Colo

Who has a court date the day after they're issued a ticket?

HUGE difference here is that the POS and Lamborghini were not only street racing, but when the Lamborghini impacted the Volvo, he did so while passing another vehicle in opposing lanes. The vehicles were driving recklessly, physically all over the road, and were committing significant illegal acts just when the accident occurred - not just going 70, or whatever the number ends up being, in a 45. Furthermore, in this incident, multiple people died. Unfortunately, whatever the outcome is, the eventual charges on the drivers of the Mercedes and Mustang will be lessened based on the fact that the driver of the Camaro was turning directly in front of them at the time. Had they been in opposite lanes taking out someone doing something unquestionably legal, the outcome would probably be different.

Wow -- I hate to say it, but I'm feeling less and less inclined to feel sorry for the Mercedes and Mustang drivers. Originally it seemed like 70mph in a 45mph, while irresponsible, wasn't too horrible, that the cars may not have been racing, and that the Camaro might share partial blame for the accident. But the driver of the Camaro was thrown seventy five feet. That's a ridiculous number when you consider that he was inside a vehicle at the time of impact. I think if everyone on here was perfectly honest, we would all admit to having raced from time to time, or at least in the past. I know I have. But who would take it this far? Triple digit speeds on public roads - with intersections, traffic lights, turning traffic - is out of this world. I sincerely hope they eventually find out these guys were doing no more than 70, or maybe even less, but it's looking less and less like that's a possibility. Seventy five feet... unbelievable.

And the accident investigator will look deeply into this to determine a speed. They rarely get these speeds wrong when all is said and done, and the road was closed for a long time so they could take accurate measurements.

Even though it uses the most tried-and-true engine on the automarket?

RomanDad -- I suggest you Google some street racing convictions. They're never convicted of second-degree murder, even in significantly more serious circumstances than this. It's just not going to happen.

I'd be surprised if something like this even had to go through a grand jury... typically things like this don't.

Allan, really -- the police said speeds weren't above 70mph, and they probably weren't. I know you saw a mangled car, but remember it was 35 years old and had been hit by two heavy vehicles both traveling at a very high speed. If the police say it's 70mph, they've done this calculation using both evidence at the scene and various mathematical formulas, and they will not be able to prove any higher speeds than that in court. Witnesses? Did they have radar guns? Think for a second. A witness hears screaming engines and sees two cars in excess of the speed limit. It's their reaction to sensationalize the incident. They claim 100mph, but since when do random people on the street even know what 100mph looks like? They will rarely see vehicles ever travelling that fast. On a street where the speed limit is 45mph, cars going in gross excess of that (70mph) will look a lot faster. Eyewitnesses are unreliable in court, and in this case, the police's calculations of the speed will be the evidence that is used. Read this article about eyewitness testimony in cases like this before giving too much credit to the witnesses!

It is very unlikely that this case will go to trial on the charges as they have been presented now. Just here on this forum we're able to aptly portray "reasonable doubt" to a group of relatively biased people who dislike the defendant -- imagine what a skilled attorney can do to a random sample of the area's population. Assuming the vehicles were street racing, here's the difference between this particular incident and a lot of street racing incidents: aside from going fast, the vehicles involved here were really not doing anything wrong -- and they really weren't going that fast, either. I just spent a few minutes Googling street racing convictions, and there were few jail terms even approaching five years -- and those were only for the most heinous crimes (like multiple deaths, multiple offenses, or triple-digit speeds through traffic). My guess: both Bluemax and the Mustang driver will plead to lesser (misdemeanor) charges which will carry little or no jail time, long probationary periods, long periods without their drivers' licenses, and significant community service. Because of the different burden of proof in a civil courtroom, if a civil suit is filed, a jury will likely find that -- provided the Mustang and Mercedes NEVER topped 70mph -- the driver of the Camaro will be at least partially at fault. Of course, despite what mbworld posters are saying, he is criminally innocent.

