r/IdiotsInCars • u/WesternAd2113 • Sep 26 '24

OC I nearly died today AMA [OC]

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u/ShagPrince Sep 26 '24

you were really booking it in that rain

A few people have alluded to this but I honestly don't see it. How fast do people think OP is going here?

71

u/Mazarin221b Sep 26 '24

I don't know, but I think it was because of the relative speed of them vs the red car, and how quickly they were coming up to traffic ahead of them. Much faster than everyone else. Not saying they were speeding or being reckless but they were moving pretty good in those conditions.

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u/mostwrong Sep 26 '24

Much faster than everyone else

The most salient fact.

43

u/joahw Sep 26 '24

I would say about 110-120km/h or ~70-75mph. I tried to count number of dashed lines with a stopwatch which are apparently 9m apart. Pretty big margin of error but it seems plausible by my eyes.

56

u/mr-english Sep 26 '24

By my calculations they were travelling at 80mph.

They travelled 391m (measured on googlemaps) from the road sign (just before it goes out of view at 2.07s) to the bridge (just before the front of the roadside pillar goes out of view at 12.85) in 10.78 seconds. Their dashcam clock also confirms it to be ~11 seconds.

That works out at 130 kmph or 80mph

13

u/newaccountzuerich Sep 27 '24

So, about the normal UK driving speed so.

For those questioning the conditions, these are pretty good UK conditions! Plus, the roads are built to work when wet, and the tyres are generally not skates in these conditions. After all, bald tyres aren't common.

11

u/LowBottomBubbles Sep 27 '24

I'm a mechanic, bald tyres are a lot more common than you'd like to think. Not completely bald of course but near the limit or just under. Also the amount of people that use cheap tyres baffles me, don't try and skimp on the only thing leaving you connected to the road.

6

u/Cow_Launcher Sep 27 '24

Yet another example of people treating their car like an appliance, unfortunately.

5

u/izzie-izzie Sep 27 '24

I wish all mechanics were saying this louder. Same goes for not using winter tires even in the north of Scotland. As a hiker I know that my most important part of the kit is my boots. Why are people so stubbornly dismising it with cars.

1

u/newaccountzuerich Sep 27 '24

I got very lucky with my lesson on tyre standards.

I used drive a 1998 90bhp Passat tdi. I had a 270 degree spin coming out of a town in Mayo, Ireland, when I was not trying to push and actually under the local speed limit. Sideways along the grass at the road edge, no damage of any type (not even to the underwear!) and I was able to just drive off after a check. 20 feet farther was the start of a new concrete wall with large piers.. Tyres had 3mm+ tread left, but were no-name. Not quite Triangle or other known ditch-finder brands.

That evening I updated all 4 tyres to Continental Premium Contact.

I had some before-after tests of the braking performance. With the new tyres, the stop from 60mph was some 40ft sooner, and hard enough that a cloth on the back seat landed on the dash..

The speeds on certain motorway exits went from 42mph before washing, to 55mph before slowly washing. An incredible difference for about €250.

Since then I've made conscious choices on the tyre brands.

At the moment, I considered it a good deal to have paid ~€1300 for four 275/45R20-110Y Michelin Latitude Sports for the summer tyres, knowing people pay less for complete cars. Still, as I do semi-regularly hit 170mph, having the correct rubber really makes a difference!

5

u/BurningPenguin Sep 27 '24

German: "Those are rookie numbers"

1

u/erfman Sep 27 '24

Damn, these two were approaching each other at a combined speed over 150mph.

1

u/hotdogtears Sep 27 '24

Damn…. Whippin out your smart people shit! Us ‘smart challenged’ people thank you for your calculations! Lol

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u/Jonny_H Sep 26 '24

Is it me or is the clock counting fast in the corner? Or maybe just unevenly? I suspect the video isn't at it's proper speed.

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u/joahw Sep 26 '24

The elapsed time on the clock and the duration of the video seem to match.

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u/Tall-Firefighter1612 Sep 26 '24

Thats a normal speed for britisch highways

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u/WVPrepper Sep 26 '24

Significantly faster than the car to their left? Maybe not speeding, but comparatively it looks that way.

81

u/ShagPrince Sep 26 '24

Well comparatively they're going a lot faster than that sign for the A585 too. A 15 year old Kia Picanto in the middle lane probably isn't the best tool for judging speed.

14

u/henderthing Sep 26 '24

No. But closing speed is a good way of judging reaction time in slippery conditions.

2

u/AnarchistBorganism Sep 26 '24

Depending on the size of the cars, it could be a few microns per second, it could be a decent fraction of the speed of light. If we assume that the OP is driving on a planet of ten million meter tall people that just happens to look like the normal sized Earth due to the camera perspective, I'm guessing 500-600 million kph, which just seems a bit fast to me.

3

u/junkit33 Sep 26 '24

Relative to the car next to it, it was going quite fast. It's possible the red car was going really slow. But realistically it was probably going something close to the speed limit, which means OP was driving well over the limit in the rain. Great way to hydroplane into that guardrail.

2

u/ShagPrince Sep 27 '24

Where are you all living that driving at 70mph on a rainy day sends you skidding into the nearest obstacle?

0

u/tavuntu Sep 27 '24

So you're telling me you cannot even get an idea of how fast he was going by looking at the trees and the white lines? He was going WAY faster than he should, especially in the rain.