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."

Comments

Whoosh!

[dtmos]

I'm pretty sure this guy passes me every day on the way to the office.

Re:Whoosh!

[lgw]

The best part of the first Cannonball Run was the team that used an ambulance for the race (wasn't that Burt Reynold's character?). Csaba Csere actually did this in the real Cannonball Run! He said it worked perfectly - they had no trouble from the law, and would have won except the ambulance blew it's transmission as they approached the west coast. (Hey guys, next time don't stop in San Francisco to blow a tranny.)

Insurance

[dskoll]

I wonder if his insurance company will be hiking his premiums? Sounds like a risk-taker...

When will he be arrested?

[Anonymous Coward]

Clear cut case of speeding and the guy even collected his own evidence.

Re:When will he be arrested?

[kimvette]

No, highway speed limits, at least federal interstates, have speed limits for the purpose of generating revenue.

Re:When will he be arrested?

[tgd]

No, highway speed limits, at least federal interstates, have speed limits for the purpose of generating revenue.

Reckless driving is a criminal offense, not something you're fined for. Speeding fines are there to provide some disincentive to doing stupid things prior to going to jail for it.

Re:When will he be arrested?

[Ralph Wiggam]

What do federal interstates have to do with anything? The 55 mph limits were proposed by Nixon as a way to conserve gas during the first big oil crisis. The actual speed limits, enforcement, and ticket revenue are all handled at the state level- for interstates and every other road.

Re:When will he be arrested?

[SJHillman]

"We don't know when, we don't know where, but we know you did it!" doesn't hold up very well in court.

Re:When will he be arrested?

[Mr Krinkle]

Ermm, no. He had a "lead" spotter to get him out of the NE corridor of traffic hell, where construction can easily add 4-6 hours to your trip.

Then he had a spotter in the car, and a co-driver that was also spotting/sleeping.
As to the parent,
  There are definitely places out west, where with a proper car (and proper driver) a "safe and reasonable speed" could easily be well into the triple digits.
Is that true in my lifted Jeep Wrangler? Nope. Is that true in a nice sports sedan with active suspension? yep.
Was he breaking the law? Yeppers... Do I think he was pushing it? less than you'd think..
Do I know people that have done similar/worse things on motorcycles? Yeppers...
I've ridden on interstate trips and averaged 90-100 on the bike including quick fuel stops... and felt perfectly safe.

So while he was "breaking the law" I doubt he was as wreckless as Sally the realtor hurtling along in her Infinity SUV on her cell phone, explaining stuff to clients, and looking up things on her laptop....

I know I'm a lot more scared of the texting idiot than someone actively trying to drive...

Re:When will he be arrested?

[bitt3n]

This. Not only that, this is a clear case where he SHOULD be, if not arrested, at least fined heavily. This is clear cut reckless driving; speed limits are posted to keep the public safe. Stunts like this should not be pulled at the potential expense of other drivers on the road. We're all beholden to the same laws, whether you're trying to break a record or not.

Unless he posts GPS data (maybe he did), how can he be arrested? Theoretically, he could have been traveling the speed limit through any given state that might want to arrest him.

Re:When will he be arrested?

[camperdave]

Speeding fines are there to collect some money for municipalities. Otherwise they would be uniformly and much more strictly enforced.

Um... no. Speeding fines are NOT there to collect some money for municipalities, otherwise they would be uniformly and much more strictly enforced.

Re:When will he be arrested?

[tranquilidad]

The first study you cite isn't related to lower speeds but lower speed variances and, in the first page abstract, says, "...accident rates do not necessarily increase with an increase in average speed but do increase with an increase in speed variance."

The third study really speaks about speed limits on urban roads, where the majority of accidents occur, rather than interstates.

The Solomon Curve speaks more directly to the real issue of speed and accidents and relates to speed differentials. Solomon's results have been duplicated many times and the issue is that there is a higher likelihood of being in an accident as an individual's speed varies from the average speed. Interestingly, going much slower than the average speed seems to indicate a higher likelihood of being involved in an accident.

I spend a lot of time driving across country and the worst places in my experience are the interstates in urban areas. Those areas tend to have artificially lower speed limits to deal with maximum traffic capacity for rush hour. When driving through these areas during non-rush hour times I would feel that I would be run over if I drove anywhere near the speed limit. The first study you cite specifically talks about finding the ideal speed limit related to the highway speed design point and that artificially setting the speed limit too low related to the design point increases the probability of accidents.

Simply having a lower speed limit does not, in itself, result in lower accident rates.

Re:When will he be arrested?

[nbauman]

no one ever cites those studies that show lower speed limits are safer... Because they don't exist.

Here's a study that shows lower speeds are safer. Among people who were wearing a seat belt, nobody driving 60 mph or less died. People driving over 60 mph died, because in an accident above 60 mph, the car rolls and the passenger compartment starts to fall apart. (Unfortunately the full paper is paywalled, but it had a nice chart of fatalities increasing with speed.) This happens to be a classic paper from 1967; there have been studies coming to the same conclusion ever since. You can look them up in the Engineering Index.

