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Porsche Boxer goes airborne and crashing into the SECOND floor of a real estate office... 1

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JohnRBaker

JohnRBaker

Mechanical
Jun 1, 2006
35,612
Not quite an 'engineering disaster' except for the idea that someone actually built a car that was capable of doing something like this. I suspect that we'll all soon learn that, while high speed certainly contributed to this incident, other factors played a role, perhaps some sort of 'substance' abuse, be it liquid-based or otherwise:

Porsche launches into New Jersey building's second floor leaving 2 dead, police say


John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
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Irvine, CA
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WTF? How the heck did they do that? Supposedly, they went "down" an embankment, but...

hooper_nbaay5.png

73546702-22df-451e-ade1-54b646b7bb95-Toms_River-_Car_crashes_into_second_floor_of_building_41.jpeg


TTFN (ta ta for now)
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That "No Parking" sign must have been REALLY stiff!

Over 40 years ago, our car was vaulted into the air after being rear-ended by a drunk driver. We ended up on our top 100 feet from the point of impact. The impact threw us up and over the concrete median to the left and twisted us in air. Need to say, we made the papers here and I finally went "airborne", but not the way I imagined.

Hard to imagine what happened, but strange things do. He should have been racing in another brickyard though... and had to be going against traffic from what I see... May have actually caught a little air too...

Mike McCann, PE, SE (WA, HI)


 
I live about 10 miles from where this occurred.

The story I heard was they were going about 160 mph, which might put a lot of the head scratching over "how" to rest. I'm not sure how they could have possibly gotten 160 on that part of that road, but that's what I heard over the weekend. I'm sure some more verified details will come out.

Edit: now that I looked at it myself, I think it was entirely possible to get to 160 there coming off that turn, going down hill. Looks like they didn't turn, crossed the median, went into the grass on the other side, and got air off the drainage ditch lip or rise on the other side of the road to me.

Andrew H.
 
Porsche: Watch me hit this house.
Train: Hold my beer:

Train_wreck_at_Montparnasse_1895_wxlxkj.jpg
 
This shows the skid marks and path of the vehicle:

Sucks for the passenger and his family. Darwin award for the driver.

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The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
 
I think it flipped. The marks are too far apart to be a frontal skid or loop.

It's just hit the kerb and gone airborne rolling over.

porche_oj6zhe.jpg


Can't see this going 160 - Not really enough distance to get to that sort of speed. - Google map 1466 Hooper Avenue, Toms River, New Jersey, USA

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.
 
I was skeptical about the speed too. I live right by there, I drive that road. As soon as you get past the mall, and if you are willing to blow the traffic lights, you've got just under a mile of fairly straight road to let loose. I don't know if 160 is realistic, but you could definitely get well over a hundred in the right car on that stretch.

Andrew H.
 
Yeah, guess so. Energy of a Boxster going 160 mph = 3.4 MJ Potential energy of Boxster at 30 ft = 0.12 MJ. so plenty of kinetic energy to go around for a couple of bounces; it just had to get the proper combination of bounces. The car didn't travel too far after going through the wall, so most of its KE was consumed by then, apparently.

I've actually stayed in Tom's River for a couple of days a long time ago; it's very close to the naval facility at Lakehurst.



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I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
One of the links above said the police didn't have a speed estimate, and the driver and passenger are dead, so any speed that pops up at this point is likely just somebody's wild guess.
If they have security footage, that could help on speed. If they have sound, you might be able to deduce speed from that.
 
I don't know how much data Porsche stores in their "black box" but my Vette keeps the last 5 seconds which would be more than enough to know how fast it was going.

----------------------------------------

The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
 
It is about 150 feet in the air from the curb to the structure and the vehicle was still over 10 feet in the air when it hit.

Edit: The height of the vehicle is close to 15 feet based on the brick coursework. The building is situated about 5 feet below the road from Google Earth. That's almost enough data to work out the launch speed.
 
The Boxster's rated top speed is 160 mph, so that's probably where the number comes from, according to The same page says that it can hit 120 mph in a half-mile, so it could have been going more than 120 mph.

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I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
A speed of 120mph seems to make more sense than 160 from the kinematics; unless the vehicle was still on the way up when it struck the building which would be harder to believe.
 
I saw it reported on the TV news. The car was wheels up in the building.
 
That might just be coincidence; the skid marks show it was going mostly sideways, but if it hit a curb, it could have caused the lateral motion to turn into a tumbling arc. It landed on its roof, but it must have hit the wall mostly with the roof, close to the rear, since there's no obvious buckling of the chassis from a side hit:
2WKSQGXHLRH5JM427AOLITWUNE.jpg


TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
I think it was going slower than you guys think. When a car gets into an accident at over 100 mph, the car is obliterated just like a bomb went off. 160 mph is 2.5 time more energy than 100 mph. I think it got a "lucky" bounce and wasn't going close to that fast.


Here is a mythbusters vid of a 100 mph crash. Even if it tumbled into the building, in my opinion, it would have been torn more up.


A vid of 120 mph

 
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