Good day all. Many many years ago, a movie was produced called The Gumball Rally. This movie was based on a very illegal race from New York to California called the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash or the Cannonball Run.
Several other movies, each worse then the last were made using the titled The Cannonball Run. However, these movies were all based on a real life race that has occurred, off and on, for decades. Now, thanks to the China Virus, a team of drivers decided to see if they could break the record for the fastest cross country run in a car. Here are the details from Fox News:
A team of scofflaws has apparently taken advantage of the dramatic reduction in traffic across America due to the coronavirus pandemic to set a new coast-to-coast driving record.
According to Ed Bolian, who set a record in 2013 when highway congestion was normal, the Audi A8 completed the “Cannonball Run” from New York to L.A. in 26 hours and 38 minutes, beating the 27 hours 25 minutes mark set last November by Arne Toman and Doug Tabutt.
I think it’s safe to say that many speed laws were broken during the creation of this new record. Normally, the drivers in these runs have to be careful regarding other traffic, which will slow them down. While they may not be to concerned about killing themselves, they are very concerned about hurting bystanders and damaging property that isn’t their own. Doing that guarantees a lengthy vacation in the House of Many Doors. However, thanks to the Wuhan Flu, people aren’t driving cross country very much and the roads are wide open.
Traffic analytics company Inrix has reported that congestion is down nearly 50 percent on average in the U.S. due to stay-at-home policies.
And the police who would normally be out patrolling the highways are to busy harassing people who are walking around or buying items some dictatorially minded Liberal has decided should be banned.
Bolian did not reveal the identity of the drivers, but said in a YouTube video that he monitored a live track of the April 4-6 trip online and has seen timing data confirming the time.
Of course he’s not going to name the drivers. The police in many states would like nothing better then to put them in jail. Of course, it would be interesting to see how the usual charges of “Driving to endanger” would work when the only people who were endangered were the drivers themselves, and they knew what they were doing.
The news comes as police across the country report seeing an increase in speeding due to empty roads. On Tuesday morning, a driver was caught on camera wrecking his $750,000 supercar while speeding on a New York City street, then running red lights as he attempted to flee the scene before being arrested and charged with driving under the influence of drugs.
Owning a supercar does not make one a super driver…dumbass!
The people involved in the coast-to-coast stunt have not publicly come forward, but a photo of the car that was briefly posted to Facebook by another acquaintance shows that the Audi was fitted with two marine fuel tanks in its trunk to extend its range between fill-ups and tape to obscure its signature taillight design.
These people are many things, but stupid isn’t one of them. They know that police will use every means at their disposal, not all of them legal, to identify this group. Now, as to the extra fuel tanks, we won’t go into the danger of hauling around that much extra gas in the trunk. What does interest me is the extra weight. That much gas adds hundreds of pounds that the engine has to handle, not to mention how the balance of the car is affected. I guess it’s a trade-off.
Bolian was one of several previous record holders and regular competitors in illicit cross-country races — like the C2C Express and 2904 — to suggest the high-speed run was more reckless, inappropriate or simply less worthy than theirs.
“Do I think this is the best use of time while the country is staying in during a pandemic?” Bolian said in an interview with Road & Track “Probably not, but for me to say it’s awful is like a cocaine dealer saying a heroin dealer is awful.”
“None of these so-called records have any value,” an Instagram story on the “official” Cannonball account said. “We won’t publish them because doing runs in these #covid19 days devalues the difficulty of the exercise. It could end up badly.”
That sounds an awful lot like sour grapes to me.
Alex Roy, whose 2006 record was beaten by Bolian and now works as a special operations director for Ford’s Argo AI autonomous car subsidiary, tweeted that “Patriotism = staying off our roads until this is over.”
“If you hit a truck moving medical supplies and people die because of it, that’s on you,” Roy told Road & Track. “People are counting on those trucks moving around right now. It’s not funny.”
While I have no idea how this was handled, in runs like this in the past, there have been spotters along the way to warn of potential hazards. There’s also the fact that once you get out of the cities and into central United States, the roads can be described as long and straight with good visibility. The only issues there would be night driving and bad weather.
The exact route taken by the Audi from New York City’s Red Ball Garage to the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach has not been revealed, and it is not known if any law enforcement agencies are aware of or investigating the incident. The average speed over the shortest route possible between the two points would be approximately 103 mph.
If the police in the various states weren’t aware of this, they certainly are now. Whether they will find these people is another matter, along with being able to prove anything. As to why people do this? Primarily, bragging rights. It costs a ton of money to set something like this up, not to mention what happens if you get caught. Still, as long as no one is injured, or put at risk outside of the participants, it’s fine with me.
Thatisall
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