Cool Car
Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2015 7:15 amPosted Today, 12:54 AM
Drum Roll Please ....and now, The Winner of this year's Darwin Award (awarded, as always, posthumously):
An Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal embedded in the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve.
The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene. Policy investigators finally pieced together the mystery.
An amateur rocket scientist had somehow gotten hold of a J A T O (Jet Assisted Take Off) unit, which is actually a solid fuel rocket used to give heavy military transport planes an extra 'push' for taking off from short airfields.
He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long, straight stretch of road. He then attached the J A T O unit to the car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the J A T O!
The facts, as best as could be determined, are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit the J A T O ignition at a distance of approximately 3.0 miles from the crash site. This was established by the scorched and melted asphalt at that location.
The J A T O, if operating properly, would have reached maximum thrust within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of 350 mph and continuing at full power for an additional 20 -25 seconds. The driver, and soon to be pilot, would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog fighting F -14 pilots under full afterburners, causing him to become irrelevant for the remainder of the journey.
The Chevy automobile remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied and completely melted the brakes, blowing the tires and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at a height of 125 feet, leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock.
Most of the driver's remains were not recoverable. However, small fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted from the crater, and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel.
Epilogue: It has been calculated that this moron attained a ground speed of approximately 420 mph, though much of his voyage was not actually on the ground.
You couldn't make this stuff up, could you?
Drum Roll Please ....and now, The Winner of this year's Darwin Award (awarded, as always, posthumously):
An Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal embedded in the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve.
The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene. Policy investigators finally pieced together the mystery.
An amateur rocket scientist had somehow gotten hold of a J A T O (Jet Assisted Take Off) unit, which is actually a solid fuel rocket used to give heavy military transport planes an extra 'push' for taking off from short airfields.
He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long, straight stretch of road. He then attached the J A T O unit to the car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the J A T O!
The facts, as best as could be determined, are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit the J A T O ignition at a distance of approximately 3.0 miles from the crash site. This was established by the scorched and melted asphalt at that location.
The J A T O, if operating properly, would have reached maximum thrust within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of 350 mph and continuing at full power for an additional 20 -25 seconds. The driver, and soon to be pilot, would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog fighting F -14 pilots under full afterburners, causing him to become irrelevant for the remainder of the journey.
The Chevy automobile remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied and completely melted the brakes, blowing the tires and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at a height of 125 feet, leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock.
Most of the driver's remains were not recoverable. However, small fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted from the crater, and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel.
Epilogue: It has been calculated that this moron attained a ground speed of approximately 420 mph, though much of his voyage was not actually on the ground.
You couldn't make this stuff up, could you?
