There is an important lesson to be learned here. I hear lots of guys bragging about things they do with their cars out on the public roads, and I think about the dangers involved if they really pull some of the stunts some guys boast about.
Let's face it, our vintage cars don't have the brakes, handling, or safety features of new cars. Just yesterday I was winterizing my convertible and a non-car guy friend stopped by as I was about to take the car out to top off the gas tank before I tucked it away in my garage. He jumped in the car to join me for that last little drive of 2011 and commented about how I had no shoulder belts. Very true. even running into a tree or pole at 25 mph would probably result in a windshield protrusion shaped like my head.
I posted recently about my anniversary of somehow surviving a plane crash that left the plane looking not much more intact than that cuda. I went on to become a flight instructor after recovering from that crash. In safety lectures, we instructors sometimes talk about serious and often fatal plane crashes that are the result of what we call "stupid pilot tricks". Buzzing a friends house at low altitude and then stalling or otherwise losing control at an altitude too low to recover, with a resulting smoking hole left in the ground is a classic example. Whether flying or driving a fast car, only a moment of bad judgment can end up killing you! I know some will say that making a point of this is disrespectful of the unfortunate deceased person and his loved ones and that is not the intention. The intention is to make examples of tragedies like this one to make others wiser and hopefully not make the same mistakes. Beware of stupid driver tricks as they can result in death or injury to you or innocent people you run into!
