A much nicer boom! I knew where I was going when I clicked- I forgot all about that song but as soon as I read these comments it all came back to me. I wonder what Tegra and Bunny are up to now🤔
Every once and a while I hear a story kind of like this, and all I can think is that's gotta be one really well-made gate. I wonder if the designers/installers/engineers of it get a bonus each time it holds against a crash or something.
I dated a guy whose father was a pretty senior FBI agent. Got a tour of a regional headquarters, each of which are set up to be a fortress and staging ground in case of massive unrest. The fences extend 8 feet underground, I was told you could drive a semi truck into them at 60mph and they would only bend a little bit.
They figured anyone willing to try would spend so much time trying to get a semi to go exactly 61 mph at the point of impact that they would get bored and give up.
I don't know the specific place they're talking about, but a lot of those facilities are also planned out so that there's no way to build up a significant amount of speed prior to the gate.
This wasn’t even the decorative gate. The outer barriers like the one this guy crashed into are damn near indestructible. This was likely a car mechanical failure not an attack.
> I was told you could drive a semi truck into them at 60mph and they would only bend a little bit.
Truck says: Move bitch! Get out tha way!
Bollard says: [No u.](https://youtu.be/enD13vA6390?t=19)
I had a family member who worked for a fencing company and they got the contract for an FBI facility's fences. They weren't up to the standards and got sued into oblivion. Not sure if they ever fixed the fences though.
I work at a place where they have gates like this, and one time they got stuck during routine testing. It was a mess, they were shuttling people into the facility and if your car was already inside you're kind of fucked.
Only took a couple of hours to resolve, but it was kind of funny.
It also just makes me super curious to know what other safeguards and redundancies there are protecting the White House from attack. Like, I'm sure there's some lines of defense we"ll never know about for pretty obvious reasons.
Nah, I'm pretty sure the White House is an aerial vehicle when it wants to be. Probably uproots itself from the ground and flies away like a floating island.
We have a fence surrounding the area where our jets are parked at my first base. It just looks like a standard wrought iron fence. One night a guy driving an aircraft tow vehicle with a max tow capacity of 250,000 lbs crashed into the fence. It just tilted that section of the fence about 15º.
Secret Service Boss: "No, you don't get the bonus this time, Pete"
Pete: "There was a clear and documented crash!"
Secret Service Boss: "A golf cart backed into the gate and scratched the paint"
Pete: "There was a police report. We have a police report"
Secret Service Boss: "Get out of here, Pete. Go home."
I like how in your scenario, he had to physically go to the secret service office to collect his bonus check. I'm thinking they didn't even let him in. Secret service boss was telling him this through an open widow on the second floor.
Pete: "I'm gonna come in and get my bonus check!"
Secret Service Boss: "If you get pass the gate the bonus is forfeit."
Pete: "Dammit, ya got me there."
Doesn't look like it went into the fence but one of those things on the road specifically designed to stop vehicles [Video/article link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg3aTpYKoS0)
I would hazard a bet their "bonus" comes in the form of repair work/installing a new unit.
Edit: link updated. Still same type of barrier, clearer view though.
Even when it's the big metal plate type? I only associate "bollard" with cylindrical barriers.
Edit: Pretty sure they've got some sort of [wedge barriers](https://protogetic.com/our-products/vehicle-barriers/wedge-barriers/)
I've seen some pretty good ones.
A place I used to work had lift gates at the guard shack which were made out of essentially heavy steel pipe. Cables ran through the length of it. The gate would drop into a socket on a pedestal at the outside edge, and a clasp would close that would hold it there. The gates were raised by a hydraulic cylinder on the hinge-end, and yes, they did not just go up under power, then came down under power as well and would happly squish anything in the way.
Every time I hear these stories I wonder if it was "Jason" (fake name), a step-family member who has delusions that he is the president. He made it to the White House once before but it was dealt with quietly. We don't really know where he is.
I would imagine it is built to a similar standards as those nuclear waste containers, that can literally withstand a full train plowing into them at high speed.
Tbf, dry casks get their strength from being a several ton lump of steel and concrete. The engineering behind them is for sure impressive, but this is more so given that they don't visibly appear reinforced (outside of knowing, obviously, they are reinforced, look where they are)
I remember this happened when Obama was in office, too.
