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Atlanta Man Shatters Coast-to-Coast Driving Record, Averaging 98MPH
New submitter The Grim Reefer sends this quote from CNN:
"[Ed] Bolian set out on a serious mission to beat the record for driving from New York to Los Angeles. 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. ... He went into preparation mode about 18 months ago and chose a Mercedes CL55 AMG with 115,000 miles for the journey. The Benz's gas tank was only 23 gallons, so he added two 22-gallon tanks in the trunk, upping his range to about 800 miles. ... To foil the police, he installed a switch to kill the rear lights and bought two laser jammers and three radar detectors. He commissioned a radar jammer, but it wasn't finished in time for the trek. There was also a police scanner, two GPS units and various chargers for smartphones and tablets -- not to mention snacks, iced coffee and a bedpan. ... The total time: 28 hours, 50 minutes and about 30 seconds. ... When they were moving, which, impressively, was all but 46 minutes of the trip, they were averaging around 100 mph. Their total average was 98 mph, and their top speed was 158 mph, according to an onboard tracking device."
I'm pretty sure this guy passes me every day on the way to the office.
I wonder if his insurance company will be hiking his premiums? Sounds like a risk-taker...
Clear cut case of speeding and the guy even collected his own evidence.
Why isn't this guy in jail?
Driving like a fool puts everyone on the road near him in danger. He should be sitting in jail, and lose his license.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It seems like if you can do this with a car, where there are traffic laws and speed limits, there's no good reason why a NY-LA bullet train wouldn't work.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
In the Land of the Free and the Home of the brave, They needed to add a lot of cowardly countermeasures to make sure the were not caught and imprisoned, for what was in essence a joy ride.
If there was a way to go, I am going to do this stunt, I am expected to be at these locations between these times, and make sure the police give us enough room and clear out traffic. Sure it may require a little extra money say an traditional $10k to pay for the expense of blocking off the roads for the time.
But Risk taking should be rewarded, not punished, especially if you are willing to work with the system.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
He was really just trying to get some groceries but he used Apple Maps.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
This guy ought to be ashamed of himself. IMHO he does not represent the character, integrity, or mission of Georgia Tech, it's students, alumni, faculty, staff, or administration.
There are right ways and wrong ways to do things, and this most certainly was the wrong way.
Look, we all know everyone speeds. 5-10 MPH over the speed limit is socially acceptable and tacitly condoned (it's rare to get pulled over by the cops for that, unless they want to bust you for some unrelated reason). But this is entirely different – it seems to be a clear case of reckless driving. On most interstates, you can do 75 MPH no problem, and on the better ones, 85 MPH is reasonable during the daytime if there is no inclement weather. There are a few interstates where you can safely do 90-100 MPH, but these are not all that common, and even then, extreme caution is required. I don't see any possible way that someone could safely average nearly 100 MPH on a cross-country road trip. Safety comes by going with the flow of traffic, and this driver must have been blowing past the majority of other cars during most of his trip. It's amazing that he made it there in one piece.
"What are you, some kind of nut? Who do you think you are?"
Dun, dun, dunnnnn -- Captain Chaos!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Just feed the receiver with the right frequency to tell it how fast you want it to read. Imagine the look on the cop's face when you scream by at 100+ and the gun reads "55".
They don't need the radar gun reading to ticket you for speeding - if you ever go to court, you'll find that all police claim to be "trained in visual speed observation", and will back up the radar evidence with their professional judgement of how fast you were going. And the judge will accept their estimate because they have the training to show that they can make accurate estimates.
OK, this guy plotted and planned in excrutiating detail for 18 months, works in the automobile industry, yet seems utterly fearless about the legal ramifications about admitting average speeds in excess of all posted limits in the country? The article I saw had a damning amount detail, including what sound like many admissions that he knows what he's doing is illegal (e.g. the comment about the vented trunk fumes while stopped by a cop).
