The Cannonball Run Record Is Everything That’s Wrong With Car Culture
103 mph. That’s how fast three drivers recently went as they crossed the country in their successful attempt to break the informal “Cannonball Run” record for fastest crossing of the contiguous United States. The time: 27 hours and 25 minutes.
That 103 mph is not a top speed; it’s an average speed. And everything about the attempt—from the meticulous preparations designed not only to maximize efficiency but evade law enforcement, to how it’s being covered in the media—is a striking example of the slavish devotion we have to cars in this country, safety be damned.
What does it take to careen across the country in just under 27 and a half hours? A heavily modified 2015 Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG, for starters, with a special turbocharger and intercooler package to deliver 700 horsepower at the wheels. The drivers also went to extensive lengths to evade police detection: coating some surfaces in silver vinyl (which deflects laser speed detection), installing a brake- and tail-light kill switch to throw off police from observing sudden, hard braking, and outfitting it with a package of high-tech gadgets including two radar detectors, a laser jammer, police radio scanner, even an aircraft collision avoidance system to scan for police helicopters or planes on patrol.
In short: this was no lark. This was a meticulously planned effort that took extensive preparation. And that’s what makes it so outrageous. The highest speed limit on any of the roads they traveled was 80 mph, meaning they were at least 23 mph over the limit on average. At one point on rural roads, they hit 193 mph, far past the car’s electronically limited top speed of 155 mph (U.S. version, which was apparently disabled).
Clinical research on average braking reaction time by drivers has resulted in varied response times, but even the fastest reactions aren’t much under one second. At a cruising speed of 125 mph, a car will travel 183 feet in one second. Braking distance in the 2018 AMG from 70 mph was 153 feet in Car & Driver’s own testing. At that speed, a car goes 60 yards—the distance from the back of a football field endzone to midfield—before a driver with fast reflexes can even brake, and almost to the other endzone before he can stop. Miss a deer, or a cyclist on the side of the road? The driver might die. The cyclist almost certainly does; odds of fatality for vulnerable road users depend greatly on impact speed; at 30 mph, 10 percent of pedestrian crash victims die, while at 50 mph, 90 percent do.
Maybe the drivers don’t know the exact math on all this, though I’m betting they have at least a good idea. But they absolutely do know that driving that fast puts anyone around them at higher risk. And yet, they still did it, for an unofficial and largely meaningless record. It’s a stunningly selfish disregard for public safety.
But that’s only half the story. How do we know all these details about the attempt? Because the drivers voluntarily disclosed all of it in media coverage, with little apparent fear of criticism. Across dozens of stories, almost universally, the reports characterize the record as one of those charmingly roguish accomplishments that’s, you know, illegal but still pretty cool.
A sampling of headlines:
“These guys finished a record Cannonball Run from New York to L.A., averaging 103mph. Here’s how.” — Washington Post
“Cannonball Run Cross-Country Speed Record Set by Twinsburg Man, Two Others” —Cleveland.com
“They Drove Across the Country in 27 Hours, 25 Minutes” — CNN
“These Guys Just Drove an E63 AMG Across the Country in a Record 27 Hours, 25 Minutes” – Road & Track, which first reported the story (and is published by Hearst, as is Bicycling)
These stories, and others, do mention in some way that the feat was illegal. But never in the headlines, and in the stories only in passing, almost as an apology for the inconvenience these three dashing adventurers put up with. CNN characterized the drive as having “blatant disregard for speed limits” and as “illicit” but also approvingly quotes one of the drivers saying the team used “every police countermeasure known to man,” and offers an unchallenged claim that the drivers took care not to upset other motorists.
Cleveland.com did call out the drive as “obviously illegal,” but the story then dives into the drivers’ “intense planning, extreme gumption, and a healthy dose of restraint.” Several paragraphs detail the drivers’ claims of caution and discretion, and the story adds that two of them met in Bible study, which seems relevant because Jesus would definitely drive a hundred on the highway.
A post shared by Arne (@arnesantics) on Dec 4, 2019 at 9:29pm PST
One of the most measured reactions came from Road & Track, which pointed out that, unlike on Germany’s no-limit autobahns, American drivers don’t expect other cars to be traveling so fast. “There’s potential for disaster,” R&T wrote. The drivers claim they had no unsafe interactions (nope, not a single one, in 2,800 miles of high-speed driving).
But the most troubling detail I saw in all the coverage was, surprisingly, in the Washington Post, where one driver told the paper, “Every cop I know saw the story of the record and said, ‘Aw man, that’s so awesome.’” Like the other outlets, the Post took care to note the drivers’ courtesy and caution. No police were quoted.
Maybe it’s here where I point out that all of this is patently insane.
It’s insane to shift-drive across the country on open roads at triple-digit speeds. It’s insane to have such arrogant disregard for the law that you heavily modify a vehicle specifically to evade the police, using technologies that are themselves illegal in many states—laser jammers are illegal in California, Colorado, and Illinois, to name three states on the route, and it’s illegal in every state not to have functioning brake and taillights. It’s insane to try to pass this off as both a bold adventure AND a paragon of driving skill and discretion. And it’s insane for the media to accept that narrative so credulously and uncritically.
So yeah, I’m pissed at the collective failures here. But I’m not surprised. This is a country where cars rule unchallenged. A country where literally billions of dollars of urban real estate is given away for free every day to drivers, in the form of free parking. It’s a country where people protest the addition of a bike lane if because it might slow their precious drive times.
Cars are the apex predator in a transportation ecosystem where menace and aggression are literally built into the grilles, and where drivers can hit and kill cyclists and pedestrians and walk away without charges, or receive laughably minimal punishment when they are brought to court. Our devotion to cars is a stuck parking brake on the economy, a pox on public health, and is killing the planet.
Legal auto racing is fantastic, both to watch and do. Seven years ago, I got to take a precision driving course with Porsche Track Experience, at Barber Motorsports in Birmingham, Alabama. We did skid pad and autocross drills, and I enjoyed an afternoon of track time on the 16-turn, 2.38-mile road course. I went the fastest I’ve ever gone on wheels, and it still ranks as one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. But it belongs at a track or closed course.
Everything about the Cannonball Run, by contrast, is defiantly outlaw, down to its origins: it was started by Car & Driver magazine (another sister publication to Bicycling) in 1971, partly as a protest against speed limit laws. And it’s well past time to stop tolerating it, much less celebrating it.
It’s clear that the drivers in the most recent attempt don’t fear punishment. They weren’t caught in the act, and while they’ve admitted flagrant speeding, and telematics from both the vehicle and the GPS systems they used would provide incontrovertible evidence, I don’t expect any enterprising prosecutor to subpoena that information.
Everything about the Cannonball Run, from its entitled, narcissistic beginnings to how we talk about it, exemplifies the worst excesses of car culture in this country. Maybe once, in some America of long ago, it had a purpose, but that’s gone now. It’s time for the Cannonball Run to die, before someone does.
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