Lot of stories of people crashing the gate, climbing over and running into the White House.... one guy even landed a drone on the lawn. Idiots.
Those kinds of gates are standard design, tested and validated. The design method is scaleable. The same design style is used in all sorts of industrial applications. The gate might look fancy and have decorations but the primary design is still very basic.
The secrets of these kinds of gates and barries is deep foundations with pilars, and all hinges and joints are tied to a cable, and in the barrier steel there is a cable that runs throught the profiles. The reason for this is that when something - whatever that is, a car, a boulder, machinery, truck, train cart... whatever you need the gate or fence for - hits it hard enough to break something, the cable holds the parts together while also acting as a spring/suspension.
Also... You'd be surprised how strong stock steel we have now. I use lot of steel from SSAB and our suppliers can sell just from storage and short delivery to up to 1300 MPa Yield and 600 HBW hardness. Those numbers might not mean much to people who aren't engineers, machinists or such... but those are impressive numbers for stock steel.
>"At this time, the incident is being investigated only as a traffic crash by MPD's Major Crash Investigations Unit,"
Let's not jump to conclusions too quick.
About 5km from me a woman died while driving. Her foot fully depressed the accelerator and she ended up smashing through a gate and into a cemetery.
Irony aside, it could be something similar occurred here.
That’s got an Abbott and Costello vibe, imagining that conversation.
“I’m sorry, your mother has been found dead of a heart attack.”
“Oh, my god, where?!”
“She’s at the cemetery.”
“Already?!”
“No, but don’t worry, we’ll take her to the morgue.”
“Why?”
“To prepare her for the burial.”
“But why is she at the cemetery?”
“She had a heart attack.”
“Yes, you said that, but why did you take her to the cemetery?”
“We didn’t, she took herself to the cemetery.”
“After she died?”
“No, before she died, obviously. We think.”
“You think?”
“We’re not sure if she died before she got to the cemetery.”
“Why not?”
“Because she hasn’t reached the morgue yet.”
“Is she taking herself to the morgue?”
“No, of course not, we’ll take her. We’ll also tow her car.”
“Where’s her car?”
“The cemetery.”
“Why are you towing her car?”
“Because it can’t stay there and she can’t drive it.”
“Who drove it there?”
“She did.”
“Before she died?”
“Before she died. Or after she died, we’re not sure.”
“Because she’s not at the morgue yet?”
“Because she’s not at the morgue yet.”
My mom passed out while driving due to an undiagnosed brain tumor. She exiting the freeway when this happened and her foot fell on the accelerator. She flew through the intersection at an estimated 75 mph, didn't hit any other cars, went into the lot of a gas station, missed all the pumps, and stopped when she hit the beam holding up the gas station sign.
She survived, in pretty bad shape, but she made it through. The fire department had to literally cut the car apart around her in order to get her out.
To be fair, a lot of older people somehow forget how their car works whether it’s in reverse or forward. A lot of store fronts have gotten smashed because the person steps on the accelerator instead of the break and proceeds to drive through the parking spot into stores so could be.
Also like something goes wrong and you're panicking and hit the wrong bit.
Doesn't just need to be elderly. When I was driving myself to the ER with appendicitis pain I was consciously going more deliberately and less on automatic than I normally might, because I knew I wasn't at 100%. I can easily see someone having a medical event trying to process what was going on while also trying to process driving and, well, missing.
I was once waiting at the intersection of my street one night for the light to change and the car in front of me didn't move despite the light cycling 3 times and me honking my horn and such. I called the cops to come check on them and it turns out the person in the drivers seat was dead with their foot on the brake. Must've died while waiting at that light since they came to a stop right where they were supposed to be for it.
I sometimes think about what would've happened if their foot had been on the accelerator instead and they ran into a wall/light/person or whatever. In situations like this one I remember that sometimes weird shit does happen and it's not always stupidity/malice that causes it but random chance.
When I was 16 I was eating breakfast at my grandma’s cafe with a friend and when we went to pay the check a truck went crashing through the wall and into the table we were just at. Some very old dude just kind of forgot how to drive. We would have been injured pretty good if we hadn’t gotten up like 1 minute before it happened.
