Now, the winner of this year's Darwin Award (awarded, as always, posthumously):
The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal embedded in the
side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The wreckage
resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was
unidentifiable at the scene. Police investigators finally pieced together the
mystery. An amateur rocket scientist.... had somehow gotten hold of a J A T O
unit (Jet Assisted Take Off, actually a solid fuel rocket) that is used to give
heavy military transport planes an extra 'push' for taking off from short
airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long,
straight stretch of road. He attached the J A T O unit to the car, jumped in,
got up some speed and fired off the J A T O!
The facts as best as could be determined are that the operator of the 1967
Impala hit the J A T O ignition at a distance of approximately 3.0 miles from
the crash site. This was established by the scorched and melted asphalt at that
location.
The J A T O, if operating properly, would have reached maximum thrust within 5
seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of 350 mph and
continuing at full power for an additional 20 -25 seconds.
The driver, and soon to be pilot, would have experienced G-forces usually
reserved for dog fighting F -14 jocks under full afterburners, causing him to
become irrelevant for the remainder of the event.
However, the automobile remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles
(15-20 seconds) before the driver applied and completely melted the brakes,
blowing the tires and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then
becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at a
height of 125 feet leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock.
Most of the driver's remains were not recoverable. However, small fragments of
bone, teeth and hair were extracted from the crater, and fingernail and bone
shards were removed from a piece of debris believed to be a portion of the
steering wheel.
Epilogue: It has been calculated that this moron attained a ground speed of
approximately 420-mph, though much of his voyage was not actually on the
ground.
You couldn't make this stuff up, could you?
