I used to say that people were paranoid who thought the government was spying on them. So I'm not quite ready to dismiss this as a crazy conspiracy just yet.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash
41–50 of 227 posts
Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash
#42How does a 2013 model Mercedes Benz with a five star ANCAP safety rating (the highest rating you can get) scoring 35.51 points scored out of 37 (an Australian car safety rating for reference) with more airbags than wheels (8 airbags for those of you playing at home including a curtain airbag that drops in-front of the passenger and driver protecting the head and upper-body from impacting anything) crash into a tree w…
Lets cool our heads a bit. It's not that "impossible" to crash a modern car with ABS, EBD, TC and ST. I'm a living-breathing evidence to the fact that none of these technologies can do anything if the car hits a paddle of water/sand going too fast around a bend. I'm not saying that this is exactly what happened but do we know that it didn't?
Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash
#43Another possibility is that he had a nervous breakdown or substance abuse episode, leading to both the paranoid emails and the irrational vehicle operations. Obviously I'm not saying that's the case, but the extremely irrational driving goes fits a theory of paranoid delusions (brought on by any number of mechanisms), just as the hacked car system goes with about to uncover something big.
This first question that comes to mind is what was he doing driving at 4:30 in the morning. His friends describe him as a "grandma diver" so why was he driving so fast and blowing red lights on a residential street? Did he ever display this type of behaviour before? Another question is.. how does a well made car burst into flames so quickly.
One possibility was that he may have been chased.
Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash
#44Another possibility is that he had a nervous breakdown or substance abuse episode, leading to both the paranoid emails and the irrational vehicle operations. Obviously I'm not saying that's the case, but the extremely irrational driving goes fits a theory of paranoid delusions (brought on by any number of mechanisms), just as the hacked car system goes with about to uncover something big.
Yeah, we really don't know. But I'm extremely uncomfortable by the fact that foul play is a real possibility. We already know that the federal government is operating largely in secret and without regard to the law (their insistence that are indeed following their own secret set of laws doesn't provide me much solace). We already know that various press organizations have been wiretapped. I feel like I've woken up in…
It is a huge leap from the revelations of late and a world where the government goes around killing journalists. When your parents confided to you that Santa Claus wasn't real, you didn't suddenly become adopted too. Chill out and reacquaint with reality.
Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash
#45This Hastings incident has interesting parallels to Andrew Breitbart's death. http://rt.com/usa/coroner-arsenic-death-breitbart-456/ Namely the fact that both of these men were prominent journalists, living in the US, each with 'big stories' they were working on that have not seen the light of day due to their untimely death shortly after proclaiming they were working on said stories. To compound the dire possibiliti…
Meh. Breitbart died of an enlarged heart and also had a major heart attack a few months prior.
Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash
#46How does a 2013 model Mercedes Benz with a five star ANCAP safety rating (the highest rating you can get) scoring 35.51 points scored out of 37 (an Australian car safety rating for reference) with more airbags than wheels (8 airbags for those of you playing at home including a curtain airbag that drops in-front of the passenger and driver protecting the head and upper-body from impacting anything) crash into a tree w…
This is how conspiracy theories are promulgated: propose an preposterous alternate reality and then find real facts wanting in comparison. In this case the alternate reality is that it is "impossible" to crash recent model year Mercedes unless you intend to. This is obviously preposterous since it's not hard to find reports of such crashes with 5 minutes on Google.
It's not impossible to crash any car, the alternate reality here is that a brand new car with more safety features than a padded cell crashed by itself at 4:30am in the morning into a tree and exploded on impact. The point is these cars are built to try and avoid these kind of accidents at all cost, the plethora of safety features cars like these have makes it a lot more difficult than say an early 00's vehicle crashing into a tree to hurt anyone inside. Not impossible, but certainly reduces the odds a bit. This article here details the kinds of testing Mercedes put the car through: http://blogs.automotive.com/2013-mercedes-benz-c-class-and-m... - 200 high-speed in-house crashes sounds like a lot of testing for a car and apparently it faired well in all of them. You can see a video of the car being testing here as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvw_VLcUUwU&feature=youtu.be - while Hasting's didn't crash in a controlled environment, you see a picture painted of a car capable of withstanding a lot of impact.
I know it's common for cars to slice down the middle and kill their occupants, but exploding and incinerating Hastings inside to the point they have to identify him by his dental records at least warrants a closer look. I'm not saying foul play is to blame here, but some questions need to be answered. As is common in unexplained plane crashes, the debris should be tested for explosive residue just as a precaution.
Another interesting question is why was the engine found over 100 feet away from the car? When a car crashes isn't an engine pushed back into the cabin, not thrown forwards?
Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
This first question that comes to mind is what was he doing driving at 4:30 in the morning. His friends describe him as a "grandma diver" so why was he driving so fast and blowing red lights on a residential street? Did he ever display this type of behaviour before? Another question is.. how does a well made car burst into flames so quickly.
One possibility was that he may have been chased.
Or that he was paranoid and thought he was being chased.
Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
This first question that comes to mind is what was he doing driving at 4:30 in the morning. His friends describe him as a "grandma diver" so why was he driving so fast and blowing red lights on a residential street? Did he ever display this type of behaviour before? Another question is.. how does a well made car burst into flames so quickly.
> how does a well made car burst into flames so quickly? I always wonder about this, it's not like a car fire is anything like hollywood makes it out to be.
Cars can catch fire in real life: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=54e_1333912420
See also: Ryan Dunn's 911, post-tree.
Hollywood may exaggerate the rate at which that happens, but not much more.
Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash
#49Anybody read through http://www.autosec.org/pubs/cars-usenixsec2011.pdf already? My car-tech knowledge is way to rudimentary to get a better idea on that stuff.
I've heard about bugs in the throttle position channel from a few coworkers that worked for several different manufacturers. This was awhile ago though and most bugs have been sorted.
Creating a car crash through brake or steering manipulation sounds a bit far fetched. Throttle position on the other hand does not have any type of redundancy in most modern cars (no mechanical means of restoring control). If you have access to change TP, either by GPS coordinates or remote, you could cause a crash pretty easily by sticking the throttle body WFO. The driver always has options to stop the car, but in panic mode...who knows.
I am still withholding judgement and will watch the investigation with interest.