11/21/24
May 25, 2011
NASCAR Driver Caught Speeding 128 mph: NASCAR driver Kyle Busch was stopped by police near Troutman, N.C., for driving 128 mph in a 45-mph zone. Busch, who was charged with reckless or careless driving, said he was testing a Lexus LFA sports car loaned to him by the manufacturer. "I thank the Iredell County Sheriff's Department and all law enforcement for the hard work they do every day to protect the public and to enforce the laws in a fair and equitable manner," he said.
posted by rcade to auto racing at 01:11 PM - 25 comments
He ought to be fired. For getting caught from behind like that.
posted by yerfatma at 03:59 PM on May 25, 2011
when he caught back up with the car, it was turning left
figures
posted by graymatters at 04:07 PM on May 25, 2011
That car has another 80 mph in it. Busch showed some restraint.
Just kidding. He's a maniac.
posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 08:02 PM on May 25, 2011
Some great lines above.
Looking at the road he was driving on, hard to believe one could hit 128 MPH.
Reading the link I was thinking there might be a side story with the unnamed woman in the car, but it turns out it was his wife.
posted by dviking at 01:19 AM on May 26, 2011
"There's a lot of traffic, especially concerning kids," she said. "There's mothers going to pick up their kids at school, school buses dropping off. I didn't even care who it was. The 128 was just flabbergasting to me. I was just shocked at that. I can't even perceive going that fast"
A. I will pay Kyle Busch to do it again after reading that.
B. They really need to stop teaching creationism in science class down there: how can you not perceive 128mph? Have you never seen a plane?
posted by yerfatma at 08:42 AM on May 26, 2011
I don't have a problem with her quote. Most people have never come close to driving 128 mph.
It should be a more serious charge to drive 83 miles over the speed limit on public roads, especially ones in residential areas. Only good fortune kept Busch from causing an accident that could easily have been fatal. He has the skill to handle that speed, but the other drivers he could encounter on the road don't. NASCAR should punish him for having so much disregard for others.
posted by rcade at 09:25 AM on May 26, 2011
What rcade said. I also have no problem with the quote. It's not like he was on a thruway or something. And people can blow it off in this situation but if he was to hit and kill someone, all the comments would be different. Regardless if people can "perceive" driving that fast or whatever, it's as unsafe as can be. It doesn't matter if it's big Kyle Busch NASCAR driver or anyone else. Being a NASCAR driver doesn't have a thing to do with it if someone else pulls out in front of him while he's going that speed.
posted by dyams at 10:56 AM on May 26, 2011
Most people have never come close to driving 128 mph.
Really? Not 128 (most cars' tires would start to shred before that), but at least triple digits, surely? The first thing I did when I got my license was see what 100 felt like.
posted by yerfatma at 11:45 AM on May 26, 2011
I was in the passenger seat of a factory-fresh 300ZX in the summer of '81 when my roommate decided to see what his boss's new car could really do. Frak the speedometer that only went to 85. Frak the tachometer getting pinned. Frak the other drivers on what was then a very new 10 Freeway near Pasadena. Frak my incipient heart attack. 128?
Our estimate was that we hit and sustained 135! My screaming--or maybe my threats to vomit into his lap--finally got him to slow down.
posted by billsaysthis at 11:51 AM on May 26, 2011
Also in 1981, I managed to hit a sustained 140 (as high as speedometer went) in a 1969 Buick
deuce~n~a quarter 4door while going over the Tennessee river on I-65 at about
2:30 am.
