BMW M5 Crashes, Kills 5

January 29, 2008 3:09 PM

Did you hear about the BMW M5 crash that occurred in Ocala, Florida over the weekend? (video - with a car advertisement opening, ironically). The five teenagers in the car flew 200 feet off an airport runway, then hit a tree, splitting the car in half. What you may not have heard of was that the driver, Josh Ammirato, was an active member of m5board.com, an online BMW M5 forum community. AmericanM5, he was known by, had posted only a day before the crash, asking about rough shifts when exceeding 140MPH. The thread about his crash. Edmunds Inside Line has full details of story, including map of the accident.
posted by patr1ck (252 comments total)

EPIC FAIL.
posted by notmydesk at 3:11 PM on January 29 [6 favorites]

It always sucks when an online community loses one of it's members, however poor the circumstances. This certainly reminded me to drive safe, and hope others are doing the same.
posted by patr1ck at 3:12 PM on January 29

five teenagers in the car flew 200 feet off an airport runway

I definately misunderstood that when I first read it.
posted by blue_beetle at 3:12 PM on January 29 [3 favorites]

The accident site is the same airstrip that John Travolta uses to land his Boeing. It's an integral part of the gated community where he lives.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 3:14 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]

I don't have a lot of sympathy for rich kids who do stupid things. It's a shame for the parents, but I'm not gonna get all teary for incredibly privileged youth.
posted by ZaneJ. at 3:18 PM on January 29

Is going to the m5board forums and reading through the threads akin to virtual rubbernecking?
posted by benzo8 at 3:22 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]

.
posted by Dave Faris at 3:22 PM on January 29

Sad.

Kids don't need money to do stupid things.
posted by P.o.B. at 3:24 PM on January 29

Damn, that's funny. That's where my parents moved to for retirement. I'll have to ask them if they heard about that.
posted by daq at 3:24 PM on January 29

It's nice that Rudy Giuliani took time out of campaigning in Florida to go and put on a State Trooper's uniform and fake moustache and to describe what happened for us.
posted by Flashman at 3:26 PM on January 29 [2 favorites]

Of course they heard about it.
posted by Henry C. Mabuse at 3:26 PM on January 29

Sucks.
posted by chillmost at 3:26 PM on January 29

There's really no "."

It sucks, but easily preventable... An M5? At 18? Really? That just is not a good call, no matter what your standards of parenting. If you, as a parent, can't tell that giving up a 400+ HP car to your 18 year old, MALE offspring isn't a good idea... Really?

*shakes head*
posted by Cathedral at 3:27 PM on January 29 [13 favorites]

*Wince*
posted by Phire at 3:28 PM on January 29

I don't have a lot of sympathy for rich kids who do stupid things. It's a shame for the parents, but I'm not gonna get all teary for incredibly privileged youth.

Nice.
posted by The Light Fantastic at 3:29 PM on January 29 [3 favorites]

If they had an aircraft takeoff rocket booster strapped to the back of the car, then I'm afraid snopes has already debunked this Darwin Award as an urban legend.
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:29 PM on January 29

I'm glad they have John Travolta's residence clearly marked on the accident map in the last link, since that's completely relevant to the accident.
posted by nzero at 3:30 PM on January 29 [4 favorites]

Cars are very good at offering a seriously dangerous illusion of safety , so I guess initiatives like this rollover simulator are badly in need .

Side note: good to see cops doing education by suggestion , instead of conditioning by stick & tear gas.
posted by elpapacito at 3:32 PM on January 29

While it's easy to write this off as rich boys with expensive toys, that's all pretty superficial and might say more about you than it does about the event. You can probably get a used Honda to go that fast, too.
posted by Dave Faris at 3:32 PM on January 29 [5 favorites]

Wow, it would be shocking to have a member of your community die in such a visible manner.
Sad, indeed.

Though I have to ask; how the hell did they get access to a runway to drive that fast on, and what was a tree doing anywhere nearby. Were they at the very edge of the tarmac or something?
posted by quin at 3:32 PM on January 29

why wasn't john travolta there to help? clearly he wasn't paying attention during tom's video.
posted by hazel at 3:32 PM on January 29 [44 favorites]

If you, as a parent, can't tell that giving up a 400+ HP car to your 18 year old MALE offspring isn't a good idea... Really?

FTFY.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 3:33 PM on January 29

Though I have to ask; how the hell did they get access to a runway to drive that fast on

The community they live in has a private runway. It's for people who own their own planes and want to be able to fly into/out of their neighborhood.

I don't have a lot of sympathy for rich kids who do stupid things

But if it was poor kids who did a stupid thing and died (happens just as often), then you would have sympathy? Fucked up.
posted by wildcrdj at 3:33 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]

500 hp + 140 mph + 18 = -5.
Josh's dad is a dolt.
posted by Floydd at 3:35 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]

From the first thread, and presumably before the accident:

I would be much prefer an 18 year old with brains to have an M5 rather than spend his moeny on some other piece of junk that could kill him and his mates in an accident.
posted by swift at 3:36 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]

500 hp + 140 mph + 18 = -5.
Josh's dad is a dolt.

Interesting point. I wonder if the families of the other four boys have a negligence case here?
posted by nzero at 3:37 PM on January 29

No, you can't really get a used run of the mill Honda to compete with a 500 HP BMW M series sedan. No, not really. A tuned S2000, perhaps.

The problem is, as one of the posters on the M5 forums said, the physics. It took the car X distance to get up to speed, and y distance to stop from that speed. x+y ended up being extremely close to the end of the runway. He went a few miles per hour too fast, or waited a second or two too long. Because the 'used Honda' deltas are so much lower, there is more room for safety...
posted by Cathedral at 3:37 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]

The community they live in has a private runway.

That would do it, thanks.

MALE offspring

Aren't teenage girls typically considered more proficient/ less aggressive drivers? Isn't that why their insurance is usually lower?

Or is this just a really common misconception? I honestly am not sure.
posted by quin at 3:38 PM on January 29

Probably a good idea to actually know where the end of the runway is if you're going to do speed trials on it. Maybe put some flares out or something.
posted by puke & cry at 3:39 PM on January 29

FTFY.

YMMV.

(sorry...)

Poor, dumb kids. There but for the grace of, etc.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:40 PM on January 29

The Light Fantastic writes "It's a shame for the parents, but I'm not gonna get all teary for incredibly privileged youth."

Neither will I , but I will cry one for them as ordinary idiots.

BUT , don't fall victim to the illusion that this kind of accident may only happened to spoiled ultrarich brats, you don't need a car that accelerates rapidly to kill yourself exactly the same way these guys did, except the spectacular flying and the complete destruction of the car structure of course.
posted by elpapacito at 3:40 PM on January 29

Is anyone else not really sure what this post is doing here?
posted by odinsdream at 3:43 PM on January 29 [2 favorites]

I second ZaneJ. Moronic rich kids putting their parents through hell.
posted by littlerobothead at 3:43 PM on January 29

He was stupid, but he had fun. I sincerely doubt that my death will be as memorable or thrilling. The recklessness of youth is an essential part of the human experience.

I'll be drinking beer tonight. One of those beers will be for him. Fuck the haters; he can't hear them now, and all our flaws and failings are really moot points in death.
posted by koeselitz at 3:43 PM on January 29 [4 favorites]

CitrusFreak: a year or two ago, an 18yo rich girl did something similar here (though not involving airstrips) - rolling her expensive convertible sports car whilst driving way over the speed limit in a suburban street, and killing - from memory - two of her friends. Received quite a light sentence, for what it's worth - a year or so in prison for manslaughter & negligent driving causing death (I think the reasoning was that she had suffered enough already).

On the other hand, don't all the stats show that young males are the worst offenders for this sort of thing?
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:44 PM on January 29

I am looking for statistics right now, but IIRC, the delta between male and female teen drivers is quite startling.
posted by Cathedral at 3:46 PM on January 29

Aren't teenage girls typically considered more proficient/ less aggressive drivers? Isn't that why their insurance is usually lower?

