1300 hp mercury comet brake failure crash
I think the fact that the motor has 1300 hp has little to do with the accident. Think about throttle position and power output. The throttle was nowhere near wide open throttle. Listen to the engine when the brakes went out. To me it doesn't sound like a motor that was putting out much power. Likely the throttle is sticking near the closed side of travel rather than the wide open end. Simular to a improperly adjusted idle speed around 2000 rpm. Think about how little power it takes to propel a car at that speed and rpm. The car didn’t appear to be accelerating rapidly. It was more or less just maintaining speed. I would say that the majority of our cars are capable of that kind of power output. The fact that he had zero brakes probably had more to do with the accident than how much power the motor is capable of producing. We all would be in trouble with zero brakes and little time to react. Things happen fast in the heat of the moment and sometimes our brains don't as well as we think they would. We can all pick out some detail of the accident and say it couldn't happen to me because of this or that. What ever we have to do to to convince ourselves that "I could never be that guy".
If the sticking throttle and brake issue developed during the drive, I'd give them a pass. That's not what happened. They set out knowing the brakes were marginal, the throttle is sticking, and he was already riding the brakes to maintain speed. The riding of the brakes sounds to me like there was enough power to accelerate. Not hard, but some. The car didn't seem to gain much speed once the brakes failed, but it didn't seem to slow at all either and it should have scrubbed a bit off, I would think.
What I can't forgive is the fact that it was a known issue and the workaround is not a reasonable one. They didn't continue to operate in order to get off the road, they continued their trip. It was dumb.
As far as once the brake failure happened, it was too late by then. It's not easy to do it all right, but the point is that it should never have gotten to that point.
We all do dumb things, sure. Stuff can and does break, especially when it's 70 years old. But so knowingly operate a missile with malfunction is just not justifiable.
I'm pretty sure that engine braking would be decent with the key off, at least until the engine rpm came down under idle speed. There's not much difference in coasting with the throttles shut than there is with the key off, I don't think. Maybe I'll try it sometime with my pickup and see what happens ;)
