
'Cannonball' speed record broken – New York to LA in less than 29 hours - codezero
http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/31/us/new-york-los-angeles-cannonball-speed-record/index.html
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DanBC
> He concedes his endeavor was a dangerous one, especially when you consider
> Bolian slept only 40 minutes of the trip, and co-driver Black slept an hour.
> But Bolian went out of his way to make it as safe as possible, choosing a
> weekend day with clear weather and a full moon -- and routes, when possible,
> with little traffic or construction.

It's interesting how people justify things to themselves. "Okay, sure, I'm an
asshole, but at least I made efforts not to be terrible". Travelling at a
weekend might just mean a much higher number of inexperienced drivers making
rare journeys, thus making weekend racing more not less dangerous.

And isn't the point of having a co-driver to let one of them sleep while the
other drives? Driving while tired is _very_ dangerous.

I agree with the rest of the thread - these people should be prosecuted. Take
this stuff to a race track where other people have made a choice to be there.

~~~
fastball
I don't know about you, but with enough caffeine (which really isn't that
much) I can easily stay up for 30 hours with little to no side effects.

~~~
DanBC
> I can easily stay up for 30 hours with little to no side effects.

You _think_ you can stay up for 30 hours with little to no side effects. Maybe
you can when you're not driving, but being behind the wheel adds a bunch of
stuff that causes tiredness. It's boring, there's a monotonous sound from road
surface, the road is hypnotic.

Try it - get a game console and some driving game (like Forza or Gran Turismo)
and do the very long races for 30 hours.

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Xylakant
I'm sorry to spoil the fun here, but if you want to drive a race, rent a race
track and don't do it on public streets where you endanger innocents.

~~~
rurounijones
I agree with you but in this case it wasn't about racing. It was about
breaking a specific record.

[EDIT] To all the people who are downvoting; I am pointing out that I agree
that it was a stupid thing to do but just saying "go on a race track" is
pointless because he wanted to do something that cannot be done on a race-
track. It is like telling someone to go to a climbing gym instead when they
really want to conquer Everest.

~~~
Xylakant
That's no excuse. If breaking the record involved endangering others, leave
it. Break another record if you have to. Do a higher jump than Baumgartner or
swim across the atlantic, I don't mind - just don't race a car on public roads
and use "I made it as safe as possible" as a pathetic excuse.

~~~
rurounijones
I am not offering it as an excuse and like I said I agree with you.

However your suggestion will not help because he was not after the experience
of a race track, he was after the experience of breaking the record of the
canonball run.

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spuz
This is quite an incredible feat. I thought after reading Alex Roy's 'The
Driver', that this record would stand for a long time. Certainly not be broken
by a full two hours.

What is interesting here is that these guys have decided to go public almost
immediately. Roy and his team were sworn to secrecy for something like 2 years
while the statute of limitations in the states that they committed crimes
expired. I wonder how these guys think they will get away with not seeing the
inside of a police cell.

For those interested in what this kind of thing takes, I recommend this talk
by Alex Roy at Google NY:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQpg0tvap4A](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQpg0tvap4A)

~~~
Ntrails
Do you consider a diamond heist to be an incredible feat because as it turned
out no one was hurt?

The reason they succeeded is they didn't get caught. Everything else is
irrelevant. Next time they should fly to Germany and fuck about on the
autobahn for a couple of days, at least people will be prepared for drivers to
be doing that speed.

Edit: I do think 55mph is a pretty dumb limit though.

~~~
Xylakant
> Next time they should fly to Germany and fuck about on the autobahn for a
> couple of days

Please don't. We have enough idiots over here mistaking the autobahn for a
racetrack. I'll tell you a secret: It's not. People get killed here just as in
the USA, for example the accident when a professional test driver for Mercedes
cannonballed his prototype car into a previous accident. Despite darkness and
bad visibility he was going beyond 190km/h and impacted with 170km/h, killing
the driver of another car - despite the fact that that person was already out
of their car. Two people that were out on the autobahn trying to help other
victims of the crash narrowly escaped death. I remember that quite well since
I passed there like half an hour before.

If you want a race, take your car to the Nürburgring for a weekend. It's still
legendary and still dangerous, but at least people know what they signed up
for. It's actually affordable: 195 EUR for 4 laps with instructor:
[http://www.service-zum-
nuerburgring.de/details.php?id_nr=306...](http://www.service-zum-
nuerburgring.de/details.php?id_nr=3069&knr=24)

Edit: Picture of the accident: [http://www.nq-
online.de/index.php?&kat=56&artikel=5699](http://www.nq-
online.de/index.php?&kat=56&artikel=5699) There's not much left of the car.

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wglb
This is a great story, quite dangerous, but all the comments here scolding
this event, I suggest that you take a drive during the morning commute on the
illinois tollway, say around Lake Cook towards ohare and let us all know how
many are driving at the speed limit, which is 55. If you go 70, you are likely
to get run over. Or if you drive the posted speed limit in a construction
zone, you are likely to get honked at.

Similarly, on the Edens where the expressway begins, at 0600 on a work day, if
you want to drive 70, you better be in the far right hand lane.

So _according to a tracking company whose officials asked not be identified
because they were unaware that Bolian would be driving so illegally when he
hired them._ Seriously? The tracking company thought that they would be
driving just a little illegally, not _so illegally_??

~~~
podperson
Everyone drives a little illegally ;-)

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jschulenklopper
> 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.

If you want to read more on Roy/Maher's record race that beat the previous
record by an hour and three minutes, put this well-writen piece in Wired on
your weekend reading list:

[http://www.wired.com/cars/coolwheels/magazine/15-11/ff_canno...](http://www.wired.com/cars/coolwheels/magazine/15-11/ff_cannonballrun?currentPage=all)

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ck2
They need to subpoena those external gps records and give them a ticket and
suspend their license for every state they went through over 100mph.

Think about how many lives they endangered.

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bmj
Jalopnik has a detailed article, too:

[http://jalopnik.com/meet-the-guy-who-drove-across-the-u-s-
in...](http://jalopnik.com/meet-the-guy-who-drove-across-the-u-s-in-a-
record-28-h-1454092837/@tcraggs22)

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yarith
After reading this thread I feel very few commenters have actually driven
across the USA. It is easy to go 100+ mph for a few hours and see maybe a
dozen cars (esp in Texas and New Mexico or any stretch of I-10 for that
matter). I actually feel it is more dangerous for people on SF's 101 that go
60mph instead of 90mph.

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cromwellian
For some reason, this reminded me _The Last Chase_
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASCmH1HdG6g](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASCmH1HdG6g)

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contextual
For every moron to break the 'Cannonball' record, there will be a hundred
other morons who, in an attempt to break the record, will plow over
pedestrians and animals.

Not a proud moment to be a human.

~~~
monkeyspaw
You speak with much certainty. As the original record was set over 25 years
ago, surely there have been incidents of people trying to break it and
"plowing over pedestrians", no?

I wouldn't encourage people to try this, but your statement "there will be a
hundred other morons... who will plow over pedestrians" is hyperbolic.
Especially since we can look back to the original record.