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Except that he's already made a public confession and documented publicly as well. They may not be able to compel him to testify against himself, but everything he's publicly said and displayed is freely admissible.
To get an idea how much faster you could get around if the US had proper no speed limit highways like the German Autobahn.
(That said I don't condone reckless driving on roads that aren't built for that speed.)
I just want to know how he got past all those idiots plodding along in the left lane.
I visualized his arm automatically going up in a palm out salute towards the end of his rant.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Moving at those kinds of speeds, people don't have time to accurately judge merging time, lane changes, etc. You can be 1/4 mile away and be on someone traveling the speed limit before they've even finished changing lanes. Record or not "top-gun" dick moves belong on the race track, not public highways.
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Sounds to me like he "drove like a genius" instead of a fool, because he made it _literally_ from one end of our vast nation to the other at top speed without hurting himself or anyone else AND he didn't get caught while obviously breaking the law. Not exactly the kind of "fool" you hear of on those Dumb Crook News segments in the media
Do you drive dangerously, or just speed? Autobahnpolizei are known to ignore the guy going fast but safe in favor of catching the guys passing on the right, tailgating, weaving through traffic, and camping out in the middle lane.
In the US we ticket for speed, since it's the easiest to prove and carries the highest fines. The cops don't care so much about actual unsafe driving. Yes, it's screwed up.
My father (gone now, former KY state police) always said . . . "I could see he was going 10 miles over the limit . . ." never stood up in court.
But even a farmer out in a field can look up and say about distant driver "he was just going too fast to make that turn" (placing blame for an accident squarely on the driver) . . . usually was upheld.
This guy . . . will never be convicted. Without explicitly being caught . . . he'll pass under the same reasoning drug dealers do. (If 1 in 100 that take cocaine die from it, and you've just sold 100lbs . . . then . . . you're "defacto" guilty of murder. Its that "defacto" and not "nameable person" that makes all the difference.)
So, its an impressive feat . . . but still incredibly careless and stupid.
No, I don't remember your name. But the memory mapped screen on a TRS80 from 1977 is from 15360 to 16383 if that helps.
Speed doesn't kill it's suddenly becoming stationery that's the problem.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Because the jammers were for infrared. That band isn't regulated.
Who gives a shit about this "speed record"?? This asshole Ed Bolian was willing to risk the lives of everyone else on the road for some silly high score bullshit. There's no difference between this careless fuck and the asshole who killed a mother and her three children while street racing in Philly. http://articles.philly.com/2013-10-31/news/43530258_1_roosevelt-boulevard-khusen-akhmedov-ahmen-holloman
This is not a fucking game. If you want to break speed records, use a track where you'll only risk the lives of those who knowingly expose themselves to this level of danger, rather than innocent people who are just trying to go about their lives. Fuck every last fucking one of these coast to coast 'racers'.
We're Mountain STANDARD. Daylight Savings is mostly for the birds. Half of the year, we're (functionally) on Pacific time.
This: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/09/27/motorcycle-driver-clocked-200-kilometres-deerfoot-trail_n_1919126.html
I presume that you also consider 5 out of 6 people who play Russian roulette to be "geniuses" as well.
Speed limits on interstates are set to road conditions and what is safe for the average, or below average, driver driving an average car based on a formula from 20 or more years ago and includes a formula to reduce gas consumption. While driver skills haven't changed all that much, cars have become much safer due to technology. In addition, you can drive safely at higher speeds in a car with race car engineering due to the added down-force, braking, less weight, etc. There is also a big difference between driving fast and driving dangerously, though most people equate one with the other.
I'm willing to bet that the first image that most have in their mind when they read this is the guy weaving in and out of heavy traffic at high rates of speed and cutting everyone off. However, there is no way that he could achieve this speed with any amount of traffic on the road.