Not the most aerodynamic of cars it began to float scaring the shit out of 19yr
old me at which time I let of the gas and hoped to hell all 4 tyres once again felt like they were in
contact with the road. Never again have I tried to go that fast.
posted by Folkways at 01:59 PM on May 26, 2011
Did the air start to blow out of the car? Supposed to happen around 135.
posted by yerfatma at 02:49 PM on May 26, 2011
It's reckless behaviour for sure, but unless you've been in a fast car being driven by a racing driver it's hard to understand just what a ridiculously highly attuned species they are. They're not human. I've been on the Bridgestone test track in Rome in the passenger seat of an Enzo next to one of their test drivers pushing 200 mph. I should have been browning my trousers, but I just wasn't. The guy so obviously knew what he was doing and it was so obviously well within his comfort zone. In fact, until that point I'm not sure I really thought of motor racing as a sport. I hadn't appreciated the physical talent involved until we were out beyond the point where I'd have been able to handle it myself. I was allowed one lap and felt like I put it on the edge the whole way, felt like if anything I was going to get told off for pushing it too hard, but apparently I didn't even get over 150.
Admittedly, test tracks don't have normal drivers cutting around the place with the potential to pull out in front of you, so like I said, reckless behaviour. As several bikers have said to me in the past (talking me out of ever buying a motorcycle), it doesn't matter how good you are, it comes down to how good is the worst driver on the road?
I've a mate who works for an aerodynamics company. They're doing the aero package on the Aston Martin Le Mons car, so they let him take an Aston Martin home for the weekend (just a Rapide, not a Le Mons car obviously). We took it out and behaved recklessly. At one point we were doing about 140 on a wide, dark, empty dual-and for no reason at all, my pal said to me "Brake test?" and jumped on the anchors. We stopped very impressively within a few seconds, just in time to see two mutjac deer standing right in the middle of our lane. We'd probably have seen them in time to get down to maybe 100 mph without the completely random brake test, but I reckon that'd still have been more than enough to kill everyone involved. We nervously crept back into town and cruised up and down for the rest of the night winking at girls.
Winking, Weedy. I said WINKING.
posted by JJ at 03:47 PM on May 26, 2011
I hit 137 in a 1986 Chrysler LeBaron GTS (a goddamn K-Car!) with a 2.2 liter turbo on a downhill, multi-lane highway in rural Kentucky in about '88. Windows down, sun roof open, the Cult blasting out Sonic Temple*. One of the stupider things done in a lifetime full of stupid acts.
*Neither winking nor wanking, but my eyelids were flapping like window shades
posted by tahoemoj at 04:13 PM on May 26, 2011
Isn't so much the speed as it is the location/time that makes what Busch did so reckless.
I've had my Saab 9-3 convertible over 100 on numerous occasions, but never on a single lane road that just happened to have a school on it. Busch does this on a multi-lane, divided hwy, and I don't have a problem.
Busch can perceive going that fast without any problem. My mom can not. She sees a car approaching to the left that is a block, or two, away, and she thinks she has plenty of time to turn. Of course, if the car coming at her is doing 128 MPH, she has a third of the time to pull out, but she doesn't know that. The car is coming straight at her, so she can't accurately judge it's speed. Or, it's just around the corner, and again, she thinks that she has time because any car still not around the corner a block away would never get to here by the time she clears the lane. Even if she can fathom that someone might drive their car 128 MPH, she can't perceive them doing so on that road at that time of day.
For the record, I also got a Dodge Coronet up to 110 MPH, I let up when all four hubcaps popped off at the same time.
posted by dviking at 04:36 PM on May 26, 2011
While I have a few triple-digit runs in cars - rented, of course, they were all in somewhat controlled conditions (runways, taxiways, etc., with no aircraft around). My scariest run was as a passenger in an OH-6 between Dong Ha and Con Thien, Viet Nam, in 1968. We never exceeded 50 feet in altitude, had to maneuver around trucks while crossing route 9, took grass on the skids going across a ridge, and had a nice distraction while the 19-year-old Warrant Officer Pilot chased a water buffalo. I was seriously considering drawing the .45 caliber sidearm I was carrying, but thought better of it.
posted by Howard_T at 05:03 PM on May 26, 2011
Now THAT'S a story, Howard.
I was a passenger in an 88 Dodge Shadow that my friend got up to about 110 (185kph). Thing was shaking so badly at that speed that random screws on the dash were coming out.
