DARWIN AWARD OF THE YEAR!
You all know about the Darwin Awards. It's an annual honour given to the person who did the gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way. Last year's winner was the fellow who was killed by a coke machine, which toppled over on top of him as he was attempting to tipea free soda out of it. And this year's nominee is: The Arizona highway patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal embedded into 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 not identifiable at the scene. The lab finally figured out what had happened. It seems the that the guy had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet assisted take-off, 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. Then he attached the JATO unit to his car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired the JATO! The facts as best as could be determined are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit the JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 3 miles from the crash site. This was established by the prominent scorched and melted asphalt at the location. The JATO, if operating properly, would have reached a 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, soon to be pilot, most likely would have experienced g-forces usually reserved for dog fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, basically causing them to become insignificant 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 tyres 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.
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