Jump to content

US/Canada border near Niagara Falls explosion

Wally Fairway

By Wally Fairway
in Daily Texan

 Share

Recommended Posts

  • Popular Post
wood

wood 11225

Posted
  • Popular Post
Posted

I'm the insomniac in this house & errbody else went to bed a while ago, so I was bored. As a firefighter I've also developed the habit of trying to understand/reconstruct accidents after they happen. Been doing a little amateur investigating on the 3 videos and google maps.

I was mostly wondering what would have launched him like that and how far he might have been airborne. Coming down Main St., if he blew the turn and went straight through he'd have 'just' hit the concrete barrier outside the fence head on. Might have blasted through it or knocked it out of the way, but I don't see it launching the car the way it was launched. Based on the videos and the street detail, it looks to me like the car didn't come down Main St. at all like the one guy said, but instead came down Niagara St. (the 3 lane street). Looks like the car went off the left side of the street just as it starts to curve to the right toward the bridge/border check. Right there is where the concrete retaining wall begins at ground level and slopes upward. There's your ramp. From the look of it they probably traveled at least 150 feet in the air, probably more. 

The arrow would be the car. The 3 dots would be the locations of the witness video and the 2 security cameras. From those angles, it makes perfect sense of the car coming down Niagara. In fact, in the video that shows the car jumping you can see that it's on Niagara. /csb

 

 

 

U.S. Customs and Border Protection – Rainbow Bridge Port of Entry - Google Maps - Google Chrome 11_24_2023 12_52_23 AM - 1.png

  • Hook 'Em 8
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
bolverk

bolverk 29652

Posted
Posted

The way this article is written seems to hint that investigators may have suspicions of some sort of mechanical failure causing the vehicle to go out of control.

Quote

 

After Couple’s Fatal Bridge Crash, Investigators Search for Reason
The explosion at the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls sparked fears of terror. The car’s occupants were local residents, and the authorities said there was no threat.

Police investigators in Niagara Falls, N.Y., on Thursday were untangling the mystery behind why a Bentley crashed and burned at a bridge at the U.S.-Canada border, killing a local couple and causing panic on both sides on one of the year’s busiest travel days.

Among the possibilities that investigators were considering on Thursday was whether the car, an older model, experienced a mechanical failure that caused it to accelerate, according to Robert Restaino, the mayor of Niagara Falls.

The victims were a man and his wife from Grand Island, N.Y., both in their 50s, who owned several businesses in western New York, according to Mr. Restaino. He declined to release their names because the family had not been officially notified.

Mr. Restaino said the couple had originally been headed to a concert in Canada, and investigators believe it was a Kiss show that was called off after a member’s illness.

The Niagara Falls police took over the investigation after the F.B.I. concluded the crash on Wednesday was not related to terrorism, despite initial fears and a sweeping response by local, state and federal authorities, including closure of the border at several locations.

On Thursday, the police department’s accident reconstruction team was tracing the couple’s journey from a casino downtown to the border crossing, examining surveillance video, the scene of the crash and other evidence collected by federal authorities.

A spokesman for the Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino, a towering gambling hall that dominates the city’s waterfront skyline, confirmed that the couple had been at the property for several minutes shortly before the crash.

From there, the car would have needed to travel a little more than a mile to the Niagara Falls International Rainbow Bridge, which straddles the Niagara River just downstream from the famous falls. Headed toward Canada, the car — traveling at “a very high rate of speed,” according to Gov. Kathy Hochul — hit a median and went airborne, topping a fence before colliding with a border patrol booth.

The resulting explosion sent flames shooting into the sky and government and law enforcement officials scrambling to determine what had happened. A border patrol agent working in the checkpoint booth had minor injuries. Cross-border rail service was suspended and cars searched for explosives at local airports, as White House and Homeland Security officials were briefed.

Cable television was flooded with speculation about the cause of the blast, and some politicians took the opportunity to warn against terrorism and criticize the president.

