# Some Car Facts



## KmH (May 17, 2017)

The average American car sits doing nothing for *92%* of it's life. Accounting for all of a car's costs, fuel, insurance, depreciation, upkeep, etc the average US car owner pays $12,544 a year. Own a SUV or pickup truck? Add an additional $1908.
More than $0.80  of each $1 spent on gasoline is wasted by the inherent inefficiencies of the modern internal combustion engine. No part of our transportation infrastructure and daily lives wastes more energy than the modern automobile.

The traffic death toll in 2015 exceeded 3000 deaths per month, or more than 12 (per year) of the coordinated terrorist attacks on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001 that killed 2,996 people.
2.5 million people are _seriously_ injured in car crashes each year. The only wars we have had that had a higher injury rate were the Civil War, WWI & WWII.

If the price of gasoline reflected the true cost and various types of damage cars cause gas would cost way more than $10 per gallon.

Lets consider the impact automobiles have on Earth's global environment.
Commercial airliners contribute 8% of US transportation related greenhouse gases. Between June 2014 and May 2015 US commercial flyers took 779 million airline trips.
Americans take 1.1 *billion* car trips *every day*. And the vast majority of those car trips serve to transport *just 1 person*.
So cars, trucks, and SUVs contribute *83%* of US transportation related greenhouse gases.

The total yearly economic & societal cost of motor vehicle death and injury is pegged at $826 billion.
The yearly direct costs alone - medical bills, taxes, insurance payments - come to $784 for every man, woman, _and child_ in the US.

Lets look closer at the yearly serious injuries number (injuries requiring emergency room trauma care) which is about 2.5 *million* people per year compared to US wars.
If you _combine_ the number of wounded _& dead_ from the _Revolution_, the _War of 1812,_ _WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, _&_ Iraq_, - you would still come up short.

All this waste, pollution and carnage is pretty much taken for granted and just considered 'status quo'.

Against the numbers above, one of the hottest issues in the US is about the fact firearms are used to kill some 13,000 people a year in the U.S., not counting suicide, even though driving a car in the US is more dangerous than going to fight in a shooting war.

Fail.


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## table1349 (May 17, 2017)

But no one tells me my car is overbooked, randomly decides I have to vacate my car and then beats me up.  I think I will keep my car.


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## smoke665 (May 17, 2017)

Saw this on the news the other night. Since it's on the tail end of my driving anyhow, I guess it won't matter much to me one way or the other. 

Why hardly anyone will own a car in 2030


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## snowbear (May 17, 2017)

I thought that gas powered lawn mowers were worse; and possibly boats (where fuel consumption is typically measured in gallons per hour)


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## limr (May 17, 2017)

Yeah. Not giving up my car.


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## limr (May 17, 2017)

smoke665 said:


> Saw this on the news the other night. Since it's on the tail end of my driving anyhow, I guess it won't matter much to me one way or the other.
> 
> Why hardly anyone will own a car in 2030



I don't buy that for a second.


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## Derrel (May 17, 2017)

The impact of Car #1, the white car, caused a lot of damage to the rear section of Car #2, the silver vehicle.

 
The driver of Car #3 is being checked out by paramedics, complaining of neck pain.

 

Here the silver vehicle, Car #2 has been separated from Car #1, at the direction of the responding police officer.

How WEIRD!!!! Today on my way home,les than three hours ago, my car (Car #4,not shoiwn in these photos) was hit from behind in a chain-reaction car crash at a stoplight on US Highway 30. My car's rear bumper took all the impact of the car behind me and left my car UN-damaged! Hooray! (I call that guy Car #3, the car that sdlammed into me)!

The two cars behind him were seriously smashed up!  Car #2 had its rear section damaged quite a bit; the car that caused the crash, Car #1, was a white Hyundai Elantra driven by a 20-something young woman.

The 65 year-old driver of Car #3 was taken to the hospital.


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## smoke665 (May 17, 2017)

Few years ago just out of Huntsville, AL on the south bound lanes over the TN river I saw hood's and trunks crumple way up ahead. Some creative braking allowed me to not only stop but keep the one behind from rear ending me. When the dust settled and the chain reaction ended I was in the center of the bridge, the only one of 38 cars without a mark.