I wouldn't say more proficient, exactly, but certainly less aggressive. Almost anything is less aggressive than an 18-year-old male.

Okay, maybe not starving velociraptors, but still.

It doesn't end with being a teenager, either - as a 27-year-old single male with a single literal fender-bender on his record, my car insurance rates even in Massachusetts' extremely regulated market are literally *insane*.
posted by Ryvar at 3:46 PM on January 29

Wow, if I had a dollar for every time I'd raced a 500HP vehicle along a private airstrip when I was 18 I'd have zero dollars.
posted by unSane at 3:48 PM on January 29 [5 favorites]

haha. There are three notes on the map, and one is "John Travolta's House"
posted by delmoi at 3:48 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]

Guess it's time to re-read "Musée des Beaux Arts" as an epitaph of sorts.
posted by pax digita at 3:48 PM on January 29

It sucks, but easily preventable... An M5? At 18? Really? That just is not a good call, no matter what your standards of parenting. If you, as a parent, can't tell that giving up a 400+ HP car to your 18 year old, MALE offspring isn't a good idea... Really?

+++
Seriously. More money than brain cells.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:51 PM on January 29

Tch, his posts in the original thread claimed the BMW was his own, he was a safe driver, and he would never endanger the lives of others. Bastard.

I feel sympathy for their families and for the passengers. I have no sympathy for the driver, who lied to his friends that he knew what he was doing when he tested out the airstrip. One less entitled, cocky asshole in the world.
posted by schroedinger at 3:51 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]

is it just me, or is that m5 board beyond hideous? With the dancing emoticons and gigantic amounts of whitespace caused by posters' car pictures? Are all message boards like that? No wonder I never visit any.

He was stupid, but he had fun.

And he killed four of his friends.
posted by rtha at 3:51 PM on January 29 [4 favorites]

Damn, that's funny.

Um, no. No it's not. Not at all.
posted by dersins at 3:54 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]

In high school, I had a friend who's parents were in the middle of a messy divorce. Dad bought my friend a porche 911, his mom bought him a VW golf. This being the 80's, there was zero chance his dad was getting custody, and of course mom wouldn't let him keep the 911 at her house, so he only got to drive it when he'd visit his dad twice a year. I didn't keep exact records, but it sure seemed like 9/10 times he drove the porche, he got arrested for driving like an idiot. He never got pulled over in the golf.

I never got to ride in the 911 with him, but I know how he drove the golf.

There's something to be said for giving your child a vehicle they can't get 0-60 in .5 seconds.
posted by nomisxid at 3:54 PM on January 29 [2 favorites]

A bit off topic, but now I'm wondering...could a typical 18yo man, armed only with a knife, (say, six or eight inches long) be trained to consistently "win" fights with a starving velociraptor? Assume no element of surprise.
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:54 PM on January 29 [16 favorites]

Also, I think it's a little callous to write this off as "stupid rich kid got what he deserved" when four of his friends also died. Driving quickly down an airstrip doesn't seem like something that's too dangerous as long as you know when you're going to run out of track, which this kid didn't. I'm sure his friends expected him too, though.
posted by delmoi at 3:55 PM on January 29

"The five teenagers in the car flew 200 feet off an airport runway, then hit a tree, splitting the car in half."

Yes, but were they alright?!
posted by markkraft at 3:55 PM on January 29

My son is eight. He is fearless, too quick to anger, an adrenaline junkie, does not believe in gravity, and does not take advice. I think of him whenever I read a story like this.
posted by LarryC at 3:56 PM on January 29 [3 favorites]

There's something to be said for giving your child a vehicle they can't get 0-60 in .5 seconds.

This is why every kid should be given a '92 Ford Taurus as their first car. Worked wonders for me. The only time I ever got to "peel out" is on icy roads. Stupid front wheel drive.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 3:56 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]

Seconded odinsdream. Reckless driving kills people all the time. Many of them contribute to online communities. Nothing noteworthy here unless you're a tricked-out-motorhead.

Nonetheless, he is to be commended for commiting autocide on closed pavement instead of endangering other drivers a public roadway.
posted by CynicalKnight at 3:57 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]

Yes, let's all take turns kicking the dead kids.
Let's kick their grieving parents, too.
Might as well kick their dog, while you're at it.

This is me kicking you in the balls and asking, "Hurts, don't it?"
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 3:58 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]

I don't judge these kids. I did some stupid, stupid things as a teenager, and I was lucky to have survived them. If I had been given access to a machine like that, yeah, they probably would have had to scrape me off the pavement with a spatula. I can only thank God that my parents decided that if I was so determined to remove myself from the gene pool, I wasn't going to be taking any luxury imports with me.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 3:59 PM on January 29

A bit off topic, but now I'm wondering...could a typical 18yo man, armed only with a knife, (say, six or eight inches long) be trained to consistently "win" fights with a starving velociraptor? Assume no element of surprise.

Eighteen-year-old males

Velociraptor

No.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:00 PM on January 29 [16 favorites]

I did some stupid, stupid things as a teenager, and I was lucky to have survived them.

Yeh, I'm just glad that a 1200cc Beetle doesn't really get out of second gear all that often with eight people on board. Otherwise that oversteer & rear-wheel-tuck when you take corners too fast could be a bit dangerous. Especially with a bottle of vodka in your belly. From what I've heard.
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:06 PM on January 29

Also, I think it's a little callous to write this off as "stupid rich kid got what he deserved" when four of his friends also died.

Personally, that's exactly *why* I'm inclined to write this off as 'stupid rich kid who got what he deserved'. If it was just himself he was putting in jeopardy, I might be less judgemental about him, but the fact that he's visited enormous tragedy and grief, not only on his own family, but also on the families of four other kids really stretches any ability I might have had to grieve for him.

That said, I think his parents are more to blame than he is. What kind of moron lets their kid go crazy in a brand new M5?
posted by PeterMcDermott at 4:11 PM on January 29

CPB - Oh, just fuck off. It's not about kicking anyone. It's about something that anyone with the barest speck of sense would know. It's about the fact that if you were a responsible parent, the only way that an 18 year old kid would get in that car is if you were with him...

I've done autocross, HPDEs, driving schools, etc... I drive a decently fast car. I am confident in my skills and my chosen platform... There is NO WAY I would be doing 140 with 4 friends in my car for any reason. Any reason at all. This is called maturity and experience.

The parents of the poor dead kid should have known where this was going from the second they handed him the keys...
posted by Cathedral at 4:12 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]

I can imagine the through process that led him doing this to show off to his buddies how fast the car can go, and how quickly it can stop. I wouldn't be surprised if he had done this before on the same runway.

However, when he did it the practice times, probably working his way up to the higher speeds, he did it by himself. Not with 4 other, 150-200lb people in the car. Which would add another 600 to 800 lbs and possible extend his acceleration and stopping distance, more likely taking longer for him to get to speed, and then realizing too late that he didn't have enough distance to stop. (I don't know how magical the M5 is, but most cars handle differently with 5 people in them vs one).

Looking at this diagram, it appears they didn't know how much run way they had, or it could be used as a demonstration that physics is a harsh mistress.
posted by mrzarquon at 4:13 PM on January 29 [11 favorites]

If I'd had a private airstrip handy you can bet I'd have been attempting to do the same thing when I was a teenager. They were on an airstrip! Not a highway. They weren't threatening any other lives. What more do you want?

I hope his passengers were just as stoked on the thrill- if not they're victims plain and simple. If they were- well, I'm sorry for the parents, but I hope I go in a manner as fun as they did!
posted by small_ruminant at 4:13 PM on January 29

Let me say I am beginner when it comes to high performance cars as I am only 18 so take it easy on me.

is nowhere near as good as

i told u i was hardcore
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 4:15 PM on January 29 [9 favorites]

Seconded odinsdream. Reckless driving kills people all the time. Many of them contribute to online communities. Nothing noteworthy here unless you're a tricked-out-motorhead.

