Given the reported lack of maintenance, it wouldn’t surprise me if the brakes had never been bled (i.e. plenty of moisture in the brake fluid). And if they had never been upgraded from factory, then they probably got smoking hot from trying to keep the speed under control during that descent with all that weight. Wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the brakes simply boiled, leaving the driver with no braking authority whatsoever. That would explain the lack of skid marks on the pavement, and the high speed of the final impact.
Even without boiling the brakes, high temps could have resulted in severe brake fade (i.e high temps on the rotors and pads dangerously lowers the friction coefficient, reducing braking authority).
Since the driver reportedly was not licensed to operate that limo, he may not have had the training needed to manage braking. AIUI, this is part of the training for getting a CDL, i.e. knowing that brakes on heavy vehicles have limited capacity, so when it comes to descending significant grades (like the one you described), speeds should be kept low and engine braking should be used.
The US does have an extradition treaty with Pakistan, so if criminal charges arise from this mess, I expect we could get him brought to the US to face trial.
No: because of skidmarks on the highway from previous near misses, because the owner of the Apple store had remember 2 or 3 semis coming into his parking lot because they also failed to stop at the stop sign, because of the reputation among the public of it being a bad intersection.
The owner, the Pakistani national, he is facing an existing charge of murder in the Pakistan? And he went back to the country? Can you be more clear, it is not clear in my reading.
He was implicated as an accessory to a murder case back in 1994. He ran away to the US and avoided extradition. Not sure what happened to the case against him, but he could be tried even if the primary has been convicted and hanged.
He seems to have decided to take his chances with the charge anyway. Probably for the best from his point of view.
I think it’s the son of the limo company owner who is in custody. From The New York Times, “Nauman Hussain, the son of a Shahed Hussain, the owner of Prestige Limousine, was taken into custody by the State Police during a traffic stop on a highway in the Albany area.” The father is the one in Pakistan.
I’m a little puzzled and shocked that all 18 in the limo died. Even with nearly all of them unbelted, there’s usually a few survivors in accidents like this—people that didn’t get thrown out, or who impacted objects that slowed their deceleration. What was the nature of the crash? Did the limo roll? Was their fire?
AIUI, the limo pretty much went head-on into a tree. No fire, no rollover. The impact was hard enough to drive the engine through the firewall into the front-seat area. Basically the whole chassis came to a dead stop, and then all the passengers slammed into the forward bulkhead at 60 MPH. Impacting at that speed is like falling from a height of 118 feet, i.e. jumping out of an 11th-floor window.
A few of them did survive the initial impact, but subsequently died at (or enroute to) the hospital.