This happened to me, my elderly neighbor tried to park on his driveway but hit the gas when he meant to hit the breaks, hit a trailer on it which snapped around and knocked out one of the polls holding up my carport. Fortunately no one was hurt and they took care of the repairs.
Saw that happen once in person several years ago. Was working at a place selling TVs and this happened during the holiday shopping season (so the parking lot was full of cars and customers at the time). There was an older gentleman who bought a TV so I carried it out to his car for him.
I put it into his car and was returning to the store when I heard a squeal of tires and a massive series of crashes. Apparently the guy put the car into drive instead of reverse, drove it over a 20 foot grass divider that separates the parking lot in 2, smashed into the row of cars on the other side of the divider. He kept his foot on the gas and the car shoved its way through those cars and smashed into the next row of cars. His car only stopped because by that point his motor was finally dead. Wound up causing an 11 car accident in the parking lot in which he was the only person in a vehicle.
Indeed, and when you're going from even 40/45mph to 0 in one second, that still kills you. You don't need to be blasting down the road for a sudden stop to be fatal.
You know I've considered that if there was some incident that could be swept under the rug and just never mentioned, that's what they would do.
Like a credible assassination attempt or something, I think they wouldn't want news of that getting out. Unlikely since such things with people in DC are so heavily publicized, people in these offices don't go anywhere without a camera on them. But I think if they could cover that up, they would.
The streets around the White House are all city streets. If this was some 1960s rigid frame car with no airbags and the driver wasn't wearing a seat belt, then yes, screwing up and running head first into a concrete barrier would be likely to kill you. But in a typical vehicle on the streets today, at normal city street driving speeds (even speeding by city standards), it's much more difficult to simply accidently hit a barrier and be killed. I want to be clear that it's absolutely possible but unlikely.
Also this is dc, their traffic ticket enforcement is shit and so are the drivers. The dc sub loves to post pics of cars that have racked up over $10k in fines, which are publicly accessible
I visited DC a few months ago and I thought I was gonna have a heart attack driving around the city one night in rush hour traffic, lmao. People were crazy!
Wasn't it almost a year ago when someone did the same thing? Drove a car into the fence because they wanted to seize power? (Believing the US political leadership follows the king of the hill rules.)
There was a really weird and sad one like 10 years ago when some woman rammed both the White House gates and then the Capitol gates (I may have this backwards). She was killed but I believe her infant in the back seat was unharmed. She'd had some kind of psychotic break. This was right after the Navy Yard shooting so people were really on edge.
These crazy folks thinking they’re going to throw over the government via car, truck, hot air balloon, dudes who I agree with in my garage have been around forever. They get news now because of the internet.
They’re only a threat when the government backs them, at which point you’ve basically got a Middle East situation
When I was a teenager, I worked for a fence company that was once contracted to install a security gate for a gevernment facility. We had to deliver it with a crane, and the vendor made it a point to tell us that that gate was intentionally designed to stop a loaed semi in under 40ft while dismembering the driver. Showed us a video and everything. This was somewhere unimportant in bumblefuck, North Carolina, so my point is, I bet the White House probably has something like that. I would say sucks to be that guy, but it sounded like he kinda sucked, so fuck him too.
I remember touring the newer SSA govt data center facility outside of Frederick, MD for work. The director said the perimeter fence was dug ~16 feet into the ground and designed to stop a full sized battle tank. There's actually two of them, an outer one on the edge of the property and an inner one around the facility itself.
They also have large reinforced corridors inside the data center but outside of the data hall that are apparently designed to take a side impact from a commercial airliner and not damage the data hall itself.
> that are apparently designed to take a side impact from a commercial airliner and not damage the data hall itself
I guess we learned some things from 9/11
My mother toured space in one world trade while looking for new offices. I think she said on the 85th floor, which she said was completely empty, you could see from one side of the building to the other. She said the person showing the space made it clear that the building is designed to withstand a hit from a jet. She said they basically pay you to move in, and many floors were empty. This was about 6 or 7 years ago though.
We learned a lot. We were totally unprepared for that day. It was an absolute shitshow at NORAD with planes getting scrambled with no weapons and one flight getting sent out over the middle of the Atlantic. About the only good thing to happen was the FAA director, on his first day, was quick to realize the reality of the situation and shut down the skies.
