[N & M]

May he Rest In Peace.

[Karmic Man]

Originally Posted by DCG

I think it is about time ALL BMW Ms get M xDrive wouldn't you say?!

If you want the added traction it is their if you need it, and if you don't, you the driver just simply has to hit a button. Sounds good to me!

The life you save may be your own.

xDrive can be turned into RWD too just as Traction control and Stability control can be turned off.

AWD cars also had a long history of fatalities. Over the years there were a fair number of high profile fatalities reported in GTR, Evo, WRX...etc

I wouldn't reply on xDrive technology to save a life plus it robs all the fun

Accidents happened regardless of the level of technology. Autonomous cars also killed people. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...car_fatalities)

The only tools that we can use to our greatest advantage is our mind. Be responsible and don't drive beyond our means, look out for others, don't drive when under alcohol, drug or sleep deprivation influence.

RIP

[Phatcat]

Originally Posted by beppeM3+123d

Generally speaking M2, especially in this season where you can have high humidity situations and very slippery road for high grip after couple of hours during the same day, is dangerous because you have to be aware from full throttle.

Is very very easy to lose control of the car especially with traction mode that is highly permissive.

All of us guys, the winter is coming, we have to forget full throttle to avoid very dangerous situations.

Rip

Ps I still do not understand why airbag doesn't explode.

BMW traction mode isn't highly permissive. It's the most intruding actually. But no traction control will save someone if he/she went into a corner too hot.

[A4W]

There's a serious discussion to be had on being honest about our relative skill or lack thereof as a driver, as well as how these incredibly powerful machines make you feel invincible, what with all the technological intervention and safety equipment.

It would keep us more honest, though likely kill more us, if there was less intervention like on old Porsches. If you lifted in a fast corner you might put the car in a ditch. But now all of these modern cars have a safety net, and even sometimes I forget how lethal they can be at speed. All I can say is drive carefully on public roads.

[Makaveli7]

May he rest in peace. Tragic news for everyone

[Artemis]

Originally Posted by DCG

I think it is about time ALL BMW Ms get M xDrive wouldn't you say?!

No, the first step should be some reality-check introspection by drivers. Just gently bang your head on your desk right now and imagine how this would feel at a substantial higher speed. With all technology and protection materials on board, a tendency of overestimating driving skills is human. The Laws of Nature cannot be defied.

Originally Posted by Karmic Man

The only tools that we can use to our greatest advantage is our mind. Be responsible and don't drive beyond our means, look out for others, don't drive when under alcohol, drug or sleep deprivation influence.

Originally Posted by A4W

There's a serious discussion to be had on being honest about our relative skill or lack thereof as a driver, as well as how these incredibly powerful machines make you feel invincible, what with all the technological intervention and safety equipment.
It would keep us more honest, though likely kill more us, if there was less intervention like on old Porsches. If you lifted in a fast corner you might put the car in a ditch. But now all of these modern cars have a safety net, and even sometimes I forget how lethal they can be at speed. All I can say is drive carefully on public roads.

Wise words.

[itsmorich01]

What a loss. May he rest in peace. Also looks like a BMW employee from the looks of it...

[ScottAndrew]

Originally Posted by DCG

I think it is about time ALL BMW Ms get M xDrive wouldn't you say?!
]

No - fitting AWD will just make a lot more drivers who don’t have a great deal of talent feel like they’re even more immortal, and they’ll crash at even higher speeds, possibly taking more people with them.

When the Subaru Impreza Turbo first came to the UK there was a series of high speed, high-profile accidents as the hard acceleration characteristics and ability to put power down was abused by neds and others of limited intelligence and ability. Previously used to low powered FWD tin, they rapidly ran out of talent and road.

You don’t give drivers more reasons to be able to go even faster when the car is already lethally fast.

[Robin_NL]

Originally Posted by ScottAndrew

No - fitting AWD will just make a lot more drivers who don’t have a great deal of talent feel like they’re even more immortal, and they’ll crash at even higher speeds, possibly taking more people with them.

When the Subaru Impreza Turbo first came to the UK there was a series of high speed, high-profile accidents as the hard acceleration characteristics and ability to put power down was abused by neds and others of limited intelligence and ability. Previously used to low powered FWD tin, they rapidly ran out of talent and road.