In all honesty, I hope you're correct in that a) he wasn't drag racing. b) he wasn't going over 70mph. Furthemore, in all honesty, I hope that there is a data recorder inside one or both vehicles, and I hope it vindicates both drivers (as much as is possible, anyway). I'm sure we'd all rather this conclude with the investigators finding out that the vehicles weren't racing or excessively speeding, either -- even cynical, Mercedes-hating Allan. However, my own personal opinion is that we're going to find that these two vehicles were either racing or excessively speeding, and Bluemax is going to end up plea bargaining to a serious offense. juicee63, your loyalty to and defense of your friend is admirable, but between his posts on mbworld and the witness statements, it really looks like the only possible outcomes of this event for Bluemax are varying degrees of bad ones. Once again, I really hope I'm wrong. But inductive reasoning says I'm probably not. If you look at this photo of the overturned Mustang you can see that it clearly has twin exhausts, which are not available on the six-cylinder Mustang, and are standard on V8 models. There's no question that the Mustang involved was the 320-horsepower Mustang GT. Yes, I was assuming they were racing from a dead stop because juicee63 had mentioned that he thought from a dead stop, the vehicles would be going faster than 70mph at the point of impact. I think that any logical person would agree that from speeds above a dead stop, the vehicles could have been going faster than 70mph. My point was that regardless of the potential speeds of the vehicles, we need to take into account the fact that they probably rapidly decelerated as soon as they saw the Camaro turn in front of them, which would account for the significantly reduced speed being mentioned in the news reports.

The Mustang is clearly a GT - you can see the stock chrome wheels in the images from the crash scene. As posted above, the times are relatively close, and they get closer if the Mustang was modified. All accounts say the Mercedes hit the Camaro first. That's just a generalization, mostly applied to large sedans of the 1960s and 1970s, not muscle-ish cars like the second-generation Camaro. It may have been made of steel and iron rather than plastic and carbon fiber, but it's 35-year-old steel and iron, and a hit to that from a legal 50mph or a "reckless" 70mph isn't going to look very different to a passerby.

juicee63, you have made one very unreasonable assumption which you think completely vindicates Bluemax but actually is probably not factual. You have presumed that, because the Mercedes was only going ~70mph according to reports after 1,200 feet of travel, he was clearly not under full acceleration and thus was probably not racing the Mustang. A Mercedes E63 runs the quarter mile, which is 1,320 feet, in about 12.2 seconds at about 115mph. A 2005-_ Ford Mustang GT dues it at about 13.5 seconds at about 105mph. So, for 120 less feet, presume about 105mph for the Mercedes and 95mph for the Mustang. Of course, neither speed is ~70mph - but here's where you make your mistake. If a Camaro pulls out in front of you at about 1,100 feet, what do you do? If you're a Mustang and a Mercedes and you're street racing, you slam on the brakes. Suddenly 85mph in a Mustang and 90mph in a Mercedes quickly becomes... 70mph. And then the impact. Allan, you too have made a presumption that you have used to pass judgement perhaps too quickly on Bluemax. You have presumed that, based on what you saw of both the driver of the Camaro and the mangled wreck of the Camaro, that the vehicles simply must've been going quite fast. You state you were unable to even identify the vehicle as a Camaro upon coming up to the accident scene. But, have you taken into account that a 1973 Camaro really doesn't have significant crash protection areas? The car isn't built like cars of today, and it's going to crumple a lot faster and a lot worse than a modern car. Yes, the Camaro was destroyed, but even if it had been hit by two (relatively large) cars at just a touch above the speed limit, 50mph, it would've been completely hammered. This is a 35-year-old car, mind you, which was impacted by not one but two vehicles coming directly towards it. As for the driver, who you captured the camera phone picture of thrown from the accident, I can say the same things: he's an older man who is, thus, presumably relatively light himself, unbuckled and inside a 35-year-old car with no crash protection areas. My contention is that for you, a simple passerby, it would be almost impossible to tell the difference between the two cars impacting the Camaro at a legal speed (50mph) and the estimated speed (70mph).

Maybe I can try to convince the officer to write the points against my sledding license -- I can't afford any more points on my driver's license! Imagine losing your driver's license for doing 15mph donuts in an empty parking lot at 2am!

Indeed -- it leaves it vague so that a judge or jury can decide. 100mph in a 65 zone in the middle of the desert may not be considered reckless, while 100 in a 65 zone in a major metropolitan area probably would be. It's smarter the way California does it (i.e. not assigning a speed to it) because conditions are never uniform. By the way, this is scary: Any person who drives any vehicle in any offstreet parking facility, as defined in subdivision © of Section 12500, in willful or wanton disregard for the safety of persons or property is guilty of reckless driving. I've been doing donuts in snow-covered parking lots for the last week -- I can't believe it's considered 'reckless driving'! EDIT: obviously, regardless of the true legal definition, what occurred with the E63 and the Mustang was reckless driving, since they caused an accident. I'm just being technical here.

It's vague for California (because it only quotes the state statute dealing specifically with 100+ over; presumably general speeding is left to courts to decide recklessness), but for many states it's very precise. I know from personal experience that it is correct for Colorado.