Experimental Car-Plane Crashes - Five Brilliant Americans DarwinedOut

"Sylvia Else" wrote in message u...
Eric Chomko wrote:
On Jan 27, 1:11 am, kT wrote:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/26/airstrip.car.crash/

American technological leadership suffers yet another great loss.

Candidates for the Darwin Award.

Not really enough ingenuity involved to qualify. Looks like they went
for a wild ride down the runway at night, and failed to realise that at
that speed they couldn't stop within anything like the distance they
could see with the headlights.


He should've read the manual first and known how to use the
active cruise control radar, the head up display and infrared camera.
Just set the active cruise control to 155, then place both feet
....on the floor..and let the computers do the rest.

The long range far infrared camera extends the range of the adaptive headlights
from about 150 to 300 meters with the extra 150 meters displayed
on a 7 inch screen in the dash. At about 250-300 meters the radar
in the active cruise control would've spotted the embankment, began
displaying the embankment on the head up display, encased the object
in yellow once it's been locked on, then in red when it becomes
a collision threat. Once it has, a large red triangular collision warning
is flashed on the head up display, while calculating and automatically
applying the amount of braking, up to full lock, needed to slow to under
40 mph before returning control of the brakes and throttle
back to the driver.

In short, he should have known how to use the 'auto pilot'. He probably
would've stopped in time. All M-5s are speed limited to 155 mph so to
not exceed their capabilities. 250 to 300 meters should be enough
distance to stop from 155, as 60 to 0 is about 110 feet.

The kids supposedly snuck in, BMW thought about that too as the
night vision is kept disabled unless the headlights are on.









To qualify for a Darwin Award, the candidate needs to engineer their own
death, not merely achieve it through stupidity.

Sylvia.