It's not often that someone dies doing something with a history on an online community of talking about doing the things that got them killed. Posting about rough shifting at 140mph the night before the crash? That's pretty incredible and rare.

If it happens "all the time" I dare you to find more than one other example like this. It's a pretty horrible story but the online component makes it interesting.
posted by mathowie at 4:17 PM on January 29 [5 favorites]

D4rwN'D!
posted by sourwookie at 4:22 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]

If the car had been on a treadmill, would they have crashed?
posted by strangeleftydoublethink at 4:23 PM on January 29

mrzarquon's probably spot on the money.

he'd done it alone before, and had 160 or whatever as the money speed, rather than paying attention to landmarks along the runway as indicators of when to hit the brakes.

being young, he didn't take into account the fact that 4 extra people make a big difference to a car's performance. that's something you really only get with experience, because in all your life of being ferried around in your parents' cars, you come to think that they always handle the same; the car is seen to be all-powerful. it takes a few scares sliding out with people on board before you realise just how differently a car - any car - handles when full of passengers.
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:23 PM on January 29

It's a pretty horrible story but the online component makes it interesting.

Yeah, this is why this is still up and hasn't been deleted. Not everyone puts up public notice of their means of death online UNKNOWN EVEN TO THEMSELVES. His protestations of being a safe driver are tragically ironic.

And while I think the kid obviously had poor judgement, most other 18 year old guys are spared this fate through the lack of an M5 rather than by having better judgement.
posted by GuyZero at 4:25 PM on January 29 [3 favorites]

Because it needs to be said...


Christ, what an asshole.
posted by notsnot at 4:25 PM on January 29

When I was 20 I got a ticket for going 120 in the rain late at night on I95 near Providence. No other cars around. Except the cop behind the bridge abutment. I was in a 1972 Plymouth Satellite Sebring with a 318 small block V8. I was, at the time, a poor kid (the Sebring cost me $500, as I recall, and was rusting out). And as the cop said, he clocked me at 120 (my speedometer was pinned) with my brake lights on.

God knows what I would have done with a private airstrip and an M5.

So as a former reckless young male driver (I haven't gone over 100 in a decade, except for once last year in a Pontiac G6 coupe on an empty, dry, straight West Texas 2 lane with about 10 miles of forward visibility, and then I got nervous at about 105mph) I will also raise a beer to this moron. He he he, yeah buddy.

But he *is* (as I was) still a moron, and doing this with four friends in the car with you? Priceless.

Speed kills, man.
posted by fourcheesemac at 4:26 PM on January 29 [2 favorites]

Before giving him the car, Dad should have sent him to racing school - like Skip Barber- to learn things like threshold braking and how to handle a car at the limit.
posted by Jay Reimenschneider at 4:27 PM on January 29 [2 favorites]

My car was a 1955 Chevy Bel Air. And MAN did we do some dangerous things in that car just to see if we could. Fortunately, my mom put me in a tank. If we'd have hit a tree, the tree would've lost.
posted by miss lynnster at 4:28 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]

Even Skip Barber can be defeated by the monstrous testosterone flooded being that is the 18 year old male driver... Trust me, I know from experience. But I wasn't in a quasi-supercar... Hence why I am still here.
posted by Cathedral at 4:30 PM on January 29

I see this all the time, fathers living vicariously through their sons. How else do you explain giving a kid a hot rod like that?

On a lower socioeconomic scale, I saw that all the time on a board I used to frequent when I was restoring my old Ford truck. Guys talking about the huge engine, etc., they were getting ready to drop into their kid's truck.

A few kids can actually handle that. Most cannot.

(Besides, what are you teaching your kid about life when you hand him a car that costs more than most people make in a year for his 18th birthday? Life really is different for the rich, I guess.)
posted by maxwelton at 4:32 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]

miss lynnster: no bragging rights for you.

you would have had the element of surprise against the tree.
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:32 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]

Reports indicate that Ammirato had received four traffic citations in the last two years.

And the dad still let him drive the monster car? Ugh.
posted by delmoi at 4:36 PM on January 29

Five people you don't know died in FLorida, hand wringing at 11.

This is local news and should stay that way.
posted by doctor_negative at 4:37 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]

Looking at this diagram, it appears they didn't know how much run way they had

Considering their tender age, the driver's relative inexperience, and the less-than-ideal nighttime conditions, all combined with the potentially lethal horsepower of such a high-end sportscar, when I see the exact layout of the crash site as shown so clearly in that diagram it really surprises me that John Travolta's house isn't bigger.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 4:38 PM on January 29 [29 favorites]

A thought that just came to me: the "think of the children!!!" crowd loves to talk about motorcycles and tiered licensing. Why is it that no one talks about tiered licensing for high-powered cars? (If this kid had been a motorcycle nut he'd only have killed one of his friends.) Maybe just horsepower limits for young male drivers. Hell, maybe just real driving school if you want to drive high-powered cars, any age or sex.

I think that getting a driver's license should involve as much training as getting a pilot's license. A Piper Cherokee is much safer and simpler than an M5, and flying lessons make you a better driver. (Anyone that can afford an M5 can certainly afford an airplane.)

Disclaimer: I am an airplane and motorcycle nut.
posted by phliar at 4:39 PM on January 29 [2 favorites]

When I was 16-17 my friend drove a great big piece-of-shit hoopty. We used to go down the road going about 35-40 miles an hour, and I would climb out the shotgun window, crawl across the roof and slide into the driver's seat just as my friend slid over to shotgun.

It was tons of fun -- what can I say, I was stupid drunk on testosterone. I got lucky; these kids didn't. Money has nothing to do with it.
posted by Bookhouse at 4:39 PM on January 29

This is really a shame. I understand why people react this way, it's easy to be callous and laugh at another's death. It's whistling past the graveyard, man. But on another level, I understand this-- I took a lot of risks when I was 18 or so. I could have died countless times, and while I don't believe in a God the others might, it's still a MIRACLE I'm here to type this today. Seriously. I'm certainly guilty of saying inappropriate things about people I consider to be real jerks, even in obituary threads, but wtf? What did this kid do to you? A bunch of kids are dead, because of stupidity, yes, but how many of us are so perfect at that age?

.
posted by exlotuseater at 4:43 PM on January 29 [2 favorites]

I fail at typography.
posted by exlotuseater at 4:43 PM on January 29

phliar: Why is it that no one talks about tiered licensing for high-powered cars?

We have that here. For the first three years of having your license there's a limit on power-to-weight and power-to-occupancy ratios. Of course, we also have all these laws against guns, and talking on cellphones while driving... so I expect the answer to your question is 'FREEDOM!1!eleventy1'.
posted by pompomtom at 4:43 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]

I see my last line's assumption is unwarranted, reading a bit more.

Still, I wasn't even allowed to drive the family Buick, and one of my friends whose dad was wealthy (and said dad owned the equivalent of the M5 of the day) knew in no uncertain terms he would be hung by his nethers if he ever "borrowed" the car. So it's hard to get my mind around the idea that a responsible parent would let their kid out in a hugely powerful car, especially to hang out with other kids and go to a party.
posted by maxwelton at 4:44 PM on January 29

UbuRoivas: A bit off topic, but now I'm wondering...could a typical 18yo man, armed only with a knife, (say, six or eight inches long) be trained to consistently "win" fights with a starving velociraptor? Assume no element of surprise.

Considering actual velociraptors (as opposed to the things in Jurassic Park) weighed something like 35 lb., he'd have pretty good odds without any special training and without the knife.

I guess this means that a BMW M5 is more dangerous than a velociraptor.
posted by Mitrovarr at 4:46 PM on January 29

Cars are very good at offering a seriously dangerous illusion of safety, so I guess initiatives like this rollover simulator are badly in need.

I just got my license a few months ago, and here in Sweden part of the [long] license-obtaining process is a requirement for all applicants to take a 3-hour safety course which mostly consists of practical exercises that teach you about stopping distances, especially during slippery conditions. We also got to experience what it's like to use a handbrake at high speeds, what a huge difference just +/-20kph can mean in case you have to swerve in an emergency, etc.