You don’t give drivers more reasons to be able to go even faster when the car is already lethally fast.

This exactly.

Cheers
Robin

[chris719]

Originally Posted by ScottAndrew

No - fitting AWD will just make a lot more drivers who don’t have a great deal of talent feel like they’re even more immortal, and they’ll crash at even higher speeds, possibly taking more people with them.

When the Subaru Impreza Turbo first came to the UK there was a series of high speed, high-profile accidents as the hard acceleration characteristics and ability to put power down was abused by neds and others of limited intelligence and ability. Previously used to low powered FWD tin, they rapidly ran out of talent and road.

You don’t give drivers more reasons to be able to go even faster when the car is already lethally fast.

That is true, but most amateurs get into trouble with oversteer rather than understeer. Definitely less likely to hit a tree backwards with a car like an Audi that terminally understeers. You will just plow right into it instead. Usually a safer type of accident.

[ScottAndrew]

Originally Posted by chris719

That is true, but most amateurs get into trouble with oversteer rather than understeer. Definitely less likely to hit a tree backwards with a car like an Audi that terminally understeers. You will just plow right into it instead. Usually a safer type of accident.

Possibly - this accident ended sideways but we don't know how it got there. There are plenty of videos on YouTube showing Audis and other 4WD machinery broadsided into a tree, sometimes stuck in a tree, such is the ferocity of the manner in which they left the road. And there are always drivers out there who think that when you have 4WD, you automatically get more mechanical grip from the same four tyres fitted to RWD or FWD, that you can pull more g, that the car won't slip sideways on poor surfaces, and so on.

I'm willing to bet that in the last terrible moments before that accident claimed the life of the driver, he wasn't wishing to himself that he could accelerate out of danger by directing lots of power to the front wheels. Even if the car had gone less sideways because the oversteer (if it was oversteer) wasn't as pronounced, who's to know he wouldn't have suffered in whatever accident ensued, or that with all this 4WD control and power at his disposal, the next accident he had would be even more devastating?

We won't know the dynamics of the accident, but conceptually, giving people who aren't professional drivers even more opportunity to go even faster in the quest to stop them crashing of their own will is just a licence for more death. I mean I'm personally unaffected by all of this, I don't race, I don't drive like that on public roads, I don't even go where people drive like this... But there you go.

[Robin_NL]

With all the nannies ON it's actually 'impossible' to go sideways/skid whatever in an M2/C. Been there done that (ATP Papenburg testtrack Germany) . Even with higher speeds it understeers like hell and brakes whatever wheel must be braked to keep the car on the 'straight line'....

Cheers
Robin

[Poochie]

AWD, 2WD or 1WD (No LSD) using the wrong compound of tires in a mis-matched season is a recipe for disaster (Eg. summer tires in the winter).

As the temperature drops here in the US-Northeast, I can feel the vehicle losing traction on summer tires, when I step on it.. Something that was foreign just a month ago..

A lot of people with sporty cars haven't caught on to this phenomenon and unfortunately paid the ultimate price for ignorance.

Long story longer; use season-appropriate tires.. It's not just marketing, could mean all the difference..

https://mobiloil.com/en/article/trav...ires-in-winter

[Karmic Man]

No amount of technology will save this BMW X? or the guy in it

Car ripped into three with debris across six lanes of highway...happened nearly 2 weeks ago

[LinkF1]

Originally Posted by ScottAndrew

Possibly - this accident ended sideways but we don't know how it got there.

We have some good clues from the pictures.

Based on the tire tracks and the direction of crumpling on the roof, the car oversteered, swapped ends, hit the trees at an oblique angle moving backwards and still had enough momentum to end up a hundred meters into the field across the road from the point of impact.

RIP to the driver, and a warning to us all.

[ScottAndrew]

Originally Posted by LinkF1

We have some good clues from the pictures.

Based on the tire tracks and the direction of crumpling on the roof, the car oversteered, swapped ends, hit the trees at an oblique angle moving backwards and still had enough momentum to end up a hundred meters into the field across the road from the point of impact.

RIP to the driver, and a warning to us all.

Good heavens.