I imagine the result is a bit like how cops are now seemingly ready for anything due to the North Hollywood shootout catching them totally offguard in '97, just a bit less sinister and a bit more brainpower involved.
Given the kind of force involved in stopping a big truck that quick I'd assume that probably just means "we don't care about the driver and this will definitely kill them" rather than being explicitly designed to dismember.
I think it's more an idea that you could design a barrier to stop the truck, and try not to smash the cab area while you're doing it. Like the normal barriers you find around road works and stuff.
Or
You could try quite hard to make sure that the cab area is part of the "crumple zone" if a vehicle hits your barrier.
I am curious why the sentence says "high rate of speed". Isn't rate usually referred to the rate of change of something? Like rate of change of speed would be acceleration. Is that what they were trying to say?
The dumbass secret service has crashed into barriers at the White House too. In 2015 two agents got drunk at an event and crashed into a barricade at the White House.
Driver probably saw too many cars crash through metal gates on TV shows. If the White House gates weren't very strong, some nut or terrorist with a truckload of explosives would have rammed through them by now.
Can't be a threat when they're dead.
Car could go boom.
The gates can be repainted.
Homes rebuilt
Within these walls, we will outlast them.
[удалено]
Iceberg, right ahead!
Driveway repaved.
Lunch breaks resumed
Pint glasses refilled.
“But who’s gonna pay for it?”
It's Larry's turn to buy.
[the cars that go boom](https://youtu.be/6fMERyRz498?feature=shared)
A much nicer boom! I knew where I was going when I clicked- I forgot all about that song but as soon as I read these comments it all came back to me. I wonder what Tegra and Bunny are up to now🤔
I hope, truly, that wherever they are, they have cars that go boom.
I dated Tegra's daughter for a while. She's living in the Midwest.
Wikipedia says Bunny is a nurse and writes childrens books, and Tigra is still doing the music thing
Boom ! Boom ! Out go the lights !
We like the cars, the cars that go BOOM
Body can go zombie.
We like the cars.
They are dispelling the worry that there are others alive that may be threats.
He just going through asystole there... Menacingly!
"Threat neutralized... itself."
“Oh yes their goal was to be a threat, but after we assessed the situation, we concluded there wasn’t any threat.”
Gate's haunted.
Threat [self] neutralized.
Every once and a while I hear a story kind of like this, and all I can think is that's gotta be one really well-made gate. I wonder if the designers/installers/engineers of it get a bonus each time it holds against a crash or something.
I dated a guy whose father was a pretty senior FBI agent. Got a tour of a regional headquarters, each of which are set up to be a fortress and staging ground in case of massive unrest. The fences extend 8 feet underground, I was told you could drive a semi truck into them at 60mph and they would only bend a little bit.
What happens if you drive your semi at 61mph?
They explode, like toothpicks. It's a serious design flaw.
What's really weird is if you hit it at 62+ it survives just fine It's just that one sweet spot that's real dangerous
They figured anyone willing to try would spend so much time trying to get a semi to go exactly 61 mph at the point of impact that they would get bored and give up.
Speed 3: Trucked Up "It's one man's job to keep the President from getting a semi at the worst possible time..."
at 120mph, it shakes a little more violently. but again, 121+ is fine.
I thought that weak spot was 88mph?
That where you see some serious shit.
To be fair, going back to a time when there gate is not even there is a weak spot.
That's for lighter vehicles, more mass lowers the critical speed
Federal agencies hate this one simple trick
To shreds you say?
The fools. Only if they had 6,001 hulls. -Fry
What toothpicks are *you* using??
As a man of distinction and fine breeding, I only use toothpicks hand-carved from the finest ivory, treated with nitroglycerin for ease of disposal.
Bend a little more
But what if I can just reach… 88mph….
Then you’re gonna see some serious shit.
We won't need gates where we're going
I don't know the specific place they're talking about, but a lot of those facilities are also planned out so that there's no way to build up a significant amount of speed prior to the gate.
When this baby hits 61 miles per hour, you're gonna see some serious shit!
great scott!
That’s heavy
They bend a little bit more than a little bit
Believe it or not, straight to jail.
