1,300HP Mercury Comet has brake failure causing the car to slam into the back of a minivan causing injuries to the driver and passenger. Everyone has healed from the accident and the car will be back on the road one day. Buy Merch: https://atlamerch.com/ AutotopiaLA Social Media: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/autotopiala/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/autotopiala/ Web https://www.autotopiala.com Paul Welsh - Videography & Tech support: https://www.instagram.com/mr.paulwelsh/ Builder's Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/russsto/?hl=en Edited by Kyle Simon: https://www.instagram.com/_kylesimon/ We want to hear from you. Like the music? Like the cars? Like the locations? Tell us what you’d like to see and we’ll do our best to bring it to you as we continue creating content. Thanks for watching and help spread the word by telling your friends to check out AutotopiaLA! New episode every Tuesday and Friday at 5 pm (pst).
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This is Russ, as I sat in the hospital for a couple days, I replayed everything in my head hundreds of times, things that I should have noticed as a warning, and what I could have done differently. I’ve seen lots of comments so I’ll address a few of them, not being defensive at all. In a normal car throttle sticking at 2200 RPM’s is not the end of the world, in my car that’s 900 ft/lbs of torque. I should have realized the load that was putting on the brakes. Didn’t cross my mind at the time. FYI: It had double springs on the throttle. In a normal car, I could have pulled emergency brake, I even got a quote at Good Guy’s Del Mar for an electronic e-brake & bigger brakes. Hindsight’s 20-20, I was just gonna trailer it to a few shows & not drive it much till I could do that. Why didn’t I downshift? Car had a B&M ratchet shifter, once I shifted up thru the gears you can’t downshift till you put it in park. So much going on in those last few seconds, forgot to downshift it after putting it in park, but it was probably too late to have had a big reduction in speed. As far as I know, driver of van was not seriously injured. Beauty of a modern car with crumple zones, self tightening seat belts & air bags. Car had liability coverage but no collision, I was still in the process of getting stated value insurance A
Someone who has worked as both a Tech and an Advisor, it blows my mind how little people think about brakes and tires. No matter if your vehicle makes 10 horsepower or 10,000hp, you need to be able to turn and stop. The fact that this gets overlooked on performance builds is just scary.
No emergency brake, sticky throttle, old and heated up brakes, only lapbelts then uploading everything to the internet for the Minivan's attorney to use in court. Priceless!
"Is that brakes I smell?" "Yeah, I gotta ride them. The accelerator's sticking at about 2200 rpms." "Oh, ok. Hey, can you pull over? We're going to end this now." How things should have gone down.
That owner is 100% responsible. Those brakes are definitely not designed for 1300 hp. You mentioned smelling the brakes. That's a huge warning sign. I feel bad for the poor people he smashed into.
Out of all of this, the biggest shock to me is that this dude only had liability insurance on a car he’d poured over 200k into.
"Brake failure" is a hell of a way to describe going out with a knowingly sticking throttle.
the real miracle here is that comments are still open 2 years later
The crash victim's lawyer thanks you effusively for this footage.
I feel bad for you bud. I would never get into a car with someone so irresponsible that they think 1300 hp and a sticky throttle isn’t enough to make him pull over and fix the problem. That’s an aweful situation for someone to put any other people into. Pure irresponsibility. Nothing more, nothing less.
- No brakes - No airbags - No shoulder belt - Steel dash It's just perfect.
This guy really talks a lot more about how their car is doing and shows a lot more care for their car rather than the person they crashed into.
'Hey your brakes are kind of old.' 'Nah, they're OK.' 'Shouldn't we wear our harnesses?' 'Nah, fuck it, we'll be fine.' 'Hey I smell the brakes burning up.' 'Yeah, I'm riding the break cuz the accelerator is stuck, it's fine.' 'Do you have insurance on this car?' 'Yeah I don't go for that insurance crap.' 'We're close to an intersection and a red light, don't you think we should slow down?' 'What's that? You want me to speed it up? Ok.'
Idling high, riding the brakes, smelling it and having too much faith in the braking system with too much ego with the video being recorded, a combination of things led to this and could have been easily prevented. Hopefully you all are ok.
I was feeling bad until he updated himself, his friend and a damn car and never mentioned the people they hurt
All of this concern for the mini van driver was really touching..
He built the car to try and show off what a badass he thinks he is, but now 10 million people just think he's a dumbass. Life is strange.
Imagine sitting with your family at a stoplight and two divorced dads come flying through your trunk. Then they make a video letting everyone know the car is ok.
"Install harnesses." -Don't upgrade or even maintain your brakes after serious performance upgrades. -Ignore that sticking throttle--got enough coin in this thing already. -And hey make sure to take it out into rush hour traffic for that youtube vid. -Brakes smell real hot but let's do some quick pulls in the middle lane. -Make a video of both of you acknowledging then placating glaring safety problems before even leaving the shop and never even mention the innocent people you smoked in a completely avoidable/negligently caused accident.
"As far as I know, driver of the van was not seriously damaged." Nevermind the clear lack of empathy, but the lack of understanding how much you very much could have impacted this person financially is revolting. Not only have you damaged their vehicle from you're own negligence, but they now are out a vehicle and considering it is a van it could be their only transportation for moving a family/ kids around. They have to go through the process of dealing with insurance, which is more than a headache even if not piled on top of trying to heal. Absolutely appalling.