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## table1349 (May 17, 2017)

smoke665 said:


> Saw this on the news the other night. Since it's on the tail end of my driving anyhow, I guess it won't matter much to me one way or the other.
> 
> Why hardly anyone will own a car in 2030


I read that when it came out.   Made me think back to when I was a kid.  We were supposed to all be using flying cars, as in the Jetsons.   There was even a TV show, _The New Bob Cummings Show_, that featured an Aero Car.  Where I live we still aren't using flying cars, so I will believe the above article when I see it.


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## crzyfotopeeple (May 18, 2017)

Nice diatribe. It's almost a if you are offended at the thought of cars and personal transportation.

Pollution you say, how about all the crap in the street when everyone rode a horse. Yuck!

Also, that horse stood around most of the time consuming food and taking up valuable space.


Dangerous. Yes, operating a motor vehicle is an inherently a dangerous activity. However, the freedom of uninhibited travel is a fundamental exercise that is responsible for a lot of great things about this country. You take some risk to maintain personal freedoms.

I know though, let's just eliminate all the bad, scary things in the world because it doesn't fit someones idea of their utopia. Feeling the need to force my particular viewpoint on everyone. 

I guess I could get caught in a shooting war while driving in my evil car. Imagine my odds of survival in that situation.


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## smoke665 (May 18, 2017)

In metro areas where traffic, and worse parking is a problem, a driverless electric car that I could summon to pick me up and deliver me to the next stop wouldn't be any different then using a taxi now. If vehicles continue to increase in price then at some point they will price themselves out of business. Ford and others are in a slump right now. The problem I see is that having fleets of driverless cars positioned in the vast rural areas of this country is going to be a logistic nightmare.


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## KmH (May 18, 2017)

crzyfotopeeple said:


> Nice diatribe.


It's not a diatribe. It's just facts most people aren't aware of.


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## runnah (May 18, 2017)

smoke665 said:


> Saw this on the news the other night. Since it's on the tail end of my driving anyhow, I guess it won't matter much to me one way or the other.
> 
> Why hardly anyone will own a car in 2030



Meh they always base these on large population centers but they forget that most of the country is big and empty and requires people to travel way more than current electric vehicles are capable of.


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## runnah (May 18, 2017)

KmH said:


> crzyfotopeeple said:
> 
> 
> > Nice diatribe.
> ...



Don't let facts get in the way of a good opinion I always say.


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## table1349 (May 18, 2017)

Other facts most people aren't aware of:

In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world's nuclear weapons combined.

On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year.

On average people fear spiders more than they do death.

Ninety percent of New York City cabbies are recently arrived immigrants.

Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.

Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

It's possible to lead a cow upstairs...but not downstairs.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

Table tennis balls have been known to travel off the paddle at speeds up to 160 km/hr.

Pepsi originally contained pepsin, thus the name.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

The electric chair was invented by a dentist. (hmmmmmmm)

In ancient Egypt, priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.

"Go." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

If Barbie were life-size, her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall.

The original story from "Tales of 1001 Arabian Nights" begins, "Aladdin was a little Chinese boy."

Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.

Honey is the only natural food that is made without destroying any kind of life. What about milk you say?

A snail can sleep for three years.

No word in the English language rhymes with "MONTH".

Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.

Michael Jordan makes more money from NIKE annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.

The volume of the earth's moon is the same as the volume of the Pacific Ocean.

Cephalacaudal recapitulation is the reason our extremities develop faster than the rest of us.

A cow has to eat grass to produce milk and grass is living.

The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.

The "pound" key on your keyboard (#) is called an octotroph.

The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat.

The "dot" over the letter "i" is called a tittle.

Spiral staircases in medieval castles are running clockwise. This is because all knights used to be
right-handed. When the intruding army would climb the stairs they would not be able to use their right hand which was holding the sword because of the difficulties of climbing the stairs. Left-handed knights would have had no troubles, except left-handed people could never become knights because it was assumed that they were descendants of the devil.


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## Derrel (May 18, 2017)

I wanna' meet one of those 100 people_ who choked to death on a ballpoint pen last year_!

Waiiiiit a second....on second thought, maybe not so much....


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## smoke665 (May 18, 2017)

How can you choke to death on a ball point pen? Wonder if they wear name tags


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## Derrel (May 18, 2017)

smoke665 said:


> How can you choke to death on a ball point pen? Wonder if they wear name tags
> View attachment 140125



Yeah, I mean no s***...how in the HECK can a person choke to death on a ballpoint pen!!! That seems totally,totally weird!


