood for 22 years. Let's see you do it.
90 mph average from NY to LA? Good luck.
When it's putting other people at risk of death or serious injury so that you can enjoy youself. We're not talking about merely violating speed limits on an empty highway, which I've certainly been known to do myself; we're talking about weaving in and out of traffic inches from other cars, driving recklessly, hitting triple digits in downtown areas. These guys are a threat to the safety of other people, and should be locked up.
The Wikipedia article on Antisocial personality disorder quotes the DSM diagnositic critera. Their actions definitely meet two of the them:
Two others may be met:
For a diagnosis of APD, though, there needs to be "evidence of conduct disorder with onset before age 15 years", and of course we don't know their childhood. (But the ICD criterea are a little looser, with conduct disorder at a young age being suportive of a diagnosis but not necessary.) But regardless of whether a clinical diagnosis is appropriate, it's certainly accurate to refer to the behavior as "sociopathic".
It's no different than if I were to take my rifle and start shooting out of a window into a crowded street - even if I were aiming at inanimate targets, even if I were an expert marksman, putting others at risk so I can get my jollies is not tolerable behavior. You take your rifle to the range to shoot, you take your car to the track to drive fast.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Doing 90mph on a 70mph road is probably fairly safe if there is no other traffic, the road is dry and visibility good, but that's a rare state.
Have you ever driven across country in the USA? Seriously, this is anything but "a rare state".
Most of this country, despite what many believe, is wide open space with low population and even less traffic. It's not difficult to do 120 mph for several hours without ever seeing another car. (I've done it though closer to 105 mph--I've only gone 120 once and it scared the crap out of me.) Populous areas are actually quite spread out until you get to the coastal states. If you avoid those and shoot straight across the middle of the country, it's very easy to "hit the open road" and avoid most traffic issues.
I'm not saying what this guy did is smart, but it's far from automatically being as reckless as most of the comments suggest. Yes, generally speaking it was a stupid thing to do for a "record" that really isn't all that hard (it certainly didn't require all the ridiculous gadgets he added to his car) to attain. Stupid is a relative term though, and can be easily moderated to be far less stupid or even more stupid. I'd dare say he did make some effort to minimize the stupidity of his actions, if for no other reason than making the task easier by avoiding traffic, though I don't know that for sure.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
Until I see the video I will give them the benefit of the doubt about being safe. Many people think driving fast equates to being irresponsible. It is not that simple. Sure the risk is higher the faster you go, but how many of you have driven well over 100 mph for 100s of miles.
Theoretically they could have completed this in a mini van. The obstacle was not traffic it was being caught. The rules they broke are arbitrarily set, and the parent poster is short chill-pills. IMHO, does not warrant a felony.
Many years ago in most western states the speed limit was 'reasonable and prudent.' The capabilities of the automobiles in the 50's to early 60's were just awful. 4 wheel drum brakes, bias-ply tires, and poor suspension.
Point is when the limits were highest the cars ability to brake, turn and stop were the WORST. Driving faster than the current speed limits is not harmful.
Montana defined 'Reasonable and Prudent' - now history
http://www.us-highways.com/montana/reasonable.htm
The speeding laws are outdated and only serve to let the police reach their weekly quotas. It is the police who keep them outdated.
In more logical countries it is not illegal to drive fast, but it is illegal to tail-chase other cars. This has shown to reduce accidents much more than speed-limiting laws, as tail-chasing is a very dangerous behavior, but simply speeding is not.
The next time when you drive slow enough but are tail-chasing the car in front of you ask yourself if you're not a reckless driver, just because the law says so.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Ahh, another day, another idiot who presumes that "doing 200Mph safely" has anything to do with your car.
First off, the M5 is electronically limited to 250kph, like most European vehicles that can go that fast.
Second, stopping distance is proportional to the square of speed. Your reaction time is not.
People who claim that driving at 125MPH is safe don't understand the problem. The problem is not whether or not you can control the car. The problem is what you do when something unexpected happens.
Considering that a pretty good fraction of our cars are manufactured in Korea, Japan, or Europe, I'm not sure what you mean by the "crappy suspension" that "we" put in "our cars". Wake up. Volvo, Jaguar, and Land Rover are owned by Ford. Until recently, Daimler owned Chrysler.
This expresses everything that's wrong with your attitude. You are driving on a public highway, putting everyone else at risk by the very nature of you being there. Good drivers cause crashes. Bad drivers cause crashes. You are not so skilled that you could not screw up. Even F1 drivers screw up.
This is the LAST place where you want to be testing the limits of your vehicle. And if you do screw up, it will be far, far worse if you are going 125MPH.
Note that this driver AVERAGED 90 MPH. Considering that he had to stop for gas and other necessities, he must have been going faster than 90 MPH for a fair portion of the trip.
I am so sick and fucking tired of these arguments. Somehow, it's always the OTHER drivers who are the problem. Somehow, YOU are "skilled" enough to drive excessively fast (note that over the limit doesn't necessarily mean excessive). Perhaps YOU have never made a mistake and caused an accident. That's not the point. Perhaps someone else will make the mistake. Perhaps you will slip up. IT HAPPENS FAR MORE OFTEN THAN YOU WOULD LIKE TO ADMIT.
We design and operate airplanes with significant safety margins, so that people don't die when mistakes or failures happen. The same logic should apply to motor vehicles.
what would I do if involved in a fatal accident in a 3rd world nation?
Quit whining, and take some responsibility for your actions? You made the stupid decision to race in the third world nation, with full knowledge that racing is a risky venture.
The world isn't your fucking playground, rich boy.
You want to race on a closed racetrack? Fine, that's between you and the racetrack.
You want to race down my street? Fuck off. I'll hold you responsible for your actions.