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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 ----
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.
I don't know where YOU live, but I'm in Kansas and you can do 100+ easily out here, even on the state highways because roads are so straight. I ride my motorcycle out in the country and the only real limitation is the mental fatigue of high speeds. I can only maintain them for a while before slowing down to make the ride more relaxing.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Given that the Op specified "federal interstates", I can state that at least in the USA the designed safe speed for a highway takes far more into account than just the 'quality of the road surface'. For example, above 55mph driveways are outright forbidden, and 65+ you have to have on/off entry merges that allow entering vehicles to speed up to the posted limit before merging and conversely slow before exiting. Pedestrians are typically forbidden from being on the road - if there's significant need for them to be able to cross, they'll put in a under/overpass for them to cross on. Even controlled intersections are forbidden - again, roads go over/under. When you hit 75 mph, 'oversize vehicles' are handled more by the road being at least 4 lanes - and while you don't really see it at those speeds, but the lanes themselves are wider, thus 'oversize' isn't quite so oversize anymore. I've seen plenty of oversize vehicles that fit comfortably between the lines on the highway.
I'm not a highway designer, but there are additional considerations like maximum curve, slope, and such, all of which becomes much gentler as design speed increases. Then you get some areas like Texas that imposes a different speed limit at night than they do during the day - when sight limit to avoid unexpected obstacles like wildlife is really the only limit to how fast you can go.
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?
Come to the states. Unfairly lowered speed limits around specific towns with more than 80% of their police force dedicated to writing speeding tickets in a couple spots, 99% to those passing through, are known. It might be mostly a US phenonemon, but it's very well known here.
I don't read AC A human right
Pity, it works rather well here, I think the difference is that over here it's set up in such a way that a lower road toll equates to a profit for the state.
I'll point out that while there are unfairly lowered speed limits, as well as speed limits lowered not to meet safety standards but to make neighbors happy*, but for the most part if you follow NTSB recommendations you'll be very safe, and 'most' local traffic authorities are fixated on being safe. We've had some incidents where yellows have been shortened to generate more revenue from red light cameras, but for the most part judges have been very unsympathetic to red light cameras when this is discovered - and they're unsympathetic even when it's found that they didn't shorten them, but deliberately selected lights that weren't following NTSB standards for whatever reason.
There are constant improvements in the states safety wise, including demanding safer vehicles. As a result we've managed to get our annual fatalities down to just over 30k/year from a high of over 50k/year despite ever more vehicles on the road. One of the more interesting aspects is the psychology of driving that they consider today - most people drive at what they 'feel' is a safe speed, thus there's various psychological tricks you can use to make sure their 'feeling' matches up with reality. Remember, not an expert, just read some articles on it.
Additionally, remember that the USA is generally much more concerned with 'internal affairs' than other countries and we're a lot more fragmented legal wise. We're more like the EU than the UK between our 50 states. As a result we 'air our dirty laundry' a lot more.
I think that the difference in the end is more flavor than substantiative. Liability coverage is also mandatory here in the states, though the details vary.
*One interstate corridor was put in over protest, and part of the deal cut was lower speed limits in an effort to limit noise. Later studies have shown that not only do lower speeds not significantly limit noise, people aren't following them anyways.
I don't read AC A human right