By nightfall, however, Ms. Hochul was assuring the public that no terrorist activity was suspected, noting that “stress levels are already high” in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7 and military action in the Gaza Strip.

In Grand Island, a generally affluent town of about 21,500 that sits just north of Buffalo and midstream in the Niagara, residents were shocked, said Nate McMurray, a former town supervisor who still has a home there.

He said that he had received dozens of messages since the accident — which occurred just before noon on Wednesday — from shocked Grand Islanders. “People are like, ‘Oh my God, what happened?’” Mr. McMurray said.

That question was also being asked by law enforcement and forensics experts in the wake of the violent crash and explosion, which left little remaining of the car but a burn scar. The impact sent debris flying over a wide area.

On Thursday, Erin Bronner, a spokeswoman for the American arm of Bentley Motors, said that the authorities had not yet contacted the automaker about the incident, so she did not have any information to disclose.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
wood

wood 11225

Posted
Posted
12 hours ago, MissingInAction said:

It's a pretty simple forensics procedure to identify an accelerant post ka-boom.

Haven't read the whole thread but has it been determined if it was the gas tank or something else?

I haven't seen anything that really made me think there was ever any actual explosion, but rather a big impact and rapid conflagration as the fuel tank ruptured, as is typical with vehicle fires caused by collisions. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
troph

troph 24781

Posted
Posted

Dang I’m new to this I start on page one and there are two men in a box truck or something with special explosives going to to Canada to blow up what?
 

Then I skip to the last page and it’s a straight couple husband and wife driving Bentley to a Kiss concert and their brakes and accelerator malfunction and they torpedo over a median and explode.

that’s something. Wow.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
wood

wood 11225

Posted
Posted

So apparently it was a bentley Fling Spur, which can be equipped with as much as a 6.0L W12 engine. Surveillance video shows the driver wasn't impaired and was pressing on the brake pedal. Guess he didn't think of throwing it into neutral. That's some amazing power if it overcame the brakes enough to hit that kind of speed in 3/4 of a mile.

https://jalopnik.com/couple-killed-in-u-s-canada-border-explosion-were-driv-1851049907

Link to comment
Share on other sites
YGIFS

YGIFS 19449

Posted
Posted (edited)
6 minutes ago, wood said:

So apparently it was a bentley Fling Spur, which can be equipped with as much as a 6.0L W12 engine. Surveillance video shows the driver wasn't impaired and was pressing on the brake pedal. Guess he didn't think of throwing it into neutral. That's some amazing power if it overcame the brakes enough to hit that kind of speed in 3/4 of a mile.

https://jalopnik.com/couple-killed-in-u-s-canada-border-explosion-were-driv-1851049907

Apparently they were in a big hurry to convert to 1.21 kilometers! /docbrown (but also accurate) 

Even up until a week later, people still clamoring, "Well, it wasn't full of explosives after all, but it could have been full of explosives!"  Well, yes..it could have been filled with Honduran midgets on acid, looking to have a Canadian blowjob contest with Gene Simmons as the sole judge.  But that doesn't warrant false reporting that caused mass chaos at the other crossings as a result.  Why are we such a fucking hurry to prove we are proud to be the stupidest fucking country left on this planet?

As the great ordnance/pyrotechnic expert, Abraham Lincoln, once said..."Anything can be packed with explosives...if you're brave enough."  

Edited by YGIFS
Link to comment
Share on other sites
wood

wood 11225

Posted
Posted (edited)
38 minutes ago, wood said:

So apparently it was a bentley Fling Spur, which can be equipped with as much as a 6.0L W12 engine. Surveillance video shows the driver wasn't impaired and was pressing on the brake pedal. Guess he didn't think of throwing it into neutral. That's some amazing power if it overcame the brakes enough to hit that kind of speed in 3/4 of a mile.

https://jalopnik.com/couple-killed-in-u-s-canada-border-explosion-were-driv-1851049907

*Flying.