The article says that they left NY at 9:55pm on a Saturday night. My guess is that the majority of their driving in urban areas (i.e. NY, etc.) was late at night and into the early morning hours, a time when the Interstates are largely empty. He spent Sunday morning crossing Missouri, Oklahoma, New Mexico etc. Net exactly major transportation hubs. He had a co-driver to switch off when they got tired and he had a pilot car running in front of him keeping eyes on the road conditions, traffic, etc.
I'm not saying that I agree with what he did. It was illegal and relatively unsafe. But, in my opinion, it wasn't quite as reckless as people make it out to be. For my money, I prefer people who know how to drive and drive fast to people who drive drunk, while texting, while taking on the phone without a hands-free device, tailgate, switch lanes without looking or using a signal light, weave in and out of traffic, etc....
I don't really know what cars (and roads) you're talking about, but most Europeean cars are perfectly fine at Autobahn speeds, 180km/h... (Legal.)
Even the old Opel Astra 1.4 liter diesel was fine at 170km/h, even if it took a while to get there.
The Mercedes he used would be very, very fine at much, much higher speeds than that. It's *built* to overtake anything on the Autobahn. It's basically the idea of that model... (Mind, last time I were anywhere near the Mercedes plant in Stuttgart, that Autobahn was jammed most of the time, so I presume they do their testing somewhere else.)
Driving 150 MPH in a 75 MPH zone in not a goddamned "gray area", Einstein.
Because it's so much worse for the bodies inside a car getting hit by another traveling 105 MPH than 55.
No, it's that when the American driving at 55 puts down his cheeseburger, big gulp & cell phone and notices something he has more time to stop than the American does who is driving 105 while eating Doritos and changing tracks on his iPod.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Speed limits have virtually nothing to do with the quality of the road surface. It's about hidden driveways, pedestrians, wildlife, oversized vehicles, bends, trees, sun glare, ect. These problems are summarised in statistics about accidents that are used to set rules aimed at lowering the road toll. This is not to say everywhere works like it does here in Oz, but for the most places around the world the rules are enforced for good reason, not just revenue raising.
As part of your registration here in Oz you have to also pay for third party insurance, the insurance company is a monopoly owned by the state. It is responsible for paying for anyone who is injured, it's also responsible for public awareness campaigns to cut the road toll. It is in their interest to reduce the road toll, a low road toll is their "profit". In my state the toll has dropped from around 600yr to 250yr in the 20yrs the scheme has been operating, random booze buses and seat belts had previously halved the toll from around 1200/yr in the early 70's. All that while the number of cars in my state has increase 10 fold since the early 70's.
So while the authorities may be "unfairly" force drivers slow down in specific circumstances, it's certainly not because they are short of a dime. There will never be a zero road toll as long as there are humans, the question is, and always will be - what is an acceptable toll, where do we stop and say that's as good as it gets?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I learned this physics lesson quite well when I hyrdroplaned at 55 MPH in July 2013 and hit the leading edge of a guardrail rear first. Thankfully the impact pushed me INTO my seat, and I was alone in the car (an hour earlier I had my children with me). The sheer force of spinning and rapidly decelerating knocked me the fuck out. I remember a loud "metal grinding" sound that was my rear bumper folding up and demolishing 20 feet of guardrail, and I remember spinning. Then I woke up at the bottom of a ditch.
Ever since I have been more careful (not not a pussy) while driving in the rain. I measure my tires' tread depth on a regular basis. That is one experience I never want to repeat again. And that was at 55 MPH (in a 70 zone). If I were hit by an assclown going twice my speed even on dry pavement? That is four times the force. Four times the pain, four times the brain scrambling in a spin. I may write software for a living, but I respect physics.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
I said *in front of* the 18 wheeler. You can't see around a big truck. This idiot also averaged 100 mph. that means that he had to move far faster than that for a large fraction of the time.
The highways are filled with trucks, even in the boondocks and at odd hours. That means he had to pass countless trucks while going at speeds like 130 mph, not 100.
For Christ sake, I can't believe the replies I'm getting from people who try to justify this idiotic behavior. The amount of ignorance and stupidity out there is just mind boggling.