Sorry! Been away fer a li’l bit. Haven’t been keepin’ up with the news, either.
Tripler
I don’t get around to the SDMB as much as I used to.
The way it is set up, you have to do an S-turn to the right to get on the NW-bound side, and the reverse when you come out of the SE-bound side of the bridge where it reaches the US. US border control is on the incoming end, as you’d expect, and in the middle, dividing the incoming and outgoing lanes on the land side, are part of the US secondary inspection zone and customs/border security administrative/support facilities. Coming in a straight line from Main or Niagara Ave., the car would have catapulted onto that area.
It’s not binary, with people saying “it was” and “it wasn’t”. As quoted in the article I linked earlier, some right-wing politicians and news commentators in the States stated that it was a terrorist attack.
Here’s what Trudeau said in the Commons, in response to Poilievre’s question about media reports of a terrorist attack:
Reserving judgment until he gets full information is a mark of a careful leader and politician.
Not where I’m presently living. We’re the younger set.
I don’t know whether that’s scary or encouragng.
Meanwhile a landslide in the town of Wrangell, AK (3 dead, 3 missing) goes virtually unreported. Authorities identify 3 confirmed dead and 3 still missing in Wrangell landslide - Anchorage Daily News
Far away, obscure area, low body count, no dramatic video footage – yeh, that’ll be just a footnote in the news media outside Alaska.
Since there was talk about it being a mechanical problem, I had wondered if the Bentley was old, but it seems like it was a 2023 model. There were some problems with the accelerator sticking, but only for right hand drive cars, not left hand drive ones.
The victims seemed to be well liked, and did a lot for their community.
That Bentley was moving fast. When it hit the traffic island or whatever it probably ripped the gas tank open. Then it flew through the air, high, you can see that relative to the box van in the back of the video.
The N.Y. Post identified the Bentley model involved in the crash as a 2022 Flying Spur (irony noted).
Regardless of the manufacturer casting doubt on the stuck accelerator theory, plaintiffs’ lawyers are no doubt licking their chops.
The most common V8 version of the current Flying Spur boasts a 0-60mph time of 4 seconds and tops out at just under 200mph. And is not the highest performance variant of the FS.
Modern high dollar high performance cars are unbelievably quick. Even if they look like stodgy fat sedans.
Given the total destruction of the car, the driver and the passenger, there is a major evidential issue.
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Was it mechanical? Dunno. Accelerator, brakes, and mini-blackbox destroyed.
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Was it a seizure by the driver? Dunno. No body to autopsy and no surviving witness from inside the car.
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Was the driver driving too fast and crazy-like? Dunno. No mini-black box and no surviving witness from inside the car.
Plus, who are the plaintiffs? Relatives of the deceased? They would have to prove that the accident was caused by a mechanical defect of some sort, and rebut any counter-claims by Bentley Inc. that the deceased driver was at fault.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers see a whole lot of unspeakable sadness and tragedy. Many are profoundly affected by secondary trauma. We deal with parents who have lost a child, or chidlren who have lost a parent. Sometimes a spouse witnesses the traumatic death of their life partner. Perhaps some “lick their chops” when they read about misfortune, but the ones I know just try to help the victims’ families as best they can.
Yeah, it might have been a mechanical defect, but proving that in a court of law (even to a civil trial’s standard of “preponderance of the evidence”) is going to be extremely difficult. It might have been a mechanical defect, or it might have been a medical emergency, or it might have been an elaborate suicide, or it might have been a momentary panic, or it might have been a deliberate attack. You’d have to demonstrate that the defect was more likely than all the rest combined. And I don’t have the statistics at hand, but I suspect that for accidents as a whole (of the sort that leave behind evidence), medical emergencies and momentary panic both significantly outnumber mechanical defects.
Right, this one could conceivably get some observer evidence from any cameras looking at the street on the approach, but it would probably be of limited usefulness except to maybe know at what point the car’s motion became abnormal – we already know they were going hella fast, outside footage could not tell us why, only at best for how long.
Right, but without knowing why they were going so fast, where’s a civil action? Malfunction or driver error?
Except that it wasn’t totally destroyed and there’s an ongoing investigation.
Did you know there’s a legal subspecialty, Sudden Unintended Acceleration Accident Attorneys?
Who you gonna call?
I’m just going by the news reports. The Governor of New York said that all they have is the engine block.
Sudden unintended acceleration is almost always driver error: The driver thinks they’re slamming on the brakes, but their foot is on the wrong pedal. I don’t think there’s ever been a verified case of it being due to equipment malfunction. It’d be very difficult for it to be a malfunction, anyway, since it’d require a failure of both the brakes and the throttle.
There have been cases, though. One such cost Toyota $1 billion in fines:
I’m pretty sure we have a thread from about 10 years ago where someone was charged with accelerating improperly and causing an accident, and further investigation said it was a mechanical flaw.