Dang, I've hit trees bigger than that with my Mountain Bike, and knocked them down. The P-car must have been made of tinfoil to fold up like that at 45 mph. -sarcasm-
Dang, I've hit trees bigger than that with my Mountain Bike, and knocked them down. The P-car must have been made of tinfoil to fold up like that at 45 mph. -sarcasm-
HappyAndy wrote:
Its california. They have no water for real trees so they create fake ones out of steel and concrete. At least that's what I heard.
Not all faulty product lawsuits are wanton cash/glory grabs. I think ultimately the suit will show that the incident owed mostly to human error and fallibility, but I can't hate a kid for wanting to pursue a further investigation into what killed her parent.
But of course she'll lose, because we all know that no German automaker would ever release a car for public sale with any sort of undisclosed fault.
HappyAndy wrote:
OK, even if we conclude that they were being asshats and going 80 mph, is it unfair to assume that a modern road car won't tear in half and burst into flames at what amounts to basically road legal speeds? It's like Pinto's exploding when being rear ended. It's not so much that cars should be designed to NEVER burst into flames, but car owners have a reasonable assumption that they won't be immolated in a fender bender.
The second half of this is whether Porsche was previously aware that these cars are particularly susceptible in this sort of crash. If they knew they were fundamentally unsafe at road speeds and didn't tell the owners then that's a different can of worms.
Assuming there was some money in the estate, I hope that this lawsuit eats every penny that young lady and her mother would have received. Stupid DOES deserve its own reward. Sadly that is not always the case.
Fitzauto wrote: I dont get why people can't accept that it was a mistake on the driver's part. Dragging it around like this is rude IMO.
Because a lawyer comes to them and says let us sue for you, you have been wronged and we want to set it right, for you. We will take XX% of whatever we collect and nothing if we lose.
The person to sue is the dead driver's estate.
HappyAndy wrote: Dang, I've hit trees bigger than that with my Mountain Bike, and knocked them down. The P-car must have been made of tinfoil to fold up like that at 45 mph. -sarcasm-
That photo is a bit deceptive. They went through a pretty hefty light poll (maybe 1 ft diameter of reinforced concrete) before they hit the tree. I suspect the pipe in the above picture played a roll also.
I suspect this is part of the poll:
wlkelley3 wrote: Not sure what the speed limit is on the road it happened is but the article said the lawsuit states they were going between 50-60mph which is what Paul's daughter and the driver's wife is claiming but the accident report states damage consistent with 80-90mph. Wonder which is more believable. Daughter and wife weren't there so how would they know how fast they were going?
Go to about 40 seconds on this video. They actually go through the poll, through another tree, BEFORE getting to the tree it stopped on!:
http://abc7.com/archive/9347872/
https://www.youtube.com/embed/IgwIrU7pOd0
That appears to be full speed. NO way that's 50mph. It would not be that hard to figure out very close to the exact speed from this. You would just need to how far the first tree was from the light poll. Maybe they were doing 60 at that point, but that is AFTER going though the poll.
Reminds me of a story around a decade ago where some French guy was going about cutting down trees on their roads. I think maybe his daughter died in a car crash after hitting a tree. Now I'm gonna put on my flame-suit here and say that urban tree planting is solely about beautification and the root systems can do some tremendous damage to foundations, and basically anything underground, soooo maybe the beautification and shade benefits are worth questioning. Now back to the French guy, I heard the German army lodged a complaint, something about marching in the shade.
spitfirebill wrote: If that tree right there caused all of that damage, then maybe the lawyers are onto something.
Trees are STRONG. I was always told that if you had the choice between hitting a telephone pole and hitting a live tree half its size, go for the telephone pole.
NOHOME wrote: Assuming there was some money in the estate, I hope that this lawsuit eats every penny that young lady and her mother would have received. Stupid DOES deserve its own reward. Sadly that is not always the case.
I read somewhere else earlier she was left with a roughly ~$25 million dollar estate from her father.
Remember they were stuck in the car also, were the jaws of life used? If so that would have added substantially to the damage.
In reply to aircooled:
Thanks for the extra info, it certainly sheds a bit more light on the events.
Pretty sure it was mostly undisturbed. The green tarps in the picture above are likely covering the bodies. As you can see here, the general placement seems to be the same (obviously right after the crash and before the fire department got there):
JG Pasterjak wrote: Not all faulty product lawsuits are wanton cash/glory grabs. I think ultimately the suit will show that the incident owed mostly to human error and fallibility, but I can't hate a kid for wanting to pursue a further investigation into what killed her parent. But of course she'll lose, because we all know that no German automaker would ever release a car for public sale with any sort of undisclosed fault.
I'm not so sure she will lose. It depends if it goes to a jury trial. If so, the facts may not play as important a role as emotions and how good the attorneys are.
Duke wrote:spitfirebill wrote: If that tree right there caused all of that damage, then maybe the lawyers are onto something.Trees are STRONG. I was always told that if you had the choice between hitting a telephone pole and hitting a live tree half it's size, go for the telephone pole.