For the car to continue at up to 100m in a field, pointing in all sorts of directions, tyres tearing out huge lumps of turf out of the earth, after an impact with an unmoving object that in all likelihood was severe enough to take the driver’s life, the car must have been going at tremendously high speed. Yes, it's a sober warning.

The only thing an electronic nanny could do to save the driver's life is just slow him down in the first place. Using GPS to limit the car's speed to some factor-based percentage at, above or below the posted speed limit depending on weather and known traffic conditions, RADAR to detect obstacles near and far... but I don't think any of us want that sort of intervention.

However if you want the car to 100% save you in any situation, you must hand over control of it. Without those, there is no nanny that can bend the laws of physics enough to save you after massively overcooking it at 100 mph, bouncing off a tree hard enough to kill you and sending you another hundred metres into a field.

Understeering is still skidding, as it goes . Try and turn into Karussell at 130 mph, even with all the traction control in the world, you will still fly off the track and in all likelihood, kill yourself...

[ScottAndrew]

Originally Posted by Karmic Man

No amount of technology will save this BMW X? or the guy in it

Car ripped into three with debris across six lanes of highway...happened nearly 2 weeks ago

Good.

I hope it hurt him as much as it hurt his precious bloody car. At least it was slow enough to allow others not to get caught up in his stupid, ham-fisted, bullshit "driving".

[Artemis]

Originally Posted by LinkF1

We have some good clues from the pictures.
Based on the tire tracks and the direction of crumpling on the roof, the car oversteered, swapped ends, hit the trees at an oblique angle moving backwards and still had enough momentum to end up a hundred meters into the field across the road from the point of impact.
RIP to the driver, and a warning to us all.

Originally Posted by ScottAndrew

Good heavens.
For the car to continue at up to 100m in a field, pointing in all sorts of directions, tyres tearing out huge lumps of turf out of the earth, after an impact with an unmoving object that in all likelihood was severe enough to take the driver’s life, the car must have been going at tremendously high speed. Yes, it's a sober warning.

Originally Posted by lemetier

It appears he was impaled by a tree limb from what I can see.

According to the German newspaper article reporting the accident, the driver had apparently tried to overtake another vehicle near/in a left turn upon leaving the town. It appears that a wheel hit the grass next to the road and the car skidded. The driver 'heavily counter-steered' and the car went oversteer 180° across the road (approx. 70 meters), violently slamming with the driver's side into a tree on the right hand side of the road (car positioned in the opposite direction of the initial driving direction). Subsequently the car was 'catapulted' over the road again onto a meadow on the left hand side of the road. The car came to a stop at approx. 40 meters distance from the road. Fishtailing crash.

[E39hijinks]

RIP..

Yep.. just not enough car there on the side (in all cars) to slow you down enough to where your organs and brain don't sustain excessive force. Cars would be safer if they were giant squares with the humans right in the middle. Unfortunately that would not be practical. So keep this in mind when you drive your car. The sides are extremely vulnerable, even in a full size luxury car like an S Class.

You're likely good in a side pole crash up to 20-25 mph. Faster than that your chances go down drastically.

I always chill out when I see trees/poles scattered about and the road is wet. Since I know the physics/limits of cars and how cars are built. Look far ahead of you and anticipate potential threats if you are driving spiritedly. Expect the unexpected.

[E39hijinks]

And to add to the comment above the one above me... a car does not have to be doing a tremendously high speed to kill you with a direct pole strike to the driver's door. 35+ mph would do it. Based on the pictures, i'd estimate around 30-35 mph. This doesn't mean the car itself was doing 30-35 when overtaking, this is by the time he went in the grass, slide across the road, dirt, grass etc and struck the tree. Also all people are built different and one person may be able to take more Gs than another. For an impact like that the crush isn't that bad on the car. So it wasn't going that fast. The car did very well. but only so much 3-4" of inflated airbag can do to slow your head down.

[///M TOWN]

Moderators with all due respect maybe you can close the thread.

May he Rest In Peace !!

[Al1969]

Originally Posted by eDrive

Moderators with all due respect maybe you can close the thread.

May he Rest In Peace !!

On the opposite - This tragic event makes all of us driving M2´s how dangerous and quick it can go wrong... that will (hopefully) keep us safer ... sorry « edrive » !