A little community responsibility here folks...

Uh...what thread are you talking about?

 

huh???

 

oh, didn't look interesting, now, i'm afraid to look.

 

are you really serious? did you you read the post about how he was on a closed runway? it's a right of passage to get your car over 100.....let's not freak out about it. sure it's not the safest thing in the world, but it's going to happen.

 

The "Think of the Chiiilllllldren!" argument holds even less water for me than comparing anything with Hitler.

Besides, it's not like once you're over 20 you're physically incapable of driving over 55.

 

I don't know what to say really.
I feel that everyone make's mistakes, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has driven fast, so.... yeah. I think I speak for everyone when I say that when your paying for a 30k dollar car, your going to at least see what it can do once. I know that doesn't give me a reason to do it, and I know it was bad, just saying that everyone learns.

 

All I can say is I'm glad you weren't my dad. I started flying airplanes at age 14 and soloed at the earliest possible moment, my 16th birthday. More than one parent forbade their teenager from flying with me when I was finally licensed at 17. Too dangerous, in their eyes.

We all have different risk thresholds, but what's more salient is most of our perceptions of risk are badly askew. Parents routinely drive their kids to school and elsewhere, exposing them to risk of injury or death in a wreck that is statistically much higher than the risk they are theoretically protecting them from, the risk of abduction by a stranger.

Getting excited because a car got driven in excess of 100 MPH (under what appear to be very responsible, controlled conditions) shows its irrationality by failing to get excited by the car being driven in excess of 70 MPH. By the time you're traveling better than about 40 MPH you're in the range where mishaps can be lethal; by 70 MPH the odds of lethality are greater than the odds of mere injury in a mishap. 100 MPH just increases the ratio. It sounds scary because we usually travel at 70 MPH, but I believe driving at 30 MPH in traffic is statistically more dangerous than driving 100 MPH on straight dry pavement in no traffic.

 

There is a precedent of this - minors that committed suicide after cyberbullying.

Granted that's the most extreme case, but just entertain the thought of a future article reporting a teen getting killed after attempting to check out the max speed, and it's reported he was active at said thread in PriusChat...."Oh that could no more happen than the Deepwater Horizon blow."

 

... Yes dad.

 

You don't get it.

I have zero authority and not the real killjoy.

Think about Danny and the trouble he's gone to on PriusChat over the years. Supposed some teen got killed trying to do 115mph, it was on the news and the parents sued PC.

Would smarting off to the lawyers be wise?

 

If your head hits something solid at about 15mph, you're dead. The faster you go, the less painful it is, because it's over with that much quicker.

As for exceeding 70mph on a bicycle, now that's just complete and utter insanity. Ah, the invincibility of youth.

 

no no no... I wasn't referring to your post... I was referring to the post in general and actually the OP specifically.

 

I hope you never find out about a website called YouTube. You'd have a heart attack seeing what some people post there, and I wouldn't want to be responsible for giving somebody a heart attack.

 

You must not have a good answer if you resort to attacking me.

The question: A teen is encouraged by that thread to see how fast a Prius can go, then the parents post-mortem sue PC....cases like that in principle have already happened...it's expensive even if you win.

I don't care for a lot of things limited by lawsuit risk, but it's a fact of life.

Can anyone say there is no risk of a lawsuit if the situation I mentioned happened?

 

Sorry, spiderman....I now realize you were not responding to me.

 

Um, all I can really say is, my Dad wouldn't have sued anyone. I don't talk to my Mom, so...yeah. I can say that if I were to have wrecked and died, my Dad would have known that it was my own fault. Not you guys.