Yup. I have no idea how fast the vehicle was going, but it wasn't there when I came to this at the end of my driveway one morning. No torn up grass, to speak of. Unless they got out to pick up the pieces, nothing on the car broke off, either.
I can't fault the girl for suing. It was probably even sold to her as making sure people are punished for what they did for her father. It's pretty easy to convince kids that this will help right a wrong.
racerdave600 wrote: I used to have a customer that was partners in a company that paved streets. His job, EVERYDAY, was to go to court. Every time there was a lawsuit about an accident, lawyers automatically added everyone that could be involved, including theirs that built the streets. It's sad that our society is this lawsuit happy.
My first accident driving a bus involved a Camry hitting it's right side mirror on the left rear corner of the bus. The only damage to the car was crack in the plastic housing but a passenger in the rear of the car sued me for $5,000,000. In addition to suing me he sued the driver of the car, City of NY, State of NY, NYC Transit, NYC DOT, GM , TMC, NOVA and Orion (four different bus manufacturers because he wasn't sure which I was driving even though it was on the accident report. When the time came for his lawyer to depose me the poor stenographer couldn't stop laughing. My attorney said it was the first time he had heard someone paraphrase Airplane quotes under oath. It happened almost 5 years after the accident and went on for three hours. Besides the odd answers I could work in There were enough "I don't recalls" that I started to lapse into a bad Reagan impression.
In reply to Wallie :
So in a world where we allow that sort of wasteful abuse of the system for such an absurd lawsuit to occur it seems we've brought these on ourselves.
Maybe when stupid frivolous lawsuits get thrown out the plaintif AND their lawyer get sentenced to 30 days in the pokey to think about their stupidity. No appeal, no financial replacement. Just have them each do a month to think.
racerdave600 wrote:JG Pasterjak wrote: Not all faulty product lawsuits are wanton cash/glory grabs. I think ultimately the suit will show that the incident owed mostly to human error and fallibility, but I can't hate a kid for wanting to pursue a further investigation into what killed her parent. But of course she'll lose, because we all know that no German automaker would ever release a car for public sale with any sort of undisclosed fault.I'm not so sure she will lose. It depends if it goes to a jury trial. If so, the facts may not play as important a role as emotions and how good the attorneys are.
If you read the comments in the article by her attorney this is so true.
Having talked to someone hired to investigate this crash many of your assumptions about the driver and speed are a little off. And Roger died from the impact with the pole. Paul died from the fire as he was unconscious following the hit and therefore not able to extricate himself from the car. I can say no more but Porsche should be cleared, as well as Roger.
In reply to KyAllroad: I just saw several things today blaming an evil 16 year old kid for bullying Porsche. While blaming a kid makes for sensational headlines I would imagine there's an adult or two involved that carry more responsibility for filing the suit.
vwcorvette wrote: Having talked to someone hired to investigate this crash many of your assumptions about the driver and speed are a little off. And Roger died from the impact with the pole. Paul died from the fire as he was unconscious following the hit and therefore not able to extricate himself from the car. I can say no more but Porsche should be cleared, as well as Roger.
Wait.... what? This is the worst kind of teaser, are you saying what I think you were saying?
In reply to aussiesmg:
Deep Announcer Voice said: Tune in next time for our thrilling conclusion.
aussiesmg wrote:vwcorvette wrote: Having talked to someone hired to investigate this crash many of your assumptions about the driver and speed are a little off. And Roger died from the impact with the pole. Paul died from the fire as he was unconscious following the hit and therefore not able to extricate himself from the car. I can say no more but Porsche should be cleared, as well as Roger.Wait.... what? This is the worst kind of teaser, are you saying what I think you were saying?
Um, that depends on what you think I was saying. I can say no more. I'm waiting to see how things play out in court. That's all.
racerdave600 wrote:JG Pasterjak wrote: Not all faulty product lawsuits are wanton cash/glory grabs. I think ultimately the suit will show that the incident owed mostly to human error and fallibility, but I can't hate a kid for wanting to pursue a further investigation into what killed her parent. But of course she'll lose, because we all know that no German automaker would ever release a car for public sale with any sort of undisclosed fault.I'm not so sure she will lose. It depends if it goes to a jury trial. If so, the facts may not play as important a role as emotions and how good the attorneys are.
Yeah Porsche has some of the best if not the best attorneys in the world. Something tells me that it will never get close to a jury. The system is designed to go after the accuser for fees as well in most cases like this she might not have much inheritance after Porsche gets done with her.
Having said this, that looks like a hell of crash, plus the tires were allegedly like 7 years old at the time.
I heard an interview with the lawyer today on the radio and all I thought was about how sad it is for our culture that it is trending so hard away from taking personal responsibility for your actions. Things like this inevitably will spell the end of big power sports cars at some point. It's a shame that people aren't able to let themselves accept that bad decisions are on the people that make them. Walker made a bad decision getting in the car with someone who couldn't control it, and the driver made a bad decision by doing things in a car that led to him running out of talent and killing himself and his friend. End of story.
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