However, it also included a rollover simulator which was interesting to experience. We didn't get tumbled around like in the video, but being upside down with a seatbelt on.. eesh. Our instructors also gave us some instructions on what to do in case we ever find ourselves in that situation, or have to retrieve someone out of a flipped car.

In addition to that, they had a 7kph crash simulator which was.. unpleasant yet informative. And finally we got to see various crashed cars up close, including a Volvo that'd smacked straight into a moose.
posted by pyrex at 4:48 PM on January 29 [7 favorites]

He was stupid, but he had fun. [. . .] Fuck the haters; he can't hear them now

He killed four other people. His family, and the families of the four people he killed, will have to live with this void in their lives forever.

Think about that while you kick back that brew tonight and tell me if you still admire what happened here.
posted by Mikey-San at 4:50 PM on January 29 [4 favorites]

Of course, if this guy had come to AskMe, anyone with concerns about his safety based on his age and perceived immaturity would have been told to take it to MetaTalk and stick to answering the question.
posted by kyleg at 4:52 PM on January 29 [11 favorites]

I've been reading this thing thinking that some rich kids just Darwined themselves, and then I remembered that I did nearly the exact same thing when I was 20.

Me and three friends in my mom's '95 Eagle Talon, doing about 110 down rural roads around 4:00am, thinking that the intersection I was approaching was a cross intersection, when actually it was a T intersection.

"Shit"......................was the only thing that was spoken as the car launched itself over an 18' wide ditch, through a cattle fence, and skidded to a halt 305' out in the middle of a cow pasture. Somehow we didn't roll, and the only injury was the front passenger's mild concussion, because the airbag shoved his 40oz into his forehead. You could see the bruise for a few days where the mouth of the bottle nailed him right between the eyes.

I was on fuckin' cloud 9 for about a week. I was invincible. It was like I took a thousand tabs of X and it was going to last for the rest of my life. Nobody could touch me; I was one with the universe; I had seen death and cheated it; I knew the true meaning of life and I knew that we have to appreciate every second that we're blessed with on this earth. My parents showed me no pity and I bought a bike to get from my duplex to classes and to work. I didn't care: I was enlightened.

But that high can't last forever, and after a week my emotions crashed. Hard. I wasn't a lucky cocky bastard driver. I was an ass. A total shit. A fuckwad who should have killed four people, but by the grace of physics and luck, somehow didn't.

I got very, very lucky. Not just because I didn't die, or end up in a coma, or kill three other people, but because we all walked away and at least I now appreciate just how fucking stupid speed is, at least on public roads with a dumbass testosterone-fueled fucknut behind the wheel.

So yeah, some young male was being a dumb young male and killed four people in the process. That should have been me ten years ago, but for a variety of reasons it wasn't, and four sets of parents didn't have to grieve, but instead just had to shake their heads at me and say "you're so fucking stupid" while I grinned and told them how happy I was to be alive.

My mom was soooo fucking livid the entire day after she found out. She was mountfuckingvesuvius all day, until we got out to the junkyard to pull our valuables out of the car, and that's when she saw just how totaled the vehicle was, and then she just held me. For five solid minutes. In a junkyard. Crying. Happy that she hadn't yet outlived her firstborn.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 4:54 PM on January 29 [62 favorites]

Terrible, terrible post.
posted by glycolized at 4:58 PM on January 29

I've always heard the strengths of BMWs are acceleration and handling, not all-out speed on a straightaway.

A few years ago, my mate heard a big crash in the middle of the night (I sleep through everything), but when she dashed outside everything was OK, though she was puzzled to see a little red sports car on a side street stopped with its lights on and engine running on a side street just north of our house, dripping like it just came out of a car wash, and finally came back in and went back to sleep.

We found out the next day that a teenage boy had crashed into a light pole on the big arterial behind our house and been killed (I told her instantly, though I still don't know that for sure, because she was already blaming herself for not looking around more throughly and calling an ambulance) 50 ft. up the street from the edge of our backyard.

He left a set of two intermittent parallel gouges in the asphalt about nine inches apart and ~100 ft. long in a perfectly straight line leading to the pole that I took to be the marks of a rim after a tire blew and was torn off. By the next afternoon there was a mound of flowers 3 feet high around the base of the pole, and for several weeks thereafter, and a white wooden cross appeared, strapped to the pole with metal bands about 10 feet off the ground, with 'Boyko' written in block letters on the cross bar. The city cut it off after a week, but it came back 3 more times before whoever was doing it gave up.

I had wondered about that particular pole, because it was made of a blackened iron instead of wood like all the others on this street, but when I was looking at the gouges in the asphalt, which began a few yards after the roadway changes direction, I realized it was perfectly positioned to intercept a car that continued in a straight line rather than following the curve of the road, before it could hit the house just off the road on the corner of the cross street.

I guess I agree with the decision to put a pole such as that there, but I hope his family did not see it and draw the same conclusions I did.
posted by jamjam at 4:58 PM on January 29 [2 favorites]

Perusing the article, they were out at three am.

Obviously parents did not know where they were.

This is so sad. I don't blame the kid as much as I do the parent who thinks that giving his or her son that kind of car is a good idea. But in that income bracket, there's peer pressure-on both generations-so that explains some of the stupidity, I guess.

What a high price to pay for a) not being a genius in physics and b) buying your kid way too much car.
posted by konolia at 4:59 PM on January 29

When I was 17, my otherwise ultra-conservative-in-parenting, super-frugal parents bought me a v8 Mustang, that year's model. To this day, I have no idea WTF they were thinking. While I like cars and liked going fast, that car scared the crap out of me and when I sold it a dozen years later, it didn't have a ding or a speeding ticket on it. I traded it for an Accord.

My son will be getting a 12 year old Volvo with deliberately dirty valves and quite possibly square wheels.
posted by jamaro at 5:00 PM on January 29 [11 favorites]

phliar: I think that getting a driver's license should involve as much training as getting a pilot's license.

Seriously, do you realize how much a pilot's license costs? Probably 80% of the population wouldn't ever be able to afford one, and most of the rest would have to save up for it for years or take out massive loans.

Doing this would make the economy collapse in a spectacular fashion.
posted by Mitrovarr at 5:00 PM on January 29

UbuRoivas writes "being young, he didn't take into account the fact that 4 extra people make a big difference to a car's performance. "

Being ignorant, rather. Clearly, we all are born as such and youngster are often more then elders, but that's not always true. They're fed all the shit about the life of Paris, but dammit if they (actually, I just recently discovered him) were fed Carl Sagan and some elements of physics, who knows..like the fact that with 4 more people he had a lot more mass to brake.

fourcheesemac writes "Speed kills, man."

Don't tell the millions of passenger on airplanes :) !
posted by elpapacito at 5:00 PM on January 29

His parents don't have anything to do with it. The kid was 18 -- an adult, even by American standards. And I very much doubt he forced his four friends into the car at gunpoint or that they had no knowledge of what the little midnight ride would involve. This is young men being stupid and having fun by risking their lives. When I was his age I did stuff that was, believe it or not, even more dangerous and came very, very, very close to a terrible, fiery death. It was incredible and it's not the sort of thing you actually regret. Putting aside all the petty resentment about his wealth, this is a tragedy and it reminds me to be very grateful that I made it out of 18 alive.
posted by nixerman at 5:01 PM on January 29 [2 favorites]

"We have that here. For the first three years of having your license there's a limit on power-to-weight and power-to-occupancy ratios. Of course, we also have all these laws against guns, and talking on cellphones while driving... so I expect the answer to your question is 'FREEDOM!1!eleventy1'"

I dunno. Once you factor out the gang bangers and drug related killings, the number of teens dying because of firearm related accidents is very very low. WAY more kids die from car wrecks and too many times it's due to an inexperienced driver with.. well, "too much car." 17 year old teenage girls driving Daddy's GMC Denali, high schoolers getting new Ford Mustangs, etc. Drive around some of the high schools in Cupertino, CA and check out the rides. Jaguars in the student parking lot? Range Rovers?