They also haven't ruled out a medical emergency,  but I suppose that might not ever be completely ruled out given the likely state of the remians. There has been a recall on that model of car for sticking accelerators/unexpected acceleration - but only on the right-hand-drive versions. A CNN story said pieces of wreckage were strewn across 12+ checkpoint booths. Interesting case for sure imho.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/23/us/us-canada-border-rainbow-bridge-explosion-thursday/index.html

f_webp

Edited by wood
Link to comment
Share on other sites
956 Worldwide

956 Worldwide 34697

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, wood said:

*Flying.

They also haven't ruled out a medical emergency,  but I suppose that might not ever be completely ruled out given the likely state of the remians. There has been a recall on that model of car for sticking accelerators/unexpected acceleration - but only on the right-hand-drive versions. A CNN story said pieces of wreckage were strewn across 12+ checkpoint booths. Interesting case for sure imho.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/23/us/us-canada-border-rainbow-bridge-explosion-thursday/index.html

f_webp

The brochure said it was a Flying Spur, not a Landing Spur. I see no case for a claim. 

  • Haha 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites
atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89623

Posted
Posted
29 minutes ago, wood said:

They also haven't ruled out a medical emergency, 

He was jamming on the brakes so he was aware and he did swerve around a car, and there is video that shows them freaking out.

Yeah, should have thrown it in neutral if the accelerator fucks up, but given how fast he accelerated, his mind was probably hyper-focused on what was in front of him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
wood

wood 11225

Posted
Posted
17 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

He was jamming on the brakes so he was aware and he did swerve around a car, and there is video that shows them freaking out.

Yeah, should have thrown it in neutral if the accelerator fucks up, but given how fast he accelerated, his mind was probably hyper-focused on what was in front of him.

Yeah I'm not faulting him for not thinking of it in time. That's why I've been telling my family that if anything like that ever happens when they're driving (unlikely as it might be), that the quickest, surest way to shut that shit down is to put it in neutral and let the engine eat itself. It's kinda one of those things, unfortunately, that if you've never considered it beforehand, you probably won't think of it when it happens and still might not think of it even if you have before. 

Hadn't heard about the video of them panicking. That's terrible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89623

Posted
Posted
On 11/27/2023 at 6:21 PM, wood said:

Yeah I'm not faulting him for not thinking of it in time. That's why I've been telling my family that if anything like that ever happens when they're driving (unlikely as it might be), that the quickest, surest way to shut that shit down is to put it in neutral and let the engine eat itself. It's kinda one of those things, unfortunately, that if you've never considered it beforehand, you probably won't think of it when it happens and still might not think of it even if you have before. 

So the car they were in does 175 mph, and has an 8-speed automatic transmission, and 0-60 in 3.9 seconds.  May not know exactly what happened, but damn that car is powerful.

https://slate.com/business/2023/11/bentley-speeding-niagara-rainbow-road-villani.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Nice Guy Eddie

Nice Guy Eddie 13508

Posted
Posted

I've never had uncontrollable acceleration but I have had a few weird situations with a car and it takes a few seconds to fully comprehend what is happening and perhaps more time to solve. It's not like drivers are commercial pilots who use simulators to learn how deal with the unexpected plus have time to work the problem.

 

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
BehoId, The Underminer!

BehoId, The Underminer! 11669

Posted
Posted

i skidded on ice and had the presence of mind to remember and attempt to execute what i had heard before: "pump the brakes, steer into the skid."  i later learned that the former is outdated because of ABS and i realized as i was skidding that i had no idea what 'steer into a skid' meant.  it wasn't my highlight.