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## table1349 (May 18, 2017)

Well there are 7.5 billion people currently living on the earth and only 100 people die a year from choking on a ball point pen.  Now we know the bottom starting point of the intelligence bell curve.


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## smoke665 (May 18, 2017)

gryphonslair99 said:


> 100 people die a year from choking on a ball point pen. Now we know the bottom starting point of intelligence bell curve.



Might be a necessary "thinning of the herd".


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## table1349 (May 18, 2017)

More useless facts. 

There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous. 

Los Angeles' full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula" 

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear. 

Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur. 

In most advertisements, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10. 

Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer. 

The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life." 

A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours. 

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds. 

A dime has 118 ridges around the edge. 

It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. 

The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world. 

In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak. 

The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket. 

Mr. Rogers was an ordained minister. 

The average person falls asleep in seven minutes. 

There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball. 

Stewardesses" is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand. 

A rat can last longer without water than a camel.

Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.

A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously  from the bottom of the glass to the top.

A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.

A 2" X 4" is really 1-1/2" by 3-1/2".

During the chariot scene in "Ben Hur," a small red car can be seen in the distance.

On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily (I knew it!).

Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.

The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.

There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with orange, purple, and silver. What about "month?"

The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan." There was never a recorded Wendy before.

The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin in World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death. 

Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to slow film down while shooting so you could see his moves. That's the opposite of the norm.

The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA."

The original name for butterfly was flutterby.

The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that  you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.

Roses may be red, but violets are indeed violet.

By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.

Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.

Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.

Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

Sherlock Holmes NEVER said, "Elementary, my dear Watson."

An old law in Bellingham, Washington made it illegal for a woman to take more than 3 steps backwards while dancing.

The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.

The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from public libraries.

Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a space suit damages them.


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## smoke665 (May 18, 2017)

gryphonslair99 said:


> A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a ma



Similar lines have been used by teenage boys throughout history


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## limr (May 18, 2017)

How about we stick to the car discussion? The thread is not titled "Random facts."


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## webestang64 (May 18, 2017)

It's a fact!!! You would have to pry my car keys out of my dead cold hand before I give up my 4 automobiles.


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## smoke665 (May 18, 2017)

How about in 2011 of the 59,000 babies born outside of a hospital 6600 were in a vehicle. Try that in a smart car.


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## smoke665 (May 18, 2017)

Couldn't find any data on conception but based on the VW ad it must be a lot for them to promote it as a sales feature!


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## runnah (May 19, 2017)

Derrel said:


> I wanna' meet one of those 100 people_ who choked to death on a ballpoint pen last year_!
> 
> Waiiiiit a second....on second thought, maybe not so much....



Bring a shovel.


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## KmH (May 19, 2017)

The current private car ownership model is unsustainable in the long term for a variety of reasons.

The current street and highway system is in serious need of repair and maintenance.
Current estimates are that the cost to bring our road & road bridge infrastructure up to snuff after years and years of deferred work is 2.6 *TRILLION* dollars.
One-third of road bridges are adjudicated as 'unsafe'.
Current the US road system is rated at only 16th best in the world because of it's crumbling infrastructure.
The 18.6 cent per gallon gasoline tax for road maintenance has not been raise since 1996 and today barely pays half of what is actually spent on road maintenance.
In other words the federal government heavily subsidizes the cost of using our cars.

The younger generation, known as Millennials, drives fewer miles and has less interest in car ownership that any generation since cars became the ubiquitous means of personal transportation.
Actually Americans as a whole are driving fewer miles and cars are more fuel efficient further reducing the amount of $$$$$s going into the gas tax fund.
More and more people are using ride sharing apps and services like Lyft and Uber indicating that the use of smart cell phones is likely to be a game changer.

Autonomous, self-driving cars are coming.
Some details still need to be worked out.
Car makers would like to see personal car ownership continue with cars being capable of both self driving and being driven by their human owners. Unfortunately, systems that rely on a human taking over in an emergency have shown repeatedly that humans don't react fast enough to take over successfully. Today, humans in total control of the vehicle don't pay sufficient attention. Expecting them to pay sufficient attention to detect and react to an emergency by taking over from a self-driving system int eh car is ludicrous. But that's the direction the major car makers are going with the development of systems they want to add to their cars.