Personally, I think that teenagers should be required to complete more stringent drivers education courses and shouldn't be allowed to drive anything with more horsepower than a Toyota Corolla until they're 21. It's too easy to get a license. All I had to do in California was show up at the DMV and pass the stupidly simple written test and drive around the block. WAY too easy.
My motorcycle drivers license in Japan was at least a challenge and so was the driving/road test.
posted by drstein at 5:06 PM on January 29

This is shockingly poor judgment (assuming it was consensual) of the parent to give the keys to such a car to an 18 year old kid. Period.

Add '18 year old kid with no relevant driving experience' (ie no 8 years racing karts and 3 racing cars): good idea ---

Add 'letting him have the keys to go to a party': - good idea --

Add "And I'll be giving all my mates a lift": good idea ------- Peer pressure will make even the slightest bit of a good idea seem an excellent one when all your mates are yelling about how cool it would be. Result? Inevitable fatal crash. Completely and utterly inevitable. There really was never going to be any other outcome, except possibly not killing all of them, and not at that particular time.

Kids are dumb - I was every bit as dumb when I was a kid, but my car was a 1.1litre Golf. It had 70bhp, not 500. And I nearly killed myself in that more than once. The power of a car like that is utterly intoxicating and almost impossible to resist if it doesn't scare you. My Father just sold the M5 of the generation before (100 less BHP and it scared him) and he, a 60 year old man, found it almost impossible to slow down in it because of how wonderful it was to drive. What chance would a kid of 18 have? None, and I would be bloody shocked to find an 18 year old that'd be able to resist flooring the thing whenever possible. Sadly, the scare he needed to properly respect the car and the speed it could do came within 10-15 seconds of the end of his life.

I fully agree that the extra weight would make (even to that beast of a car) a significant difference to its ability to accelerate and decelerate, and this is a definite possibility for the loss of judgment of braking point - maybe he got distracted (as someone said) hunting for the same Vmax he knew he got on his own). Also, Runways (especially from a car) are really pretty damn featureless and surprisingly short at +140mph. I've driven at stupid, stupid speeds on the road and it felt pretty damn scary. I've been in a (comparable powered road-) car doing 170mph+ on a 2 mile runway and it was pretty uneventful apart from the wind noise and really didn't feel all that fast.....

..right up to the point when the (professional racing driver) hit the brakes.

Then BOTH of us thought it wasn't going to stop. This was a brand new $300,000+ super car, in perfect order and controlled conditions, and it was damn scary. In the daytime. We did about 20 laps, and it still didn't feel any more like it was going to stop on the last run than it did on the first. It was also incredibly hard to pinpoint a braking point. Doing the same thing in the dark, with a load of rowdy mates in the car while still trying to get magic number you got on your own sounds like an impossible task to me. All the people egging him on to go faster would have just seen masses of runway in the headlights, I'd wager. None of them had a clue how little space they had. Headlights don't shine further up the road the faster you go...
posted by Brockles at 5:07 PM on January 29 [2 favorites]

Blatant jokey self-link
posted by MegoSteve at 5:09 PM on January 29 [7 favorites]

Told u I was haaaAAARDDCOOO-
posted by fire&wings at 5:16 PM on January 29

Seriously, do you realize how much a pilot's license costs? Probably 80% of the population wouldn't ever be able to afford one, and most of the rest would have to save up for it for years or take out massive loans.

Not at all true. Not even close. Maybe you are thinking of a commercial pilots license (which usually costs about as much as a house), but a standard light aircraft pilots license can be had for as low as $3400 up to circa $7500. Which is about as much as the first couple of years servicing and tyres on an M5...
posted by Brockles at 5:21 PM on January 29

No one noticed that the kid expressed an interest in racing down runways the day before?
posted by omarr at 5:22 PM on January 29

phliar writes "I think that getting a driver's license should involve as much training as getting a pilot's license."

A minimum of 40 hours of supervised driving and a medical certificate before getting licensed?
posted by krinklyfig at 5:23 PM on January 29

Headlights don't shine further up the road the faster you go...

Actually, it would be brilliant if they did. (also, make the cop's job easier: "we are getting 4x lumens on this guy, bob, he's speeding").

This last Dec. I had a chance to drive a new v8 mustang as a rental, and I'm 25, and I still got a little giddy stupid in a freaking mustang. I don't even want to know how I would react in a 500hp M5.

I think a lot of us have a story that is just as stupid or close to what the above young adults did, so it is more than just "wow they are stupid privileged kids (and I mean kids as in not yet self responsible adults, while they may legally be, i bet they didn't know how to cook or do their own laundry)" it is also a "I can remember being that stupid and almost dieing" moment for some of us also.
posted by mrzarquon at 5:24 PM on January 29

I sometimes wonder if I was the only cautious & overly-sensible teenager on the face of the Earth.
posted by aramaic at 5:25 PM on January 29 [2 favorites]

MegoSteve, nice try buddy, but Pluto isn't even a planet anymore.

Of course, if this guy had come to AskMe, anyone with concerns about his safety based on his age and perceived immaturity would have been told to take it to MetaTalk and stick to answering the question.

If he had come to Ask Metafilter, he would have been showing some forethought and someone could have told him how to go fast in a car without winning a Darwin award.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 5:26 PM on January 29

rockles: Not at all true. Not even close. Maybe you are thinking of a commercial pilots license (which usually costs about as much as a house), but a standard light aircraft pilots license can be had for as low as $3400 up to circa $7500. Which is about as much as the first couple of years servicing and tyres on an M5...

Yes, that's what I was thinking of. Still, $7500 is a ridiculous sum for a 16 year old that would be essentially impossible to save up without a decent job, which without driving, they wouldn't be able to get. Add a car to that and the expectation that they go to college, and you see where this is going.
posted by Mitrovarr at 5:32 PM on January 29

Hey man I have one of these cars. They are very fast (they can do over 200MPH without any problem on the autobahn)\, but they also have very good brakes (14.7 inches in the front and a little smaller in the rear). Better stopping distance than any AMG or really any car its weight (4000 lbs). I guess with 5 kids in the car that's about 700-800 lbs extra for brakes to handle.

I would also like to say anyone who thinks these kids don't deserve sympathy is devoid of emotion or a hypocrite or both. I can't remember any year of my life up until 25ish when I did not do really stupid stuff that could have killed me but that's part of the human existence and life would be extremely not worth living if it weren't for those experiences.
posted by trol at 5:34 PM on January 29

My son will be getting a 12 year old Volvo with deliberately dirty valves and quite possibly square wheels.
posted by jamaro at 8:00 PM on January 29

Huh. My first car was a 10 yr old volvo 740. My first speeding ticket was in that car - 114 mph in a 55 mph zone. Boys and their toys, etc. I routinely took that car over 90.

7 years later my Volvo was totalled. A cement truck made an illegal left into the two oncoming lanes of traffic, cut in front of a city bus in the left lane next to me, and smashed right into me. I was doing less than 5 mph.
posted by Pastabagel at 5:35 PM on January 29

What a shame. That was such a nice car.
posted by mek at 5:36 PM on January 29

Damn, that's funny

it's many things, but funny isn't one of them
posted by mattoxic at 5:36 PM on January 29

Page 2:
M5froth I completley understand where you are coming from assuming that I am irresponsible..that is definetly understandable. I do sometimes make bad decisions but I am young and I do drive safe and I will not endanger the lives of others..and I hope you are not under the impression that I am the one to brag, I have never been that way and never will.

Whoever said epidemiology is boring? It's live and in technicolor with this story. Perfect example of why accidents are the most common cause of death for Americans under the age of 45. The most dangerous thing that you can do in your life is get behind the wheel of a car and venture out onto the roads of America.
posted by i_am_a_Jedi at 5:37 PM on January 29

Mitrovarr: Still, $7500 is a ridiculous sum for a 16 year old that would be essentially impossible to save up without a decent job, which without driving, they wouldn't be able to get. Add a car to that and the expectation that they go to college, and you see where this is going."

