Hammond Critical - Top Gear Car Crash!

james.miller · 24 Sep 2006 at 14:33

The_Dark_Side said:
pro drag racers typically have incredible reaction times.

and they still crash, thats the truth.

The_Dark_Side · 24 Sep 2006 at 14:43

james.miller said:
and they still crash, thats the truth.

yes they do.
that isn't what i'm talking about though.
SOME crashes are avoidable.
SOME are not, and
SOME can be catastrophic or simply plain old fashioned bad, determined by the reactions/responses of the driver.

the above applies to all things motoring not just drag racing.
my point is neither you or i know enough knowledge about the cars or the tecniques required to drive them we cannot say which of the above options this accident fits into.

james.miller · 24 Sep 2006 at 14:48

even though i've just given you an account from the person who holds the world 1/4 mile record? you have to be realistic.

The_Dark_Side · 24 Sep 2006 at 14:52

james.miller said:
even though i've just given you an account from the person who holds the world 1/4 mile record? you have to be realistic.

well from a laymans point of view would you say it's fair to assume that your impact would be much harder if you left the engine runing than if you shut it off even a second or 2 before said impact?
if so, and poor RH didn't do so then it's something an experienced jet car driver would instinctively know.
i'm not putting blame at his door as it is perfectly possible that exactly the same result would've happened whoever was driving, but i'm not educated on the subject enough to say that.

SKILL · 24 Sep 2006 at 15:00

TDS, Going back to your comparison to a car blowout,

Personally i've never had one, and only seen one happen (M4 car overtaking me, bang and he veers across all three lanes to end up pointing the wrong way on the hard shoulder) but from what I imagine would happen I'd say speed is a decent factor in the ability to control one. If the blowout happens at 30mph i'd imagine it would be fairly 'easy' to control but at 70-80 it's going to be a lot harder.

Now imagine the same thing at over 4x the speed, it's definately not going to be easy to control if it's even possible for a human to control it.

my thoughts are that IF a blowout was the cause of the accident then even an 'experienced' jet car driver would've had a big accident, I believe RH managed to release the parachute at least so he did about the only thing possible to reduce speed as far as I know.

I'm sure we'll find out soon the 'findings' of the health and safety bods...

Hopefully RH gets better soon and they can get Top Gear back on our screens

The_Dark_Side · 24 Sep 2006 at 15:05

SKILL said:
TDS, Going back to your comparison to a car blowout,

Personally i've never had one, and only seen one happen (M4 car overtaking me, bang and he veers across all three lanes to end up pointing the wrong way on the hard shoulder) but from what I imagine would happen I'd say speed is a decent factor in the ability to control one. If the blowout happens at 30mph i'd imagine it would be fairly 'easy' to control but at 70-80 it's going to be a lot harder.

not strictly true.
if you have a front tyre let go, and they tend to go spectacularly, there is a right and wrong way to handle the situation.
your instincts tell you that you need to stop asap, that much we all agree on.
the experienced driver will amongst other things use his gears to slow down whereas the inexperienced driver will hit the footbrake and as a consequence force his/her car into performing a second rate impression of torvill and dean.

same mechanical failure, the car is disabled in both cases and as such may even hit somethign in both cases...but the end result is much more acceptable for the experienced driver than the damage the novice will cause.

james.miller · 24 Sep 2006 at 15:12

you cant apply that to a jet car unfortunately - no gears or worthwhile footbreak ya'see.

The_Dark_Side · 24 Sep 2006 at 15:16

james.miller said:
you cant apply that to a jet car unfortunately - no gears or worthwhile footbreak ya'see.

/sigh

it's demonstrating a PRINCIPLE.
that while you cannot obviously prevent a try from blowing, you're responses from that point on can affect the outcome.
an experienced driver would almost certainly be more prepared and more knowledgable to handle something like this.

wez130 · 24 Sep 2006 at 15:48

surely when you get a blow out at 300+mph, you don't think ,'oh dear, my tyre seems to have blown, i better do something about it'. More like, oh ****, wtf was that, by the time you do that, you're rolling over to near death and it's too late to do anything about it.

It's totally different to any other situation, i.e steering which is pre-meditated and you know what to expect.