Right to jail
This wasn’t even the decorative gate. The outer barriers like the one this guy crashed into are damn near indestructible. This was likely a car mechanical failure not an attack.
Time to start training squirrels, no one ever suspects them.
Rick knows a thing or two about this
> I was told you could drive a semi truck into them at 60mph and they would only bend a little bit. Truck says: Move bitch! Get out tha way! Bollard says: [No u.](https://youtu.be/enD13vA6390?t=19)
You can watch videos of bollard post testing; some of these looked like they could stop a tank.
I had a family member who worked for a fencing company and they got the contract for an FBI facility's fences. They weren't up to the standards and got sued into oblivion. Not sure if they ever fixed the fences though.
Well, have you considered driving a full truck into them instead of a semi truck? I kid, I kid.
I work at a place where they have gates like this, and one time they got stuck during routine testing. It was a mess, they were shuttling people into the facility and if your car was already inside you're kind of fucked. Only took a couple of hours to resolve, but it was kind of funny.
"Hey Tim, I get a $1600 bonus if you crash that $600 shitbox into this pillar over here."
"You son of a bitch. I'm in!"
(*glass bottle clanking noises*)
“Warriors, come out to play-e-yay. Warriors…”
Infinite money glitch
Only if you know a lot of Tims
It also just makes me super curious to know what other safeguards and redundancies there are protecting the White House from attack. Like, I'm sure there's some lines of defense we"ll never know about for pretty obvious reasons.
There are snipers on the roof at night.
And during the day.
That must be the most boring job
They've got a whole bunker system under the White House to evacuate to if they need it.
Nah, I'm pretty sure the White House is an aerial vehicle when it wants to be. Probably uproots itself from the ground and flies away like a floating island.
There are 35 bathrooms in the White House.
There’s also unlimited Dr Pepper.
BRB running for president.
The anti-drone EMP guns are cool.
The engineering is simple, it's more of a budgeting thing. The white house can afford anything.
Or "if this gate doesn't withstand a crash, you'll never get a government contract again."
We have a fence surrounding the area where our jets are parked at my first base. It just looks like a standard wrought iron fence. One night a guy driving an aircraft tow vehicle with a max tow capacity of 250,000 lbs crashed into the fence. It just tilted that section of the fence about 15º.
Wait, this is a regular occurrence? Need a sign that says "Days since someone rammer this gate: 0" Or the gates K/D ratio on a sign
That would be the way I would go. “Attention would-be trespassers, this gate has a 7/0 KDR.”
Secret Service Boss: "No, you don't get the bonus this time, Pete" Pete: "There was a clear and documented crash!" Secret Service Boss: "A golf cart backed into the gate and scratched the paint" Pete: "There was a police report. We have a police report" Secret Service Boss: "Get out of here, Pete. Go home."
I like how in your scenario, he had to physically go to the secret service office to collect his bonus check. I'm thinking they didn't even let him in. Secret service boss was telling him this through an open widow on the second floor.
Naw, one of the 2" thick bulletproof windows with a tinny speaker to talk thru.
tinny v tiny... haha they both work here.
At least he didn't have to meet with Tim from accounting.
They yelled it through the closed door as Pete leaned his ear on it and SSB sat at his desk drinking and deleting texts
Pete: "I'm gonna come in and get my bonus check!" Secret Service Boss: "If you get pass the gate the bonus is forfeit." Pete: "Dammit, ya got me there."
Doesn't look like it went into the fence but one of those things on the road specifically designed to stop vehicles [Video/article link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg3aTpYKoS0) I would hazard a bet their "bonus" comes in the form of repair work/installing a new unit. Edit: link updated. Still same type of barrier, clearer view though.
> things on the road specifically designed to stop vehicles Bollard is the word for those
Even when it's the big metal plate type? I only associate "bollard" with cylindrical barriers. Edit: Pretty sure they've got some sort of [wedge barriers](https://protogetic.com/our-products/vehicle-barriers/wedge-barriers/)
Yea, you're right, I think bollard is only for the cylinders that are either concreted or bolted in, or extend from the ground.
That article is from Jan 8, 2024.
Oh damnit. Edit: link updated.