It's not that ridiculous when you consider the insurance premiums that an 18-year old male driver has to pay, and which would probably be much decreased with a more stringent training regime (resulting in fewer accidents). I suspect you'd pay off the additional training cost in a few years at most. Add in the social cost of accidents and it'd probably be an even better deal (and I thinnk you'd have a legitimate argument for subsidization on that basis).
posted by Kadin2048 at 5:38 PM on January 29

Or the private airstrips.
posted by dersins at 5:38 PM on January 29

pyrex writes "However, it also included a rollover simulator which was interesting to experience. We didn't get tumbled around like in the video, but being upside down with a seatbelt on.. eesh."

Hey, that was me in real life about a month ago. I flipped my 4Runner trying to pass on icy roads. Started to turn around, drifted over to the ditch, rolled right over and ended up on the roof. I had my seatbelt on, so I was sort of suspended by it. Getting out was interesting, but it took no time at all. No injuries, and I was the only one in the car, but it was pretty scary at the time. The flipped car wasn't so bad, it was more doing a 360 on a 2-lane, busy highway with wet ice, somehow managing not to hit anyone. No broken windows, and the damage wasn't so bad. It was the second time I've ever been in a flipped car, but the last time I was a passenger, and it was about 20 years ago.
posted by krinklyfig at 5:40 PM on January 29

I wonder how the guys on the BMW board feel, having advised this 18 year old kid the day before. And then knowing the day after 5 kids were killed. Got to be rough.

An overview of the runway shows how tempting it looks to drive fast. According to one of the posters on that board "car accidents is the number one killer for the 18-25 yr old bracket".

I was impressed, when the shell of the car debris was being removed, how it seemed light as cardboard. Are most modern cars bodies (not the underneath or the motor but the main upper part) that lightweight these days? Are they made of metal or fiberglass? Man, for a $75,000 car that looked like it was made of tissue paper.

Interesting statistics:
• Male drivers 16-23 are four times more likely to be involved in a fatal vehicle accident than the average driver, due to inexperience and lack of maturity.
• The reasons for elevated risks of male drivers include speeding, and a higher likelihood of drinking and driving.
• Male drivers are 77% more likely to die in a car accident than women.
• Elderly women are 60% more likely to suffer a fatal accident than a 16-year-old boy
• Elderly women are 5 times more likely to die on the road even as a passengers, and are subject to the highest road related death risks in the U.S.

Deadliest days to Drive

Based on 25 years of research statistics compiled by NHTSA:
• July 4
• July 3
• Dec. 23
• Dec. 24
• Dec. 22
• Aug. 3
• Jan. 1
• Sept. 1
• Sept. 2
• Aug. 4


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posted by nickyskye at 5:42 PM on January 29 [2 favorites]

Some of the responses here are pretty disgusting. The kid was at least using a closed runway and not playing on the highway, which is at least foresight. I think he actually took his time to research the car, the speeds he could obtain and how to do it safely, which is commendable. The problem is that there isn't too many people out there who've had the experience of running an M5 on a runway filled with extra weight. Not too many FAQ out there detailing that an extra 500 pounds will significantly alter the dynamics at high speeds. M5s are amazing pieces of machinery and I can see how the slick engineering can fool you into thinking that you are not driving a supercar that needs special consideration. In fact they design it to be that way, but most of the clientele probably don't take it to such extremes.

That said this is actually relatively common. Exotics have a higher rate of accidents, far more than the average car. Sure a lot of that has to do with people not racing minivans, but a lot of also has to do with the fact that (1) proper training is not considered, (2) the cars abilities are overestimated. Solving the first will probably solve the second, but even a relatively well informed driver (how many people go seek out message boards on the model of their car after they get it?) can be fooled in underestimating the power of these machines.

These cars are really beautiful, as shown here.
posted by geoff. at 5:43 PM on January 29

Kadin2048 writes "It's not that ridiculous when you consider the insurance premiums that an 18-year old male driver has to pay ..."

Yeah, but AFAIK getting a license in most of Europe is much harder than it is in the US, and they don't require $7500. Why is the cost even necessary to learn to drive? It makes sense for a pilot's license due to the inherent costs of flying a plane to teach students, but it doesn't really make sense for a drivers license.
posted by krinklyfig at 5:44 PM on January 29

I am in the beginning planning stage w/ another member to investigate what airstrips are available in So. FL. to do 30 to 150 mph run offs just like Gustav did on the airfield.
This will be a great opportunity to run our cars w/o getting in trouble.

I need to get a feel of who would be interested to make this happen. It would be open to other sports cars to get more people to compete.

There is an 11,000 ft. runway in consideration. That's more than enough to go 190 or 200 mph and slow down.
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:46 PM on January 29

I have to throw my hat in with the "did a lot of stupid stuff in cars at that age" crowd. Airborne minivans, upside down Suzuki samurais, what else can we run into with this '72 Oldsomibile 88 without actually damaging the car? Those dumpsters, picnic tables, and the base of that statue seem to be no match for AmericanSteel. Luckily I was more of a donuts and smoke show idiot, than a speed idiot. I had an "oops I crapped my pants" experience at 19 on a 1000cc sportbike that has kept me off of anything more powerful than a rental scooter since.

A lot of cars these days are much too fast,not just top of of the line "rich kid" cars. My friend has a Mazda 3 that makes me nervous. My mother's nissan Altima is too fast for it's own good if you ask me. It's not airborne for 200 feet fast, but I can see a parent letting their kid behind the wheel thinking it's a safe alternative to something sportier.
posted by billyfleetwood at 5:48 PM on January 29

hazel - beautiful. Truly.

“If you, as a parent, can't tell that giving up a 400+ HP car to your 18 year old MALE offspring isn't a good idea... “

Yeah, I heard some kid stole his dad’s vintage 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California and let his buddy drive it all over Chicago. Then kicked the hell out of it and slammed it through a plate glass window into a big ditch behind their house.


When I was a kid I blew my engine in the middle of nowhere, not doing anything special, just driving at highway speed on my way somewhere. I called my mom, found a mechanic and got the deal underway on my little POS. Well, he tells me the engine is gone. So I’m thinking about what it’s going to take me to get a new car and the guy says he can shove in a Olds 403 (rocket series) small block no one wants because it’s an old engine, kind of expensive because it’s been customed out and “it might be a little too powerful for your car.”

Of course the next words out of my mouth were “that will be just fine.”

The work alone cost me more than the car but I was working all that summer so I had the funds. My family fronted me some bucks but paying them back was easy. And all they knew is I needed a car to get to work (to pay them back). And most moms don’t know all that much about cars.
(For you gearheads the 403’s bore-stroke ratio was huge and was rated at 185 hp with 320 foot lbs of torque - stock. This was modded with new heads (compression was way boosted) cams and a new (Edelbrock) intake, performance lifters, etc. etc. so I had 350 horse easy and I’d have to oh so gently and gradually step on the gas or peel out all the time)

So this is essentially a large racing engine in a small beater hatchback (although it did have a sunroof - leaky, but a sunroof nonetheless).
And the thing would overheat all the damn time (which is why, I suspect, I got it - relatively - cheap, the other work really cost me).

But when I’d step on the gas it was like that scene in Star Wars the first time they go to hyperspace.
And there was no top end, the thing could just go and go and go. The damn thing had lousy tires, terrible breaks, crummy steering and took off like a bolt of lightning, it was the Millenium Falcon and I loved that car.

Well, I mean of course I crashed it.

What sucked was, despite the absolutely thrilling speed (I’d outrun almost anything stock on the road), the way I crashed. I survived obviously. But I didn’t roll it in a drag race or anything cool.

