Posted on 07/14/2009 9:33:55 AM PDT by rdl6989
A man died after his car plunged 600 feet off the edge of the Grand Canyon's South Rim, authorities said Tuesday. The Arizona park's regional communications center received several reports of a car driving off the edge about 6 a.m. Monday, according to a written statement.
"Upon arriving at the scene, investigators found tire tracks leading to the edge behind the Thunderbird Lodge and received reports of a single occupant in a blue passenger car driving over the edge," the statement said.
Rescue personnel descended on ropes and found the vehicle about 600 feet into the canyon. The man's body was recovered shortly afterward, the statement said.
The incident occurred near the El Tovar hotel in a village on the canyon's South Rim, park spokeswoman Shannan Marcak said.
Authorities have not ruled the death a suicide, she said. "It has not been ruled anything at this time."
The statement said the National Park Service is investigating. Typically, Marcak said, such investigations take at least a few days.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
You forgot to include the amount of time it takes you to realize that you don't have land underneath you. That always delays the effect of gravity. Or at least that's what the professors at Warner Brothers University taught me.
Assume that our driver fell exactly 600 feet, and his forward velocity carried him out far enough that he hit nothing on the way down. Since his downward velocity was zero when the fall began, he accelerated for about 5 2/3 seconds before he hit the ground. He was going about 180 feet per second at impact, or 123 mph.
Ouch.
They'll schedule your hearings after the BCS question is thoroughly questioned.
Don’t you give me no Buick
Son, you must take my word
If there’s a God in heaven
He’s got a Silver Thunderbird
You can keep your Eldorado’s
And the foreign car’s absurd
Me, I wanna go down
In a Silver Thunderbird
Marc Cohn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXqVQzhIZ_g&feature=related
RIP.
I forgot about the Sedona gravitational anomaly.
The last time I was there was in early spring 1998. There was snow and ice everywhere. I didn’t even get out of the car in places where there were no guard rails etc.
I don’t blame him! I remember standing next to a fence on the edge of a much smaller precipice than would be found at the Grand Canyon. My body felt plastered to the fence, and I felt as if I was being pulled from my body through my eyes.
It was all I could do to push myself away from the fence. It felt like a magnet.
Sounds weird, I know, but it was not a happy feeling!
Ditto that!
I think a lot of it is being in a different and unfamiliar environment. People sometimes do things that they never would think or dare to do, if they were in familiar surroundings.
It’s almost as if they think they’re watching a movie or something.
Oddly enough, driving and riding through the Rockies didn’t bother me. It was so beautiful and I loved it. But, I hated driving through the Smokies for some reason. It was as if I had to fight the steering wheel to keep the car from drifting in some areas.
Another reason not to do it! I don't even want to think about the thing swaying in the wind, even if it didn't fall.
Thanks for the warning. lol.
Not to be a geek but there is a horizontal and vertical velocity component to the overall velocity.
Initially the vertical velocity was 0 mph, the horizontal was 40 mph.
As the car falls the horizontal velocity decreased to somewhere near zero and the vertical velocity increases according to the equation Vf = Vo+Ag * deltatime.
The time travelled is....blah, blah..
anyway...
neglecting air friction of course.
Was he driving an Obamobile??
Pray for America
No, the only way to honestly compare them would be on a trip-miles basis. Deaths per hour is as stupid as using furlongs per fortnight to measure travel. Worthless statistics.
The per-accident statistic is laughably sleazy way to compare things.
We did that just last month...the south-to-north road that meandered through the National Park. I kept thinking, "Lord, get me out of these damn mountains". I guess, in that part of the country, guardrails haven't been invented yet.
Tourists can now look straight down from the Sear's Tower's glass box
Ironically one of the reasons for the idea is the cleaning crews were constantly cleaning forehead smudges off the windows from those trying to look down.
Seems to me there would be other cleaning issues to deal with after walking out over the edge!
That hada hurt for a nano second.
YIKES! I wouldn’t go near that for ANYTHING!
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