It's disturbing when kids who represent the University of Florida behave in such a way. Not just lawlessness, but endangerment to others. We didn't write the kid off, he wrote himself off through his choices.
When I was in college in the 1980's I owned a Ford Capri, a German Ford with a 2.8 liter V-6 and 5 speed manual transmission. It was very fun to drive, even drove it down to Florida in 1986 before I moved I moved here. I took that car to 150 - 155 a few times on lonely stretches of the Trans Canada Highway. There has to be hundreds of different vehicle models that can reach 150 mph!
According to the linked article he was driving a 2018 BMW. Depending on model, 150 mph is not out of the question.
20 feet is crazy, that's plenty of room for someone to move in front of you. You should always have less than a car length or you will be perpetually cut in front of because you will be the guy slowing up interstate traffic. That or stay to the far right lane and let people pass.
Sounds like you learned to drive in Germany. 3 rules to the road: 1) the car going fastest has the right of way 2) only drive in the left lane if you’re passing someone 3) if you’re in the left lane passing someone and a faster car comes up behind you, see rule #1 It’s easy and it works. People in the USA don’t know how to drive. There’s zero discipline or courtesy on our roads
Are you serious? 20 ft is not enough distance at any speed, let alone 110 mph. Do you know how long it takes to stop going 110? Probably more than 6 seconds. At 110 mph you are moving 161.333 ft every second and once you have applied the brakes (0.3 secs is typical good reaction time, your car has moved another 50 feet or so) it will take about 400 feet to stop if the road is dry and you have relatively fresh, good tires. I try to follow the 2 second rule, always stay 2 seconds behind the car in front of you, but since Americans have no clue about highway safety I usually have to shorten this to 1 second, or else the gap is continuously filled and I am always vulnerable to another car being closer than I consider safe. This is of course not a measurement in feet since it depends on speed. At 80 mph 1 second is roughly 120 feet following distance. 20 feet is insane! It's less than 0.2 seconds if going 80, and at 110 mph it's 0.1239 seconds; no human reacts fast enough to make any type of maneuver in that short amount of time! Update: I did some googling on reaction times and I grossly overestimated average reaction times. Typical is 1-3 seconds!!! If this is true your car moves much, much further down the highway while you are reacting to a threat, up to 500 ft!
I always remembered from Engineering 60 mph = 88 ft/sec And you’re right - Americans are the most irresponsible and inconsiderate drivers in the world
Hell, my 64 impala SS with a 327, the needle would go right past 120 and right behind the dashboard where you could no longer see it and be doing at least 140
That was my dad‘s daily driver and he gave it to me when I was 16 years old. My stepdad made him take it back because I skipped school to go surfing. I made all A’s and B’s and honors classes and the he made me get rid of the car. $15,000. Now you can’t touch one for about 60.
You ever wonder why the US allows cars to go above 80 mph? If so concerned about safety and fatalities, why design cars that can go above the speed limit? Now that new cars tell you the speed limit of the roads you are driving, will they next not allow those same cars to exceed the speed limit? I think the answer is local and State governments make too much from speeding fines and insurance companies can charge more for everyone based on a particular demographic getting in accidents or speeding. Would lose too mich money. My daughter has been driving for 5 years without an accident or speeding ticket. Rather than charge those that have these type violations outrageous dollars, they spread the cost among all drivers under 25. Just wrong. Now the insurance companies will give your kids a 20 to 30 percent discount for installing a big brother device that monitors your speed.
Almost all of the new cars have speed limiters installed in them. Some of the sports cars are set higher, but most cars and trucks are set around 110-105. All Japanese cars are maxed at 112 by law in Japan. California is trying to pass a law that requires all cars sold in California to be limited to 10 miles over the speed limit by 2027. I'm sure removing the limiter is possible but most likely voids the warranty.
Most likely the speed limiters in new vehicles are programmed into the PCM. You could flash the system to change it, but it would absolutely void a new car warranty for anything that involved electronics. What will be interesting is if the car manufacturers will create some special tune for California sold vehicles or will they just equip all their cars with similar limiters. An interesting question will be how the car handles roads with no posted limit, parking lots, driveways etc. The only way a vehicle would be able to determine "10mph above any specific limit" would be if it was equipped with some self-driving features, GPS, etc.