However that fails to solve many of the current problems caused by personal car ownership.
Primary to that is the needless 35,000 or so deaths on the roads each year and the billions in associated costs.
Fully autonomous cars that cannot be 'taken over' by humans do solve most of the current problems.
Most of those 35,000 deaths and 2.5 million visits to an emergency room would disappear.

A self-driving car not personally owned would not set idle for 22 out of every 24 hours a day.
Self driving cars that spend the vast majority of their time taking people to and fro would need to be replaced more often than the 10 years average personally owned vehicles are now replaced. It may not be as bad for car makers as they think, if the opt to make self-driving cars, retain ownership of those cars, and bank the $$s people would pay to use them.


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## smoke665 (May 19, 2017)

KmH said:


> The 18.6 cent per gallon gasoline tax for road maintenance has not been raise since 1996 and today barely pays half of what is actually spent on road maintenance.



The whole method of funding for roads is self defeating. While the federal tax hasn't been raised, the states have been merrily adding tax on, in some cases and areas by $.37/gal. And that's just gasoline, it's $.24/gal on diesel, plus as much as $.56/gal local and state in some areas. At the same time with fuel mileage going up and miles going down even with the higher taxes they can't keep up with maintenance on the roads. Judging by the condition of our federal interstates, I'd have to disagree with you about the Feds subsidizing anything, ignoring is more like it.



KmH said:


> Fully autonomous cars that cannot be 'taken over' by humans do solve most of the current problems



While fully autonomous cars might prevent some accidents, I fail to see how they will solve all our problems. They still have to have roads to travel on. What about every single item you consume??? Still need trucks to deliver.


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## KmH (May 19, 2017)

Yes. But those trucks don't necessarily need human drivers.
Indeed, the way we consume things now is what will drive the death of the privately owned car.

Trucks are more ripe for being converted to self driving than passenger cars are.
There are 3 million trucks (not pickups) in the US.
1.7 million of those are long haul trucks.
The long haul trucks will get converted to self-driving first. The big long haul companies are fed up with the humongous driver turnover they have. At some of the larger long haul trucking companies their driver turnover rate exceeds 100% per year.
But the trucking companies are likely to own the self-driving trucks they use.

UPS is working hard on it's OMNI software. The software looks at the packages scheduled to be on a local delivery truck the next day and then tells the driver what order to deliver the packages in. The software configures the drivers route to be as short as possible.
UPS eliminated making left hand turns several years ago.

Googles self-driving cars still have trouble with heavy rain and snow, but I'm pretty sure they will get that worked out before to long.


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## smoke665 (May 19, 2017)

KmH said:


> Yes. But those trucks don't necessarily need human drivers.



Having owned an over the road trucking company for many years, I think I can safely say that as long as trucks travel the nations highways a human driver will always be needed. Driving a low speed vehicle on city streets is one thing, but piloting an 80,000#, 75' long vehicle down the highway is something entirely different. There are way to many variables to program, and AI isn't that advanced yet. They've tried rail/truck combinations but the nations rail system is in an equally sad state of affairs, and companies have been unwilling to give up their JIT inventory management. We had customers who gave us delivery windows of as little as +-30 mins before they shut down the plant and started assessing us penalties. Rail shipments can't match that kind of service. As long as companies expect a shipment to be 600 miles across country overnight while holding the truck at the loading dock for several hours while they finish up the order, there will always be a need for drivers that can adjust to changing circumstances. One of my best friends and neighbors is a retired  UPS Regional Manager. The package delivery/scheduling software has been in existence several years now. And yes they're always looking for innovations, but to his knowledge the drivers aren't going anywhere in the  foreseeable future either.

Lastly the "Insurance Lottery" on big truck accidents isn't going away. Lawyers all across the country salivate every time they hear of a truck accident, because they know it's not a matter of if they'll get something, it's how much. Being innocent in a truck doesn't keep you from paying out 7 figure settlements, because some idiot ran into you.


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## table1349 (May 19, 2017)

Americans will give up their vehicles about as soon as they will give up their guns.


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## Stotes57 (May 23, 2017)

KmH said:


> The average American car sits doing nothing for *92%* of it's life. Accounting for all of a car's costs, fuel, insurance, depreciation, upkeep, etc the average US car owner pays $12,544 a year. Own a SUV or pickup truck? Add an additional $1908.



