Going full tilt boogie straight down, can’t possibly make the slight S-turn into the short ramp to get in front of the booths (the approach is laid out so you can’t come into the booths in a straight line from Main or Niagara Ave., to make traffic slow down approaching) but catches the divider just right and launches…
From this angle it would seem like it would have traveled all the way past the end of the arc of outgoing booths and that’s how come they said it hit a structure in the secondary check area – which is in between the outgoing and incoming lanes.
Man, I know they had no chance of making that curve, but it doesn’t look like they even tried to. It looks like they plowed in without even touching the brakes. I’m suspecting either a crazy mechanical failure or a medical emergency.
Or a couple of drugged out idiots thinking the Bentley they stole was big and powerful enough to allow them to launch themselves over customs and make their getaway in the greatest stunt ever. They’d be legends.
We’ll probably never know given how thoroughly the car and its occupants were destroyed, but assuming the husband was driving, drunk, drugged, or just enraged into hitting 100 mph, I feel sorry for the wife. Can’t imagine what terror she must have felt as they accelerated to their doom.
They’ll just pop the whole episode into the memory hole. The only thing remaining will be a meme about a $200,000 car. That’s what cars cost these days. Thanks Biden!
I don’t know anything about Bentleys, but what is the deal with the huge exhaust plume behind the car as it accelerates toward the barrier. It looks like a rocket during launch. Do Bentleys normally put out a lot of exhaust? Was this a stuck throttle, equipment failure or someone flooring the gas pedal?
I’m sure they’re feverishly trying to construct a “Joe’s fault” narrative.
Can’t they estimate the car’s speed by using the camera footage? Frames per second and all that.
When I first saw the video, i was thinking it was at full throttle. Sometimes a panicked driver will think they’re flooring the brake pedal and accelerate until the car hits something. I wonder if this driver, who was seen before the accident having to swerve to avoid another car, lost their footing in the swerve, and then inadvertently floored the wrong pedal.
I’m pretty sure that the “plume” you’re seeing there is just spray off the tires on the wet street. There’s no more reason for a V-12 to produce a big exhaust plume under full throttle than any other cylinder configuration, and they don’t.
As for what really happened here, it may be hard to piece it together based on the level of destruction, but it does seem like a terrible accident rather than a deliberate act. More likely a medical emergency, I’d say, because it really doesn’t seem like a likely consequence of a mechanical failure. The driver’s medical history may have some clues.
I didn’t notice a plume before the launch. Since the car shot up into the air, I assume it ran into something sloped, and was driving in a place it wasn’t supposed to be. There may have been dirt, or gravel, or just extra water on the ground there that got kicked into the air by the car’s tires.
If it wasn’t at the beginning, it certainly was by the end.