E60 M5 launched into a tree; 5 dead

[Jon K]

Dude you missed the most horrifying part about that post...


That kid... he posted on M5board asking about his transmission and driving at like 150 mph, then he stopped posting that night. Then that story came to the news....


FREIGHTENING

[RockJock]

I hope this isn’t a repost!

http://www.ocala.com/article/20080127/NEWS/801270355/1001/NEWS01
http://www.local6.com/news/15144329/detail.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,325816,00.html
http://www.ocala.com/article/20080126/BREAKING_NEWS/30775910/1053/BREAKING_NEWS

[RockJock]

yup, it's a repost..please nuke, my bad..

[Jehu]

Consider your life a rich one that your time is so full you missed this story when it was all over all the BMW boards.

[Ferret]

Dude you missed the most horrifying part about that post...


That kid... he posted on M5board asking about his transmission and driving at like 150 mph, then he stopped posting that night. Then that story came to the news....


FREIGHTENING

Yeah, I heard this happened through an alternative non-car related forum - this whole thing about him posting then disappearing dead was literally all over the internets for a while!

[Dr. evil]

http://www.bimmer.info/forum/showthread.php?p=290628&mode=linear#post290628

beat you to it

[attack eagle]

freight-ening?
like assembling shipping boxes or loading a container ship??

[Blitzkrieg Bob]

I think there's a lot of low mileage ///M5 V10 parts on ebay, if anyone's interested

[attack eagle]

Had this happen on a dsm forum... except for the tree, think he hit a wall and only had 1 friend, not 4 in the car... dumb kid asking how to defeat the 138 mph limiter, 2 hours later he was dead.

[Jon K]

I'm watching a few at the moment. Don't want to start bidding too early as I don't want to drive up the price.

Dumb rich kid with an even dumber rich parent and a very fast car. Mix in a little bravado and a complete lack of skill and this is what you get.

Oh well, no loss to the gene pool. It's the families of the friends who he also killed I feel sorry for.

Suppose it makes a change from Americal college kids shooting each other though. Variety is the spice of life after all.

It would have just as soon happened in a place not in America.... don't be an ass.

[Omega]

I think there's a lot of low mileage ///M5 V10 parts on ebay, if anyone's interested

I'm watching a few at the moment. Don't want to start bidding too early as I don't want to drive up the price.

Dumb rich kid with an even dumber rich parent and a very fast car. Mix in a little bravado and a complete lack of skill and this is what you get.

Oh well, no loss to the gene pool. It's the families of the friends who he also killed I feel sorry for.

Suppose it makes a change from Americal college kids shooting each other though. Variety is the spice of life after all.

[Dave M]

I recall seeing the accident report, but not the link to the M5 community. I usually don't get 'sucked in' to exploring other forum posts, but this reallly is a scary/eye opening cas that reminded me of the types of discussion/banter we occasionally experience here.

Unfortunately, in this case, the predictions of some board members actually came to sad fruition.

Dave M

[Omega]

It would have just as soon happened in a place not in America.... don't be an ass.

Jon, sorry for not being clear enough. The emphasis was on the fact that it makes a change for a US college kid to kill his friends in a car wreck, rather than the more usual shooting spree.

Hope that clears up the misunderstanding. :p

[repenttokyo]

the fuss is that his parents didn't love him enough to not let him drive such a powerful car at such a young age.

[whiskychaser]

Jon, sorry for not being clear enough. The emphasis was on the fact that it makes a change for a US college kid to kill his friends in a car wreck, rather than the more usual shooting spree.

Hope that clears up the misunderstanding. :p
Perhaps because I'm sitting on the same island as you I knew what you meant. Maybe wrong but isnt it 4 shootings in a week or something? OK the kid was young and probably foolish. But who wasnt? So is the fuss and condemnation because he was only 18 and had an M5? I hope not

[Barney Paull-Edwards]

Sensible words Fin. Lets be honest, we did`nt have fast enough cars available to do as much harm to ourselves, as opposed to now,or maybe we in UK learnt to drive to the limit of junkers! I had to spend more time teaching my daughter how to rive properly than to drive to pass the test, i mean how can you give someone a licence without any night or Auotroute experience?