This is all that matters to me.  

As much as I might want to drive a luxury automobile, I can't justify having 2 or more times as much money sitting in my driveway, and slowly blowing away in depreciation.  I have a hard cap of $30,000 (CDN) all in for a vehicle, and have always been able to buy new, or nearly new.  

I'd really love a DB11, but until I win the lottery, it's not going to happen.


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## waday (May 23, 2017)

Autonomous cars are not going away; in fact, they're the future. I'm excited for the possibility to see autonomous cars as the norm in my lifetime.


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## smoke665 (May 23, 2017)

History always repeats LOL


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## Designer (May 23, 2017)

* One Top Fuel dragster 500 cubic-inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower than the first 4 rows at the Daytona 500.

* Under full throttle, a dragster engine consumes 11.2 gallons of nitro methane per second; a fully loaded 747 consumes jet fuel at the same rate with 25% less energy being produced.

* A stock Dodge Hemi V8 engine cannot produce enough power to merely drive the dragster’s supercharger.

* With 3000 CFM of air being rammed in by the supercharger on overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into a near-solid form before ignition. Cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock at full throttle.

* At the stoichiometric 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture for nitro methane the flame front temperature measures 7050 degrees F.

* Nitro methane burns yellow. The spectacular white flame seen above the stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, dissociated from atmospheric water vapor by the searing exhaust gases.

* Dual magnetos supply 44 amps to each spark plug. This is the output of an arc welder in each cylinder.

* Spark plug electrodes are totally consumed during a pass. After 1/2 way, the engine is dieseling from compression plus the glow of exhaust valves at 1400 degrees F. The engine can only be shut down by cutting the fuel flow.

* If spark momentarily fails early in the run, unburned nitro builds up in the affected cylinders and then explodes with sufficient force to blow cylinder heads off the block in pieces or split the block in half.

* Dragsters reach over 300 MPH before you have completed reading this sentence.

* In order to exceed 300 MPH in 4.5 seconds, dragsters must accelerate an average of over 4 G’s. In order to reach 200 MPH well before half-track, the launch acceleration approaches 8 G’s.

* Top Fuel engines turn approximately 540 revolutions from light to light!

* Including the burnout, the engine must only survive 900 revolutions under load.

* The redline is actually quite high at 9500 RPM.

* THE BOTTOM LINE: Assuming all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, & for once, NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run costs an estimated $1,000 per second.

The current Top Fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.441 seconds for the quarter-mile (10/05/03, Tony Schumacher). The top speed record is 333.00 MPH (533 km/h) as measured over the last 66′ of the run (09/28/03, Doug Kalitta).

Putting this all into perspective:

Lets say the you are driving the average $140,000 Lingenfelter twin-turbo powered Corvette Z06.

Over a mile up the road, a Top Fuel dragster is staged & ready to launch down a quarter-mile strip as you pass by it. You have the advantage of a flying start. You run the ‘Vette hard up through the gears and blast across the starting line & pass the dragster at an honest 200 MPH. Just as you pass the Top Fuel Dragster the ‘tree’ goes green for both of you.

The dragster launches & starts after you. You keep your foot down hard, but you hear an incredibly brutal whine that sears your eardrums & within 3 seconds the dragster catches & passes you. He beats you to the finish line, a quarter-mile away from where you just passed him. Think about it – from a standing start, the dragster had spotted you 200 MPH & not only caught, but nearly blasted you off the road when he passed you within a mere 1320 foot long race!

That’s acceleration!


(source)
TOP FUEL DRAGSTER FAST FACTS - Super Coupe Club of Iowa


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## jake337 (May 23, 2017)

I'm just waiting for Tesla to have a model 3 + solar roof panel sale.


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## table1349 (May 24, 2017)

1. The most stolen car in the United States is the Honda Accord.

2. One of the ugliest vehicles ever made, the AMC Gremlin, pioneered the style that is now commonly seen in SUV’s – sloped side-window and high hood. The car was only manufactured for eight years (1970-1978) and numbered 671,475 units. The RRP was $1,879.00USD when it was first released, which these days would be over $11,000 USD.

3. In the past 50 years, motor vehicle fatalities in the USA have reduced by roughly 80%. The total number of fatalities for 2010 alone is the lowest in 62 years.

