Ferrari Mailing List: Re: Ferrari crash

[Rick Lindsay (rolindsay]

Clyde wrote,

> I am here in MAN and some big time soccer player crashes a Ferrari big 
> time.  Totals the car and walks away.  What a waste.

Too true.  I have often said, and I get flamed every time I do so, that cars 
today are too easy to drive and quite possible, they're too safe.  Get in a 
modern car (Lexus, Chevy piece-o-s#!t, or similar) and you can go into a turn 
at 90, sipping a latte and TXTing you favorite girl  - and the car can probably 
handle it.  Sit down in my 308GTB and it says, "I'm going to KILL you!  Now, 
try to stop me."

As you know, I play with old cars - cars back to the pre '30s.  The drivers of 
those old cars had to know how the car worked and they had to know how to work 
with the car.  In short, they had to learn how to drive the car and in doing 
so, they managed their own risks.  The driver today gets into his jellybean 
shaped 3500 pound mass of iron and slings it along indiscriminately at 80mph.  
Do the physics on that to see just how much threat is produced to the driver, 
passengers, pedestrians and property!  F=MA where F is Force, M is Mass (3500 
pounds) and A is acceleration from 80 to 0 is a fraction of a second!  It's a 
HUGE number!  And the only typical result beyond the 'walk away from it' 
scenario that you describe is the driver trying to find out who he can blame 
(and sue) for his own stupidity!

> Why do they sell the cars to these people!

Greed.

> They should buy airplanes and self cleanse themselves!

Yes!  Let Darwin's Natural Selection handle it!

regards,

rick - on a particularly 'pissy mood' day