No, the Falcon died because I swerved to miss a cat. I wasn’t even speeding. It was night, I had bald tires (and assorted other problems) and there’s a twisty road on my way home, so I’m going thru the curves and this cat runs out in front of me and I swerve to miss it.

So, scared little bastard that it was, it dives the other way. So I swerve the other way and my tire glances off the curb and I start to spin. So I try to countersteer and the wheel just spins in my hand. Nada. So I start pumping the breaks and I feel them just go to mush under me. So I spin around and I’m going backwards now and I pull the emergency brake and it comes off in my hand.

I’m thinking “Well, now what?” and I slam into a tree going backwards. The seat breaks, I slide out from under my seatbelt and I’m catapulted through the sunroof (which shatters) and I slide back down into my seat.
I get out. I’m fine. Not a mark on me.

So I head home. Get my mom’s car and head back planning to tow my car home (since I know I’m going to be short on cash now).
Unfortunately a cop is there at the scene. And he’s writing something next to my car which is ass-backwards planted into a tree.

So he says “I feared a body. You’re lucky.” And I agree. And he says “You’re lucky you came back too. Fleeing the scene is a serious offense.”
So, yeah, I’m a teenager, I said “What do you mean? The tree rear ended me.”
He got a kick out of that and he cuts me loose.
I tow the car home. It sits in my driveway for months while I look for a buyer for this hot rod engine and eventually I have to junk it because no one wants the damn thing.

The point being: we all do stupid things, some of us in spite of our parents, some of us because of them. And we all, eventually, pay for our mistakes one way or another.

I don’t know that I’d comment on their parenting skills without knowing them. I sure wouldn’t give my kids a high performance vehicle, but by the same token, maybe my kids will have some new way of doing dangerous stuff I know nothing about much like my mom didn’t know much about cars.

But again, even if you’re not doing something dangerous - circumstances can screw with you - throw a cat in front of you (Mr. Compassion) and F’up your program. He could have done that on the runway then be driving home, lose a tire and die in a completely different way. It’s better to play the odds and not do it. And it’s better to try to hold your kids back from doing it, but that doesn’t always work out and you don’t want to lock your kid in a closet until they leave for college and never learn their limits and get into real trouble.

The only thing really needs to be said about the parents is their children are dead. Not a damn thing we say or don’t say is going to change or affect that whether they were irresponsible or had a blind spot here or they were really conscientious and thoughtful.

And hell, I’ve said a stupid thing or two on the internet myself.
Everyone involved, far as I’m concerned, is fully paid up. Just a shame the lesson had to be so harsh and so final.
posted by Smedleyman at 5:48 PM on January 29 [25 favorites]

Kadin2048: It's not that ridiculous when you consider the insurance premiums that an 18-year old male driver has to pay, and which would probably be much decreased with a more stringent training regime (resulting in fewer accidents). I suspect you'd pay off the additional training cost in a few years at most. Add in the social cost of accidents and it'd probably be an even better deal (and I thinnk you'd have a legitimate argument for subsidization on that basis).

Insurance wasn't that bad, at least for me. Having a good record and good grades helped a lot.

I'm all for more training, just not a pilot's worth of training. In the end it wouldn't cost as much anyways, I suppose, since after more research I found that renting planes is a lot of the cost of learning to fly. The Swedish system above sounded pretty good.
posted by Mitrovarr at 5:50 PM on January 29

In high school, I had a friend who's parents were in the middle of a messy divorce. Dad bought my friend a porche 911, his mom bought him a VW golf. This being the 80's, there was zero chance his dad was getting custody, and of course mom wouldn't let him keep the 911 at her house, so he only got to drive it when he'd visit his dad twice a year. I didn't keep exact records, but it sure seemed like 9/10 times he drove the porche, he got arrested for driving like an idiot. He never got pulled over in the golf.

I never got to ride in the 911 with him, but I know how he drove the golf.

There's something to be said for giving your child a vehicle they can't get 0-60 in .5 seconds.

A 1980s Golf will do 140mph on the freeway no problem, trust me.
posted by fshgrl at 5:51 PM on January 29

You're all going to feel like suckers when it turns out Al Qaeda was responsible.
posted by pokermonk at 5:59 PM on January 29

A 1980s Golf will do 140mph on the freeway no problem, trust me.

Oh no it won't. Not even close. Not a stock one, certainly. Even the G60 couldn't top 127. You don't actually believe what Speedometers say, do you?
posted by Brockles at 6:04 PM on January 29

He had the foresight to want to learn about gear ratios, etc. and he wasn't on a public road.

That's why I say racing school probably would have saved his life. He would have learned respect for 500 bhp, for starters.


A 1980s Golf will do 140mph on the freeway no problem, trust me.
You can't scrub off speed in a 1980's Golf doing 140 like you can in an M5 (or a 911). It's a whole different ballgame. It is much much more dangerous to drive a Golf at that speed.
posted by Jay Reimenschneider at 6:09 PM on January 29

I sometimes wonder if I was the only cautious & overly-sensible teenager on the face of the Earth.

Me too. Drove a Volvo and a Honda, never took it more than 10 miles over. Where would I have to get to so damn fast? I was 18, very few responsibilities, might as well put on some music and go the speed limit. Of course, the first time I took the car out, the girl I was on a date with got hit by a car driven by some other teenagers and went into a coma- maybe that's why I was so careful.
posted by 235w103 at 6:09 PM on January 29

Mitrovarr, yes, I know how much a pilot's license costs; I'm an instrument-rated pilot. Driving should require a hell of a lot more commitment than it takes. It should not be considered a right.

krinklyfig: it's not just the dual instruction that's missing, or just the ground school; it's the attitude. Every instructor I've ever flown with has always had a similar attitude: this is serious business and will kill you, so it's not enought to just pass tests, it's important to really learn. Emergency procedures -- not airplane handing -- are the bulk of the training. And there's never a guarantee that you will get a license for just showing up; the first-time fail rate on the final test is significant. Examiners will often ask you to do stupid things and expect you to refuse -- good judgement is one of the passing criteria.

If this kid had been taught the right attitude, before the run he'd know his stopping distance for his target speed and put a marker on the runway. When that marker comes by, you start braking no matter what. These kinds of calculations -- start-stop distances, min. turning radiuses, dependence of various numbers on weight and speed -- are routine for pilots.

(Of course young men will be doing stupid things and killing themselves no matter what, but we don't have to make it easy.)
posted by phliar at 6:10 PM on January 29

A 1980s Golf will do 140mph on the freeway no problem, trust me.

Its not a question of how fast they go, its how long it takes for them to get there.
posted by mrzarquon at 6:11 PM on January 29

I had a Golf.

It was totalled standing still. My husband was in it. A drunk driver hit him head on.

(yeah, he survived just fine, but he wouldn't even let me see my car afterwards.)

Of course I know you can die in a Golf as well as a high performance car. But you don't give your teen son the latter because it just makes bad things that much more likely.
posted by konolia at 6:13 PM on January 29

It's really, really hard for me to feel sorry for any of these people.

It seems to have occurred to no one that driving a car on a runway is intrinsically dangerous and irresponsible. I'm really so glad that only this criminal and his criminal friends were killed.

The fact that they were rich kids rich adds to my disgust. The rich should take greater responsibility than the poor because they have such greater privileges.

They could have killed an innocent. Instead, they killed themselves and they won't reproduce. I hope this is a lesson for their community that selfishness, short-sightedness and irresponsibility can be punished with death.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 6:13 PM on January 29

phliar: Driving should require a hell of a lot more commitment than it takes. It should not be considered a right.

I'm not really disagreeing, but it's important to consider this - for a lot of the country, you have two options: Driver and Homeless. Yes, you can make do without a car in urban areas, but you are absolutely hosed in a rural one, and in a suburban area, you will be pretty poorly off. It would be almost impossible to escape poverty without a vehicle in such areas, since you'd be limited to working in the range of where you can walk from your house.
posted by Mitrovarr at 6:16 PM on January 29

Not to be a jerk, or anything, but I will go ahead and be one anyhow. It looks like his last post happened after he was dead, and the first post was on the 25th of January. How do you know this is him on the m5 board? Is the clock just off? Was he posting from the party he was at?
posted by katinka-katinka at 6:17 PM on January 29

Focusing on the car is foolish. I've driven 100s of thousands of kilometres in everything from a 36hp beetle thru a 1 ton dually up to a 650+hp Camaro. You can do stupidly dangerous stuff in anything. At least enough to die.