  • Haha 3
  • Drool 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Nice Guy Eddie

Nice Guy Eddie 13508

Posted
Posted

once I had my car's clutch fluid unexpectedly empty at once. When I next pressed on the clutch, there was no fluid pressure to push the clutch back out. While the car was moving, I couldn't comprehend why the clutch effectively disappeared.  I just knew something wasn't right.  While my car wasn't going 175 and flipping over, I was completely confused for a few seconds on what was happening.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
wood

wood 11225

Posted
Posted (edited)
7 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

So the car they were in does 175 mph, and has an 8-speed automatic transmission, and 0-60 in 3.9 seconds.  May not know exactly what happened, but damn that car is powerful.

https://slate.com/business/2023/11/bentley-speeding-niagara-rainbow-road-villani.html

7 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

I've never had uncontrollable acceleration but I have had a few weird situations with a car and it takes a few seconds to fully comprehend what is happening and perhaps more time to solve. It's not like drivers are commercial pilots who use simulators to learn how deal with the unexpected plus have time to work the problem.

 

6 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

once I had my car's clutch fluid unexpectedly empty at once. When I next pressed on the clutch, there was no fluid pressure to push the clutch back out. While the car was moving, I couldn't comprehend why the clutch effectively disappeared.  I just knew something wasn't right.  While my car wasn't going 175 and flipping over, I was completely confused for a few seconds on what was happening.

Yeah so it kinda begs the question imho why, in this age of pretty much every function of a car being controlled by electronics, the car is even able to continue accelerating like that while the driver is on the brakes. First off, that's an impressive amount of acceleration for a car whose driver is riding the brakes, probably smashing them to the floor. I love performance driving on a track, a little bit of 'spirited' driving on the road as much as the next guy and have had performance-oriented cars since I was 15, but got damn, it can't for the life of me think of a good reason why a current car sjhould be able to accelerate like that when the driver has their foot on the brake. It just seems like an obvious design logic flaw unless I'm missing something, and it seems like it wouldn't be hard at all to limit the ECU when the car is moving and the driver applies brake input.

Just seems obvious to me. When something like that goes wrong, what's everyone's first reaction going to be about 99.999999999% of the time? Yeah, hit the brakes. And that should be a way oiut of it. every time.

Edited by wood
  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
YGIFS

YGIFS 19449

Posted
Posted

Because it's fucking British, dude.  The electronic systems on their cars fail al the fucking time.  That's their whole fucking jam.  Their cars are beautiful to look at and fun as hell to drive, but they have the engineering prowess of a Soviet-era nuclear reactor manufacturer.  

  • Haha 2
  • Rage+1 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
wood

wood 11225

Posted
Posted (edited)
7 hours ago, huge said:

That writer is a puss.

I didn't read the whole thing, but it seemed like he was headed in the direction saying nobody should be driving a car like that on the street. That's way over the top, but imho, and this may sound very elitist, the vast majority of people driving high-powered cars on the road have zero business doing so, at least if they're driving them hard.

5 hours ago, MissingInAction said:

COTA tourists in their rented BMWs

Beat me to it. Exactly who I was thinking about when I wrote the above. I can't tell you how many rich mfers I've seen at COTA in their very fast, very expensive cars who have not the first clue or tiniest shred of talent to be able to properly control those beats in anger. Even some of the 'race drivers' (read: rich guy wannabe race car driver) in Ferrari and Porsche 'racing series' have no.fucking.clue, but can afford to tear up that expensive-ass equipment - both theirs and the other guy's. My SIL and her hubby are perfect examples of people driving massively overpowered cars and not having the first clue how to handle them. Hers: Taycan S. His 911 GT3.

6 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

once I had my car's clutch fluid unexpectedly empty at once. When I next pressed on the clutch, there was no fluid pressure to push the clutch back out. While the car was moving, I couldn't comprehend why the clutch effectively disappeared.  I just knew something wasn't right.  While my car wasn't going 175 and flipping over, I was completely confused for a few seconds on what was happening.

I assume you've found out since then, but just in case: if you're skidding and the front of the car is pointing to the right side of the road, steer to the left, 'into' the skid.

Edited by wood
Link to comment
Share on other sites
conVINCEd

conVINCEd 21469

Posted
Posted
28 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

Because it's fucking British, dude.  The electronic systems on their cars fail al the fucking time.  That's their whole fucking jam.  Their cars are beautiful to look at and fun as hell to drive, but they have the engineering prowess of a Soviet-era nuclear reactor manufacturer.  