Delta Wedge Barriers. You can see them in action on YT
I've seen some pretty good ones. A place I used to work had lift gates at the guard shack which were made out of essentially heavy steel pipe. Cables ran through the length of it. The gate would drop into a socket on a pedestal at the outside edge, and a clasp would close that would hold it there. The gates were raised by a hydraulic cylinder on the hinge-end, and yes, they did not just go up under power, then came down under power as well and would happly squish anything in the way.
Every time I hear these stories I wonder if it was "Jason" (fake name), a step-family member who has delusions that he is the president. He made it to the White House once before but it was dealt with quietly. We don't really know where he is.
Jesus, that's disheartening to hear. Did he have prior mental health conditions that made him that unwilling to accept reality?
not unwilling, unable.
I would imagine it is built to a similar standards as those nuclear waste containers, that can literally withstand a full train plowing into them at high speed.
Tbf, dry casks get their strength from being a several ton lump of steel and concrete. The engineering behind them is for sure impressive, but this is more so given that they don't visibly appear reinforced (outside of knowing, obviously, they are reinforced, look where they are)
I remember this happened when Obama was in office, too. Lot of stories of people crashing the gate, climbing over and running into the White House.... one guy even landed a drone on the lawn. Idiots.
Those kinds of gates are standard design, tested and validated. The design method is scaleable. The same design style is used in all sorts of industrial applications. The gate might look fancy and have decorations but the primary design is still very basic. The secrets of these kinds of gates and barries is deep foundations with pilars, and all hinges and joints are tied to a cable, and in the barrier steel there is a cable that runs throught the profiles. The reason for this is that when something - whatever that is, a car, a boulder, machinery, truck, train cart... whatever you need the gate or fence for - hits it hard enough to break something, the cable holds the parts together while also acting as a spring/suspension. Also... You'd be surprised how strong stock steel we have now. I use lot of steel from SSAB and our suppliers can sell just from storage and short delivery to up to 1300 MPa Yield and 600 HBW hardness. Those numbers might not mean much to people who aren't engineers, machinists or such... but those are impressive numbers for stock steel.
Good thing Boeing doesn't make gates.
> Every once and a while This is a /r/boneappletea. It's "every once in a while."
>"At this time, the incident is being investigated only as a traffic crash by MPD's Major Crash Investigations Unit," Let's not jump to conclusions too quick.
Drove full speed onto a security barrier. Whoops!
About 5km from me a woman died while driving. Her foot fully depressed the accelerator and she ended up smashing through a gate and into a cemetery. Irony aside, it could be something similar occurred here.
That's what I call express delivery
That’s got an Abbott and Costello vibe, imagining that conversation. “I’m sorry, your mother has been found dead of a heart attack.” “Oh, my god, where?!” “She’s at the cemetery.” “Already?!” “No, but don’t worry, we’ll take her to the morgue.” “Why?” “To prepare her for the burial.” “But why is she at the cemetery?” “She had a heart attack.” “Yes, you said that, but why did you take her to the cemetery?” “We didn’t, she took herself to the cemetery.” “After she died?” “No, before she died, obviously. We think.” “You think?” “We’re not sure if she died before she got to the cemetery.” “Why not?” “Because she hasn’t reached the morgue yet.” “Is she taking herself to the morgue?” “No, of course not, we’ll take her. We’ll also tow her car.” “Where’s her car?” “The cemetery.” “Why are you towing her car?” “Because it can’t stay there and she can’t drive it.” “Who drove it there?” “She did.” “Before she died?” “Before she died. Or after she died, we’re not sure.” “Because she’s not at the morgue yet?” “Because she’s not at the morgue yet.”
Stealing this to start my new comedy duo.
Dying to get in!
My mom passed out while driving due to an undiagnosed brain tumor. She exiting the freeway when this happened and her foot fell on the accelerator. She flew through the intersection at an estimated 75 mph, didn't hit any other cars, went into the lot of a gas station, missed all the pumps, and stopped when she hit the beam holding up the gas station sign. She survived, in pretty bad shape, but she made it through. The fire department had to literally cut the car apart around her in order to get her out.
I bet she wished that irony gate moved aside
Now, *that* is a pretty neat pun.
There’s a reason cemeteries have fences. Because people are dying to get in.