JJ - that Rapide story is one of my fantasies. I love that car. I love all Astons. Winking at girls, though? You scamp. How taudry. Harumph!
posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 05:22 PM on May 26, 2011
It's amazing how quickly a thread can turn into a Springsteen song.
/Alice Springs to Darwin, 1,450 km. No speed limits. Nine and a half hours.
posted by owlhouse at 09:11 PM on May 26, 2011
First off, Kyle (in my best Cartman voice)... you are an idiot.
Second, since everyone is telling their faster than we should be going stories, I thought I would share mine. In 1988, in Jacksonville, Florida, a friend of mine had a Lotus, that his dad (who worked at a car dealership) had gotten for him for the weekend (it was for a fraternity formal). For those who have lived in Jacksonville, this was before the Dames Point bridge was finished. There was a road that led from the Regency Square Mall to Fort Caroline then to the bridge through a bunch of sand dunes (there was really no traffic ever on this stretch because the bridge wasn't done yet). Andy (my friend) got it up to 170 with me in the passenger seat. It really didn't feel all the fast (much like we were going 90-95) until he went to brake, then brake, and brake. I realized after a couple of seconds of braking that we were still doing 100, that's when I felt how really fast and stupid we were going. It scared us both afterwards (but not during) and we kept it much more sane the rest of the weekend.
posted by jagsnumberone at 01:30 AM on May 27, 2011
Not 128 (most cars' tires would start to shred before that), but at least triple digits, surely?
100 mph, sure. People are driving 85 regularly on the interstates these days.
Most of the cars I've owned in my life would fall apart if I tried to get them to 128 mph. I had a '69 Dodge Dart that started its death rattle at 65.
posted by rcade at 08:23 AM on May 27, 2011
Tyres I can speak to (it's ma job, ma'am). Suffice it to say that I agree with the guy I met years ago from a certain French tyre company: "Tyres are the most over-engineered things on earth." In short, the tyres on your car are far more high spec than they need to be; at high speed, your car will fail in some other regard far sooner than your tyre will (unless it's already damaged or inflated incorrectly - factors which are more usually the case than not admitedly).
posted by JJ at 11:24 AM on May 27, 2011
The air-blowing-out-not-in-at-135 thing I remember because it's a great example of why my father should not have been allowed near kids*: I read that in a book somewhere and went to him to ask if it was true. Rather than doing what parenting books might suggest, saying, "I don't know but why don't we research the science behind it", he simply said, "Yes." Pressed for details, he told me he'd hitched a ride back to Rhode Island from Basic Training in a first-year Camaro. Somewhere out in the desert past El Paso, Texas, they added to the empirical evidence of this claim. I always assumed that trip was how my grandmother wound up the proud owner of a 1968 Camaro SS in red with black stripes. And the infection passed down a generation, which is how I wound up with one of a more recent vintage.
I'm far too old for it. Haven't had the guts to take it past 110. And I've never depressed the pedal more than a quarter of the way in 6th. I've no idea what happens if you floor it. I do intend to find out someday. Just not on a city street.
* Not even slightly true, I just look back and wonder about a man who offered to teach me ho to make a mortar out of soup cans if I could find old-school flat-bottomed cans.
posted by yerfatma at 11:31 AM on May 27, 2011
Tell me you own an IROC you bastard. Speak it!
posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 06:30 PM on May 27, 2011
soup can mortars...now we're talking. Every kid back in the 60's/early 70's knew how to make one. Launched a potato over 150 yards. Back when kids were allowed to play with matches.
posted by dviking at 12:07 AM on May 28, 2011
Tell me you own an IROC you bastard. Speak it!
No, no Irish Retard Out Cruising here. Slightly more recent.
posted by yerfatma at 01:26 PM on May 28, 2011
It's a better answer than "Do you know who I am". Still, Busch may be fully capable of handling any vehicle at that speed, but you never can account for the idiot who pulls out in front of you without looking.
128 in a Lexus LFA. They ought to pay him for an endorsement.