As a former Land Rover owner, this is correct.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
conVINCEd

conVINCEd 21469

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, BamaATL said:

Wasn't it Jaguar that initially tried to make a V12 engine by simply welding two V6s together, and then were mystified that they couldn't get the timing to work? 

All I know is if I called an electrician and the chap who answered the phone had a British accent I would hang up.  It’s like they sent an entire brigade of electricians into Normandy in the first wave of D-Day and lost some institutional knowledge.  I wouldn’t trust a British electrician to install a light fixture.

  • Like 1
  • Haha 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites
wood

wood 11225

Posted
Posted

Shit. My bad. In my response above about steering into a skid,I quoted the wrong post. That was meant for this post.  Sorry, NiceGuyEddie.

11 hours ago, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

i skidded on ice and had the presence of mind to remember and attempt to execute what i had heard before: "pump the brakes, steer into the skid."  i later learned that the former is outdated because of ABS and i realized as i was skidding that i had no idea what 'steer into a skid' meant.  it wasn't my highlight.

I assume you've found out since then, but just in case: if you're skidding and the front of the car is pointing to the right side of the road, steer to the left, 'into' the skid, etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
elfenix

elfenix 34223

Posted
Posted
5 hours ago, YGIFS said:

Because it's fucking British, dude.  The electronic systems on their cars fail al the fucking time.  That's their whole fucking jam.  Their cars are beautiful to look at and fun as hell to drive, but they have the engineering prowess of a Soviet-era nuclear reactor manufacturer.  

you think the germans let the brits design anything important in that car?

the funniest part of the auto industry consolidation in the late 1990s was VW and BMW getting into a bidding war over rolls royce and neither of them did due diligence as to who actually owned the trademark. 

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
hornian

hornian 5210

Posted
Posted
On 11/27/2023 at 6:21 PM, wood said:

Yeah I'm not faulting him for not thinking of it in time. That's why I've been telling my family that if anything like that ever happens when they're driving (unlikely as it might be), that the quickest, surest way to shut that shit down is to put it in neutral and let the engine eat itself. It's kinda one of those things, unfortunately, that if you've never considered it beforehand, you probably won't think of it when it happens and still might not think of it even if you have before. 

Hadn't heard about the video of them panicking. That's terrible.

I actually had this happen to me when I was in college. Bought a used truck in San Antonio, was driving it back to Austin. The damn throttle got stuck open and I was accelerating no matter what I did. I threw it in neutral and pulled off 35 somewhere in New Braunfels and coasted into a parking lot. Popped open the hood, called my dad on my cell phone (some Nokia brick but it worked like a charm), and he walked me through what to look for. I found a rubber gasket had somehow become lodged and was keeping the throttle open no matter what. I fixed it and was on my way. And I was a 19 year old college sophomore at the time. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
B00M

B00M 6413

Posted
Posted
On 11/27/2023 at 4:48 PM, wood said:

So apparently it was a bentley Fling Spur, which can be equipped with as much as a 6.0L W12 engine. Surveillance video shows the driver wasn't impaired and was pressing on the brake pedal. Guess he didn't think of throwing it into neutral. That's some amazing power if it overcame the brakes enough to hit that kind of speed in 3/4 of a mile.

https://jalopnik.com/couple-killed-in-u-s-canada-border-explosion-were-driv-1851049907


Can an automatic transmission be shifted into neutral at wide open throttle? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
 Share
Go to topic listing


Football ... Basketball ... Baseball ... Other Sports ... Futbol ... 🤫995🤫 ... Gambling ... Movies & TV ... Music ... Hobbies ... Lulz ... Food & Travel ... Daily Texan ... Business and Markets ... Cloak Room ... Help ... For Sale ... Board Discussion ... Subscribe!... Donate!... Advertise... COOKIE MONSTER!

×
×
  • Create New...