In other news, i heard on a radio station that if hammond mends and get's back on the show, it'll be upto hammond if the accident gets aired. How do we feel about that, i'd be curious to see it myself but it's feel strange knowing he was in the thing.

Brum Man · 24 Sep 2006 at 16:27

wez130 said:
How do we feel about that, i'd be curious to see it myself but it's feel strange knowing he was in the thing.

I think it'd be fine, as long as he was ok I don't think it'd be weird at all watching it at all.

It would be no way near as weird as watching the crocodile hunter diaries knowing that Steve Irwin had just been killed, just like I did today on ITV :/

DaveyD · 24 Sep 2006 at 16:39

I agree with The_Dark_Side's points, he's not being specific to these jet cars / dragsters, but is saying anlong the lines of how I would see it, more general and on principal. Sure, there are some things we can prevent from getting worse, some we can not, each situation is very different, and the faster speeds we are going, though it'd probably be worse under stupidly heavy acceleration, we've got a lot less time to try and fix any problems, but a catastophic failure in the care somewhere is going to be difficult to do anything about.

I'd like to see the video of the crash, as long as Hammond comes out okay anyway, as a crash on film like that generally isn't going to be gruesome or messy, just lots of spinning parts and "oooh" and "arrgghs" of where it will have looked the most painful.

Fr0dders · 24 Sep 2006 at 17:51

i think the definning factor in all of this was what caused the crash. This is something, that as non experts we cant comment on

we do not need, however, to be experts to say that if the tyre did blow, and send the car out of control, there would be nothing he could do. Men & motors has loads of dragsters doing this on their "worlds worst car crashes" programes. You can guarantee that 50 % of the program will be dragster racing.

when your doing 0-300 in 3 seconds, if the tyre goes and it sends you into the air, there aint nothing you can do about it. I've seen enough of the accidents like this to say that you just cant avoid it

if however, it turns out the blowout was caused by him, or that it was some other factor of his fault that caused it to leave the leave the tack, then clearly questions need to be asked

but at the moment, untill we know the exact reason for the car loosing control, we cant comment. The blown tyre story is just a theory that the media had come up with after speaking to some witness'

kefkef · 24 Sep 2006 at 19:08

DaveyD said:
I'd like to see the video of the crash, as long as Hammond comes out okay anyway, as a crash on film like that generally isn't going to be gruesome or messy, just lots of spinning parts and "oooh" and "arrgghs" of where it will have looked the most painful.

You can bet your bottom dollar that if he comes out of it ok they'll show the crash with clarksoon ripping the **** out of the hamster in the process.

My g/f dad works at LGI as a porter and has been in to see him a few times (believe me, he gets where **** wouldn't!) since he was brought in, says he know's its a brain injury but every time they have a chat he seems fine and coherent.

The_Dark_Side · 24 Sep 2006 at 19:28

wez130 said:
surely when you get a blow out at 300+mph, you don't think ,'oh dear, my tyre seems to have blown, i better do something about it'. More like, oh ****, wtf was that, by the time you do that, you're rolling over to near death and it's too late to do anything about it.

no you wouldn't...neither would i.
but then we're not professional drivers and neither was Hammond.
professionals in any discipline have ended up there partly because they have a measure of inherant ability that lends itself to whatever they're involved in.

The_Dark_Side · 24 Sep 2006 at 19:38

MrLOL said:
we do not need, however, to be experts to say that if the tyre did blow, and send the car out of control, there would be nothing he could do.

on the contrary, i'd say that unless you're experienced in, at the very least, cars of that type then you have no way of knowing whether anything can be done.
if not then you may as well say that as soon as something goes wrong just leave go of the controls and close your eyes.

MrLOL said:
when your doing 0-300 in 3 seconds, if the tyre goes and it sends you into the air, there aint nothing you can do about it. I've seen enough of the accidents like this to say that you just cant avoid it

when you're in the air you tend not to leave long rubber marks on the track you just left.

benneh · 24 Sep 2006 at 19:52

The_Dark_Side said:
on the contrary, i'd say that unless you're experienced in at the very least cars of that type then you have no way of knowing whether anything can be done.
if not then you may as well say that as soon as something goes wrong just leave go of the controls and close your eyes.

when you're in the air you tend not to leave long rubber marks on the track you just left.