4. Whale oil was actually used in some car transmissions until 1973.

5. From 1908-1914, Ford’s Model T could be purchased in several different colors, but not black. In an effort to make production cheaper and more efficient, Ford chose to make all further Model T’s only in the color black (since black paint was cheap and durable).

6. The 1970 Oldsmobile 442 was capable of doing zero to 60 in less than six seconds. This speed was pretty impressive for the 70’s, especially for an Oldsmobile.

7. There are now three states that have legalized self-driving cars on the road: Nevada, Florida, and California. Nevada was the first to issue licenses, and did so to allow Google to test their self-driving cars on public streets. Article originally written in 2012, as of 2016 Utah, North Dakota, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Philadelphia, Vermont, and Washington DC have been added to the list. There was an executive order for Arizona and Massachusetts. Colorado, New York, and Alabama are also in progress. Michigan was the only to allow it without a driver in the car and passing this was in progress in California.

8. The 1946 Cisitalia 202 GT is so beautiful a car, that it is permanently exhibited in the New York Museum of Modern Art. The car sports has no sharp edges and is all one single sheet of aluminum. The car was only made from 1947 to 1952 and only 170 were ever produced.

9. Electric cars are not a new thing; they were already being manufactured in 1905. Rauch & Lang produced electric cars until 1920, when the gas-combustion engine became cheaper to run because of low gas prices.

10. The Volkswagen Beetle was originally called “Kraft durch Freude Wage” (“Strength Through Joy Car”). The small car was named thusly by Hitler, who in May of 1938 visited the factory and made his great announcement. The car was named after an organization within the Third Reich. After World War II, Volkswagen chose to change the name.

11. Last year there were 32,310 American fatalities due to auto accidents. This is the lowest fatality rate in over half a century. Seat belts are now being worn by 84% of people who travel in vehicles, compared to 14% just 30 years ago. Other improvements like air bags, stability control, crash impact standards, anti-lock brakes, and better tires also contribute to this great reduction.

12.            Quite a few high-end cars are already using technology to be more autonomous. Some features include: automatic braking that activates when sensors identify a crash is about to happen, self-adjusting cruise control to keep you from following another car too closely, anti-drifting steering, and self-parking. This is another one that is since a bit outdated, I won’t even try and update as the subject has changed greatly since we originally wrote this in 2012.

13.            Mr. H.H. Bliss, a real estate man from New York, was the first victim of vehicular manslaughter in the United States. In September of 1899, he exited a trolley car and was hit by an electric taxicab. Though he was not killed instantly, he did not survive the injuries to his head and chest.

14.            In 2004, Nevada was host to the first ever DARPA Grand Challenge. This is a competition for driverless cars, and the first year none of the participants completed the course. Since then, Google’s self-driving cars have completed over 140,000 miles of road travel, with only two small incidents; one of them caused by human error.

15.            Using the actual formula for horsepower (1 HP = power needed to lift 550 lbs. 1 ft. in 1 sec.), the average horse, over a longer period of time, will only produce around .7HP. Currently, a typical compact car will contain a 150HP engine; or the horsepower contained in around 214 horses.

16.            The average family sedan has contact patches (areas on the tires that are always touching the road) only covering around 100 square inches of road. This means all four tires only touch around as much road as your two feet placed next to each other.

17.            It is believed that self-driving cars will not only be able to improve the flow of traffic on highways (by way of sensing distances between cars and adjusting accordingly), but with the ability to park themselves, it will also strike out parking hassles. This will lead to fewer accidents, and reduced need for traffic control. This is the third one that is highly outdated due to the article being written in 2012, I’ll remove and replace these 3.

18.            The Transition, also known as The Flying Car, is actually a plane that can be safely driven on a road or highway, not a car that can fly. The first successful test flight was in 2009 and the Next Generation was unveiled in 2010.

19.            A researcher at Carnegie Mellon has developed new headlight technology that dodges raindrops, to avoid shining light on them. The flicker is too fast to be seen by the human eye, and it is estimated that the lights will make driving in rain significantly less dangerous. BMW has also developed “Dynamic Light Spot”, which finds nearby pedestrians and highlights them.

20.            In 2008, a 1961 Ferrari California Spyder became the most expensive car sold at a vintage car auction — $10,894,900 USD after the deduction of the auction fees.

Source:  Gearheads.


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