Driving fast is safe as long as you don't have an accident. When you do have an accident, the faster you're going, the more energy you have to dissipate, and the more likely the car is to crush in a rollover or tear apart and send you flying unprotected at 60 mph. It's pretty hard to hit the ground at 60 mph and survive. That's roughly equivalent to falling off a 15-story building.

http://papers.sae.org/670925/

A Statistical Analysis of 28,000 Accident Cases with Emphasis on Occupant Restraint Value

Paper #: 670925

Published: 1967-02-01

DOI: 10.4271/670925

Citation:

Bohlin, N., "A Statistical Analysis of 28,000 Accident Cases with Emphasis on Occupant Restraint Value," SAE Technical Paper 670925, 1967, doi:10.4271/670925.
Author(s): N. I. Bohlin

Affiliated: Passenger Car Engineering Dept., AB Volvo

Abstract: The value of the three-point safety belt has been evaluated by a statistical analysis of more than 28,000 accident cases, which concerned mainly two cars only and in which 37,511 unbelted and belted front-seat occupants were involved. The safety harness concerned is the Volvo three-point combined lap and upper torso harness with a so-called slip-joint. The average injury-reducing effect of the harness proved to vary between 0 and 90%, depending on the speed at which the accident occurred or the type of injury. Unbelted occupants sustained fatal injuries throughout the whole speed scale, whereas none of the belted occupants was fatally injured at accident speeds below 60 mph. Slight injuries only, mostly single rib cracks, bruises, etc., caused by the safety belt were reported in some cases. The three-point belt proved to be fully effective against ejection out of the car. Almost all cars involved were equipped with safety belts, of which, however, only 26% on an average were used. The frequency of use increased with the age of the occupants.

Re:When will he be arrested?

[nbauman]

The crush space was the same in 1967 as it is today. I remember an article in Automotive News which reported on a lecture by a Mercedes-Benz engineer on the problem of designing a car that would let the occupants survive a front-end collision into a barrier.

The engineer described the physical constraints. They had to decelerate the car at a maximum number of Gs. They had 50 inches of crush space between the passenger compartment and the front end. In order to decelerate to a stop through that distance, you couldn't be driving any faster than about 50 mph. It didn't have anything to do with the mechanical capabilities of the car, that was the maximum theoretical speed you survive at. The crush space increased as the square of the initial velocity, so it wasn't feasible to increase the crush space in the hood. You can't make a practical car with 16 feet of crush space.

I used to work for the Society of Automotive Engineers, and I worked on the papers that they used to design seat belts and air bags. (That's why I know about Bohlin's paper.) The lap-and-shoulder seat belts (which Bohlin originally designed) were actually safer in a collision than the airbags. The airbags only make sense if people aren't wearing seat belts.

There's a big difference in safety between a 1959 Chevrolet and the cars that came later. Ralph Nader published Unsafe at Any Speed in 1965. The lawsuit Larsen vs. General Motors was decided in 1965, and made auto manufacturers responsible for designing safer cars. And Volvo, which Bohlin worked for, were always designed for safety. Bohlin's study is only one of the best studies, but it was followed by many, many studies that all showed that the faster you drive, the more likely you are to die in an accident.

It's just basic engineering physics. 60 mph is like falling off a 10- or 15-story building. The faster you go, the more kinetic energy you have, and if that car becomes unstable, as it will in an accident, that energy has to get dissipated somewhere. The higher the speed, the less likely the occupants are to survive.

Don't take my word for it. Look up the engineering literature.

Irresponsible jerk.

[nurb432]

Driving like a fool puts everyone on the road near him in danger. He should be sitting in jail, and lose his license.

Re:Irresponsible jerk.

[TWX]

It's possible to go fast and not be terribly dangerous. In an urban area where the freeway speed limits are 65MPH, traffic flows at 75-80MPH normally. On rural Interstate highways, the speed limit is commonly 75MPH and traffic definitely bumps up against 85MPH, and some states have speed limits in the 85MPH range.

If he was driving 100MPH in a 75MPH zones, then he was only 33% above the speed limit. He also picked a vehicle designed for high-speed, Autobahn driving, meant to handle at those speeds, and I expect that his route intentionally avoided metro areas as much as possible to avoid both extra law enforcement and extra traffic. I can attest to my part of the country, it would not be that hard to go 150MPH in some areas without particularly endangering anyone but one's self, as there are long stretches of straight road with little to no usage. I wouldn't recommend it from a personal safety standpoint, but if one were to wreck in those areas it'd probably be a one-car accident.

there was a bit of a mixup

[Gravis Zero]

He was really just trying to get some groceries but he used Apple Maps.

As a Georgia Tech Alumnus

[EmagGeek]

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.

Interesting data point

[quax]

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.)

Re:Americans CAN NOT DRIVE!!

[Quila]

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.

Re: "Driving like a fool"

[Waffle Iron]

I presume that you also consider 5 out of 6 people who play Russian roulette to be "geniuses" as well.