Jesus chap what are you on about?. You're on fire today!.

Pro or not you cannot greatly effect the direction of a 300 mph crazy ass arrow jet car that just had a blowout!. Really, I mean you would need some sort of matrix esque environment manipulation and bullet time. It really doesnt matter how quickly you react when it all goes wrong at 300mph (I would also imagine that the difference between hammond and a pro wouldnt be too great, he is afterall not an old man, and has experience in race car driving).

silversurfer · 24 Sep 2006 at 19:58

No one could control that. If a rear tyre blows at 50mph only I would doubt a racing driver could control that to any extent, nevermind this instance.

I do think the stig or someone else should have been driving that day but the result would have been the same most likely

The_Dark_Side · 24 Sep 2006 at 19:59

benneh said:
Pro or not you cannot greatly effect the direction of a 300 mph crazy ass arrow jet car that just had a blowout!.

possibly not but the smallest of differences can result in a massive difference of consequences.look at the pedestrian versus car figures for an example.
hit a pedestrian at 30mph and the chances of survival are much much better than if you repeat the excercise at 40mph.

benneh said:
Really, I mean you would need some sort of matrix esque environment manipulation and bullet time. It really doesnt matter how quickly you react when it all goes wrong at 300mph

i'm not suggesting that the accident was avoidable.what i am suggesting is that if Hammond was much more experienced in vehicles of this type then it's possible, being more familiar with the car, he could've gone at least some way to lessening the accident.

benneh said:
(I would also imagine that the difference between hammond and a pro wouldnt be too great, he is afterall not an old man, and has experience in race car driving).

that makes zero difference whatsoever as that type of racing is so far removed from anything else.
when Coulthard is on a day off he doesn't call a rally team to volunteer should someone ring in sick. why? because rallying has nothing in common with F1.
by your reckoning you should be able to put an airline pilot into an F-15 and,with a few days training, expect him to perform almost as well as a fighter pilot.
chalk and cheese my friend.

The_Dark_Side · 24 Sep 2006 at 20:01

silversurfer said:
No one could control that.

unless you have experience of these vehicles then your opinion is as valid as mine.
no more, no less.
because neither of us have driven cars like that we are both armchair experts on this matter.

benneh · 24 Sep 2006 at 20:14

possibly not but the smallest of differences can result in a massive difference of consequences.look at the pedestrian versus car figures for an example.
hit a pedestrian at 30mph and the chances of survival are much much better than if you repeat the excercise at 40mph.

This is true. But I'm coming from the point of view that Hammond was insanely lucky to have come out of this alive. The odds of which are so slim that had there been the slightest variation he'd have broken his neck/bashed his skull in. His particular crash (the exact movement) of course could never be reproduced by doing the same thing over (due to the nature of chance) and therefore everything else is speculation. All i'm suggesting is that the supposed 'pro' drag car driver may well have done something different, and that something different would have probably killed him. Being as how insanely lucky hammond was.

i'm not suggesting that the accident was avoidable.what i am suggesting is that if Hammond was much more experienced in vehicles of this type then it's possible, being more familiar with the car, he could've gone at least some way to lessening the accident.

Possibly, but highly doubtfull. I'm just going on the fact that it was a blowout here, and there's nothing you can do about that. You can't anticipate it because by the time you hear something (the sidewall buckling/banging - which you wouldnt hear anyway due to helmet/headgear) and the car makes a sudden sideways jerk, at 300 MPH your direction has just changed, but the force and momentum is still there, willing the car forward.

that makes zero difference whatsoever as that type of racing is so far removed from anything else.
when Coulthard is on a day off he doesn't call a rally team to volunteer should someone ring in sick. why? because rallying has nothing in common with F1.
by your reckoning you should be able to put an airline pilot into an F-15 and,with a few days training, expect him to perform almost as well as a fighter pilot.
chalk and cheese my friend.

I was merely illustrating that he has at least a proven reaction time, and experience in fine adjustment whilst driving. (not that that makes any difference whatsoever at 300mph!).