The news article link died quite a while ago but my favourite WTF! involving car accidents can be summed up like this:
3 kids killed in car crash. Going 110MPH. At night. In a unlit, rainslick, 45mph construction zone. Without seat belts. With a donut spare on the car. They flew off the road into a poll. Can you guess what they were driving? Toyota Camry.

nomisxid writes "I didn't keep exact records, but it sure seemed like 9/10 times he drove the porche, he got arrested for driving like an idiot. He never got pulled over in the golf."

This doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the capabilities of the car but probably with the looks of the car. One's driving style usually doesn't change much between cars.

For example: For a while in my early twenties I was driving two cars. The first was a 95hp Fiero and the other was 375hp 400+ ft/lbs 66 Chrysler 2DRHT. Despite splitting the kilometres fairly evenly I never once got pulled over in the car that looked like a blue hair owned it. Not once. A conversation with a cop (always a warning, I never received a violation ticket) was often a weekly occurence. Pure harassment just because the car looked fast.

konolia writes "Perusing the article, they were out at three am.

"Obviously parents did not know where they were. "

What's obvious about this? At 18 I lived on my own and saw my parents maybe 2-3 times a week. But it wasn't unusual for me to meet my father for a coffee after midnight. Not everyone leads an early to bed, early to rise 9-5 work day existence.
posted by Mitheral at 6:19 PM on January 29

There is a weird thing going on with cars these days. Have you looked at the specs of almost any "bread and butter" car?

Example:

Honda Accord, 3 engines, horsepower: 177 @ 6500 - 190 @ 7000 - 268 @ 6000

My daily car is a 4-door sedan with 120 horsepower, and it's perfectly adequate, even fun to drive. My vintage 60's Jaguar sports car has 40 horsepower less than the V6 accord and was the fastest production car in the world when it was introduced.

And it's not just Hondas or any other make. Everything is way more powerful than it needs to be. I think of my wife in her Subaru. I would guess that she doesn't press the accelerator more than 1/4 way down, ever. She would be perfectly happy, in fact, ecstatic, with the same car that had half the horsepower but 1/3 again the gas mileage.

It's just odd that at a time when gas is hugely expensive and we're all supposed to be "green" that cars are as powerful as they ever have been. I'm not even sure you could bring to market a 90-hp car like the Corolla like I had in high school, which I had a blast in.
posted by maxwelton at 6:19 PM on January 29

It seems to have occurred to no one that driving a car on a runway is intrinsically dangerous and irresponsible.

Care to give just one reason for that? It is one of the most responsible places you possibly could drive at that speed. It wasn't the place that was dangerous, it was the experience/car ability/judgment balance.
posted by Brockles at 6:20 PM on January 29

I think everyone in this thread should go out and test drive an M5, if possible. There will be a pretty simple gate: some people are going to think that it's going to be like sex and cocaine and heaven all rolled into one. The rest of the people are going to think the exact same thing, except they will know enough to treat the M5 with the respect it deserves.

The very problem with with cars like the M5 (RS6, Bentley, etc) is that they are so well-engineered, designed and executed that they just don't feel dangerous... If you're in an Ariel Atom, an Elise, a GT3, and that sort, the systems are intentionally designed to give a completely different experience - one that intentionally emphasizes the speed and connection to the car part of the experience. These cars are less easy to underestimate, because they scream at you in varying degrees, "I'm a race car!"

So, at the end of the day, you have a deceptive supercar, the euphoria that comes with driving said supercar, and an 18 year old.

I just wonder how that got through the parent filter. Perhaps parents were suckered in by the M5 as well? I can easily see that. I see people every day driving cars they clearly aren't matched well with. Do you really need to drive your 500 HP to work every day, Johnny Q. Public with no damn training?

But the bar, as has been mentioned in this thread, keeps going up horsepower wise... You can buy an Evo or an STI right now that will get you easily up in the 300 hp range, and you can do it cheaply. Personally, I think the horsepower arms race has gotten out of hand.
posted by Cathedral at 6:31 PM on January 29

Care to give just one reason for that?

Planes land on them. Planes that are probably not expecting cars.
posted by aramaic at 6:40 PM on January 29 [3 favorites]

The Light Fantastic writes "It's a shame for the parents, but I'm not gonna get all teary for incredibly privileged youth."

Neither will I , but I will cry one for them as ordinary idiots.


OH HELL NO I DIDN'T SAY THAT!!!! I thought it was an asinine thing to say, actually. If you read closely, you might notice that I quoted another poster (to lazy to bother looking it up) and responded with a (possibly not sufficiently sarcastic) "nice." Please put me down on the "tragedy" side of the aisle. Thanks.
posted by The Light Fantastic at 6:40 PM on January 29

You people are missing the obvious. John Travolta and the Scientologist have once again sent a message.

Dont fuck with our people!!!!

Those kids probably did something to John's lawn. Revenge was swift.
posted by phoffmann at 6:42 PM on January 29

that they are so well-engineered, designed and executed that they just don't feel dangerous

That's why I loves me some Detroit muscle. You know you're risking death every time you step on the gas, and even more when you try to make a turn at any speed. The adrenaline rush of going 70 in a Charger that should not even have a steering column since it isn't designed to go in anything but a straight line beats he rush of going 100 in a Beemer. Any day.
posted by fourcheesemac at 6:42 PM on January 29

How the hell can you get an 80 foot embankment in a location where the terrain does not vary more than 30 feet? (that's exact coordinates of this airfield; those are five-foot contours)

I hate exxageration, especially when used by the mass media to pump up a story.
posted by crapmatic at 6:45 PM on January 29

aramaic writes "Planes land on them. Planes that are probably not expecting cars."

The airport might be closed during the night.
posted by Mitheral at 6:47 PM on January 29

aramaic: I sometimes wonder if I was the only cautious & overly-sensible teenager on the face of the Earth.

I wish I had been more cautious than I was, but I don't think I'm much of a match for a lot of folks in this thread. Airborne vehicles? 140mph? Any speed over 100mph seems insane to me. I've never topped 135km/h and even that was too fast. The scariest driving moment of my teenage years was a 180 on slippery snow at about 55km/h. If I'd had my head on straight I wouldn't have been out on the road in those conditions.

Now 300km/h trains, that is something I can get behind. Maybe if we could get some high speed train service going in North America and then make a special seat for the speed obsessed in the front where you get to watch the scenery fly at you, we'd be able to give them what they crave.
posted by ssg at 6:50 PM on January 29

Not to start any gender-based flamewars, but as I get older, I'm seeing more truth than comedy in Tim Allen's "more power!" schtick. Everyone, male and female, takes risks in cars when they're young, it seems. But when it comes to taking silly chances in cars and the players are over 30, they're almost always male. My 50-something former boss is a muscle car aficianado, and when he bought some type of tricked-out Mustang, he couldn't resist gunning it up to over 100 mph on a stretch of I-75 in the metro Detroit area. (Yes, he got a ticket, and thank goodness it was before he hit anyone.) The night before the I-696 officially opened for traffic my 30-year-old brother got up in the freakin' middle of the night to race his Laser on that stretch of "brand new, smooth pavement." And when he got there, there were a couple of dozen other drivers already there with the same idea. My husband has been lovingly restoring a Datsun 280-Z (his dream car), and he's now always on the lookout for a nice long stretch of rural road where he can "really take her out and open her up." More power, grunt, grunt....
posted by Oriole Adams at 6:52 PM on January 29

The airport might be closed during the night.

It's an unattended private strip. No airport, no control.
posted by aramaic at 6:54 PM on January 29