[whiskychaser]

his parents didn't love him enough to not let him drive such a powerful car at such a young age.
Wise words indeed

[fin]

If you have young sons, find a copy of the book 'Raising Cain' which addresses the tendencies/needs of young men to push limits along with the other bumps in the road of adolesence.

The authors did a two hour show for PBS. In it they follow several high school seniors. One of the scenes was of the boys telling there parents that they were going snow sledding.

In reality the sled was being pulled by a Jeep Cherokee through the snow in a small park (maybe a cemetery). Snow has the a impact absorbing quality that makes it possible to do such stunts without as serious injuries as one would receive on dirt riding a small cart/wagon. They did take steps to mitigate injuries. Snow, lightly traveled roadway, holding a rope they could let go of and roll off if they felt the speed was too fast.

The boys in this incident did take some steps to lessen their risk. Runway, not a highway, at night when the airport would be closed/light traffic. BUT, they didn't account for the runway only being a mile and a half long, and probably didn't pay attention to the markers that tell pilots runway remaining. And most importantly, they may have been drunk.

I think that the only reason I survived my youth was the strickly followed rule among my friends of having a designated driver. Kept us from getting too manic and out of hand. Judgment/Analysis is the first victim of alcohol. (it's why you can get by as a drunk musician, but not as a drunk engineer)

I have a cartoon clipped from the funny section of the paper where one boy is standing in the distance with an arrow tied onto his head. In the foreground is a boy with a bow and an apple, who says to another boy "This way, we're only being kinda stupid". Sums it up nicely.

I saw my Guardian Angel once. She had her eyes closed.

Fin

[attack eagle]

Perhaps because I'm sitting on the same island as you I knew what you meant. Maybe wrong but isnt it 4 shootings in a week or something?

5-7 IIRC.
and people still believe that disarming the law abiding citizens (included Concealed carry licensees) is the way to "protect" people... :(

[whiskychaser]

Sensible words Fin. Lets be honest, we did`nt have fast enough cars available to do as much harm to ourselves, as opposed to now,or maybe we in UK learnt to drive to the limit of junkers! I had to spend more time teaching my daughter how to rive properly than to drive to pass the test, i mean how can you give someone a licence without any night or Auotroute experience?
I live near a quarry. When I was a kid some 'older boys' had an MG - a TF I think. The one that looks like a Morgan. They would give us rides along the dirt road above the quarry. The brakes failed and luckily we went into a ditch before we went over the edge. So I dont think how fast it goes matters much. Looking back, the kid in me still thinks it was fun. But the parent in me is horrified. Strange

[pundit]

Teenage boys are full of testosterone and think they're invincible.
Has never changed... never will.
Two thousand years ago it would have been driving a chariot... now it's a car.
Same risk taking... different vehicle.
No difference... stupidity wins every time.

[GJPinAU]

In our great state of NSW the government decided to pass laws on Red "P" platers. Now they aren't allowed to drive Hi-powered cars (turbo, V8 etc) and they have a curfew on how many passengers they can have in the car with them after 11pm (1).

Of course there are exceptions to all these laws as it might be the family car they have to drive or they need to drive it for work.
This all came about when we had a spate of young drivers killing themselves and their passengers not too long ago.

[dacoyote]

Like I said in the other forum... what a waste....

To many young kids making uninformed choices... or being with someone that makes a such a choice...

[fin]

Barney,

In the US, we didn't have a lack of high performance cars available in during my youth. A Pontiac GTO in the mid-60's had better performance numbers than Ferraris. Worse, the vehicle with the best performance numbers in the US in 1978 was a Dodge "Little Red" pickup due to looser emission regs for trucks. A little published fact is that more draft age men died in cars in the sixties than died in Viet Nam.

In high school, I drove a 1968 Chrysler New Yorker with a 440 cubic inch Police Interceptor motor (kitted out for smaller police cars to out-perform the majority of cars on road) . It didn't have neck snapping acceleration due to weighing over two tons, but it would go 120mph day and night without breaking a sweat.

