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Comment by konschubert | Hacker News Reader

The police should investigate and arrest these people.

Shooting with a gun into a crowd carries a prison sentence. This should too.

From the article:

"In the words of Brock Yates: “When Dan (Gurney) and I got to the Portofino, we agreed that the part of the Cannonball which we were proudest about was the fact that we had bothered no one—we hadn’t jeopardized the safety of anyone, including ourselves. We had driven very fast, but we had driven cleanly, efficiently, and safely.”"

That refers to a 1979 cannonball run, by the originator, who (according to the article) thought up this illegal race to prove that highway speed limits were out of date. Your phrasing suggests it applies to this run, a run made during covid lockdowns (ie, much lighter traffic than usual) in order to get the run record back.

There is a difference between "these speed limits are too low, let's prove it's safe to go faster" and "someone else broke our record? Let's claw it back now that conditions are favourable".

This is such a childlike understanding of safety and jeopardy. It's like when the five year old turns back to you after doing something you told them not to saying "see it didn't break!"

Any time these are announced it's usually a year and a day after. Statute of limitations is a year for speeding in most of the us. They can be investigated, but not charged. These lads are not idiots. Check out apex: the secret road race across america (film) or 32 hours 7 min (film) to see the prep these guys get up to. Also, VINwiki on YouTube has some story's about it too.

They’re not idiots, they are sociopaths.

“your honour, I was shooting into the crowd but it was just for fun and I wasn’t trying to hit anyone”

doesn’t fly either

Technically, it could fly as an argument for (involuntary) manslaughter versus murder, certainly if one replaces “into the crowd” by “over the heads of the crowd”, or if the crowd isn’t very crowdy, and there’s evidence that the shooter explicitly tried shooting through the crowd without hitting anybody, say as part of an act.

The typical “into the crowd” implies that the shooter knew it was almost certain to hit somebody, though, so I don’t think any judge or jury would put much weight into such an argument.

IIRC they rely on keeping the runs a secret until statues of limitations expire. There should be, if not already, some laws about public endangerment which don't expire. Then they're own documentation will be evidence against them.

Nobody has ever been hurt during a Cannonball run.

How a stat proves that Cannonball is safe and/or legal?

Chernobyl was safe until it wasn't for example. Same for Ford Pinto, or Tesla AutoPilot.

Nobody said it was legal. Half the point is protesting low speed limits. Doing it in an unsafe manner is counterproductive.

I understand that in the 1972 (some say 1979) run, there was a broken arm.

It would be impossible to prove it’s not just a fictional story

Is it? By their own admission they have ample evidence, needed to prove their time

Yes, but the actual evidence isn't there... this article would be easy to fake for clicks/youtube views, and much cheaper, safer, and easier than actually doing the stunt described. Maybe the article would be enough to get a warrant to collect the data, but I'll bet they destroyed all of the data/evidence before uploading the article, and (as another poster mentioned) waited until after the statute of limitations to post it.

It seems to me that there is really a lot of media out there bragging about committing past crimes, and profiting from it. I don't think it's a good thing, but for whatever reason clearly people are able to do that without repercussions.

This reminds me of the California law banning the use of rap lyrics as evidence in crimes. Much of popular rap music is directly bragging about committing specific crimes and getting away with it, yet those people remain free, and make a lot of money off of it.

Just to clarify, I am trying to make sense of the fact that they seem to have brazenly posted the details of committing a major crime. Given all of the planning and care they seem to have taken, there must be some angle there that makes them think they cannot be caught for this.

Well, no.

    - Two datestamped photos in start and finish.
    - Unbroken video feed from two cameras.
    - A speed stat tracker
    - A third party black box GPS tracker.
    - Plus circumstantial evidence created during the event.

Not incl. the scouts, helpers, people around, witnesses, etc.

These are things they claim to have, but aren't actually provided. I would be willing to bet this evidence doesn't really exist anymore, or would be impossible to obtain by prosecutors.

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