American talk alot about 'A' type personalities. Those that are driven and ambitious. Less talked about are the 'T' types, those that are thrill seekers. We don't steer them in the right direction when they are youths. Tons of them in the military and commercial aviation communities as adults.

I do envy Brits that can say "I've done it in a Mini". Even moreso if it was with what we Midwesterners call 'sweetcorn babies' (not fat, not slender either. think Anne Nicole Smith in her prime).

For these dead boys, there apparently wasn't a rebellious Uncle telling them that if they drank less, they could use that M5 to Pull Chicks at the party they had left. Some 'accidents' are preferable to others.

Cheers,

Fin

[repenttokyo]

Barney,
A little published fact is that more draft age men died in cars in the sixties than died in Viet Nam.



58,217 American deaths in Vietnam, with 2000 MIA.

[RockJock]

Similar incident occurred on the same board a few years ago. A 33 year old guy crashed (DUI) his e39 M5 in Texas and killed his wife of 10 years, his brother and his best buddy. The fellow turned out to be a member of m5board.com. People started speculating whether or not the guy was a member. Then he starts posting on the same thread claiming that he doesn’t remember anything about the evening and that he wasn’t the driver cuz’ he got pulled out of the rear passenger window of the burning wreckage by a good samaritan ….

Some links….

http://www.m5board.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=26435

some of the news links …..

http://www.ksat.com/news/6834553/detail.html
http://www.ksat.com/news/6808543/detail.html
http://www.ksat.com/news/6594984/detail.html

[repenttokyo]

I understand what you are saying fin, I just wanted to post the numbers so people could see how large it really was.

DUI is a criminal offense in Quebec, and you can never receive a pardon.

[fin]

Oldest date for DUI statistics that I easily found was 1982 with numbers north of 26,000. The largest percentage of dead as a group was 18-25. If those are half of the dead that would be over 13,000 deaths in the draft eligible age group. Less than five years to equal the number of our Viet Nam deaths in the 13 years of conflict.

My point is not to debate the Viet Nam conflict, but to point out that we lost a horrendous number of young men in the US to drunk driving in the 1960's when seatbelts were worn by 'sissies'. Laws requiring belts to be installed in cars happened in the mid-1960's and laws requiring belts to be worn occurred twenty years later.

Doing better still means losing tens of thousands every year.

As parents we should be teaching our kids how to properly handle risk and responsibilities. Saying "Don't do it" isn't enough. Taking trips with them driving, giving them enough rope to push things, but not enough to hang themselves. I take my kids to the Father's Day Hot Rod gathering at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds not only to see the cool cars, but also so see the greatest gathering of wheelchairs I have ever seen in one place. "Kids, why are their so many wheelchairs?" They can connect the dots.

My Bride, not an hour ago, told our kids not to snow-sled backwards down the hill in our backyard. I was about to tell them that they should be watching the trees on the sides so that they would be able to judge how much farther they had to go before getting into denser stands. That she and the other mom with her kids felt that they had to watch them was a bit much for me. Too much safety net, not enough independence and self-learning. Avoiding bumps and bruises now will not help then deal with them later in life.

Biggest smile I've seen on my daughter was when I sat her on our IH Cub tractor and started teaching her to drive it in the backyard. She was nine at the time and I thought to myself that I had been driving tractors for more than three years by the time I was her age.

Cheers,

Fin

[The Bigfella]

The road toll in my state is now about one third of what it was when I got my license - despite many more vehicles on the road now. Young kids push the limits.

About 20 of my friends didn't make it to their 21st birthday - and it was all cars or (mainly) bikes. People didn't give a fig about driving drunk or drugged - and that was a major factor - others just pushed the envelope too far too fast. I carried one coffin three weeks after the guy got his learners permit. He hit the back of a stationary car at 110mph on his Mach III Kawasaki. A couple of guys had said "he'll be fast, or dead" a day or two earlier.

I've now got kids in that age group - and I've tried to train (go karts, etc) and point out that there's a time and place to do things. One of my three (two boys) pushes the limits - and whilst he reminds me of myself, I don't like it.... its that experience thing I guess.