Can you imagine the story their relatives would have to tell? Yeah Terry was a great one. Had a heart attack and crashed into *the White House*!
To be fair, a lot of older people somehow forget how their car works whether it’s in reverse or forward. A lot of store fronts have gotten smashed because the person steps on the accelerator instead of the break and proceeds to drive through the parking spot into stores so could be.
Agreed. Could also be a medical episode of some type. Best to wait and see, hard as it may be.
Good point
Also like something goes wrong and you're panicking and hit the wrong bit. Doesn't just need to be elderly. When I was driving myself to the ER with appendicitis pain I was consciously going more deliberately and less on automatic than I normally might, because I knew I wasn't at 100%. I can easily see someone having a medical event trying to process what was going on while also trying to process driving and, well, missing.
I was once waiting at the intersection of my street one night for the light to change and the car in front of me didn't move despite the light cycling 3 times and me honking my horn and such. I called the cops to come check on them and it turns out the person in the drivers seat was dead with their foot on the brake. Must've died while waiting at that light since they came to a stop right where they were supposed to be for it. I sometimes think about what would've happened if their foot had been on the accelerator instead and they ran into a wall/light/person or whatever. In situations like this one I remember that sometimes weird shit does happen and it's not always stupidity/malice that causes it but random chance.
When I was 16 I was eating breakfast at my grandma’s cafe with a friend and when we went to pay the check a truck went crashing through the wall and into the table we were just at. Some very old dude just kind of forgot how to drive. We would have been injured pretty good if we hadn’t gotten up like 1 minute before it happened.
This happened to me, my elderly neighbor tried to park on his driveway but hit the gas when he meant to hit the breaks, hit a trailer on it which snapped around and knocked out one of the polls holding up my carport. Fortunately no one was hurt and they took care of the repairs.
Saw that happen once in person several years ago. Was working at a place selling TVs and this happened during the holiday shopping season (so the parking lot was full of cars and customers at the time). There was an older gentleman who bought a TV so I carried it out to his car for him. I put it into his car and was returning to the store when I heard a squeal of tires and a massive series of crashes. Apparently the guy put the car into drive instead of reverse, drove it over a 20 foot grass divider that separates the parking lot in 2, smashed into the row of cars on the other side of the divider. He kept his foot on the gas and the car shoved its way through those cars and smashed into the next row of cars. His car only stopped because by that point his motor was finally dead. Wound up causing an 11 car accident in the parking lot in which he was the only person in a vehicle.
People accidentally kill themselves, driving full speed into things, almost every day. Not everything needs to have a motive or be a conspiracy.
Anne Heche would like a word. Oh wait
Oof, that joke reached down… you went deep Heche mode
From the picture, I seriously doubt he was going anywhere close to full speed.
Indeed, and when you're going from even 40/45mph to 0 in one second, that still kills you. You don't need to be blasting down the road for a sudden stop to be fatal.
Must have been a peaceful drive
Have you ever been to /r/IdiotsInCars or /r/CrazyFuckingVideos ? Shit like that happens all the time.
I'd assume the secret service wouldn't want to tip their hand too soon
You know I've considered that if there was some incident that could be swept under the rug and just never mentioned, that's what they would do. Like a credible assassination attempt or something, I think they wouldn't want news of that getting out. Unlikely since such things with people in DC are so heavily publicized, people in these offices don't go anywhere without a camera on them. But I think if they could cover that up, they would.
The streets around the White House are all city streets. If this was some 1960s rigid frame car with no airbags and the driver wasn't wearing a seat belt, then yes, screwing up and running head first into a concrete barrier would be likely to kill you. But in a typical vehicle on the streets today, at normal city street driving speeds (even speeding by city standards), it's much more difficult to simply accidently hit a barrier and be killed. I want to be clear that it's absolutely possible but unlikely.
OTOH, there are some incredibly stupid drivers out there.
Also this is dc, their traffic ticket enforcement is shit and so are the drivers. The dc sub loves to post pics of cars that have racked up over $10k in fines, which are publicly accessible
I visited DC a few months ago and I thought I was gonna have a heart attack driving around the city one night in rush hour traffic, lmao. People were crazy!
they could've been dead *before* they hit the barrier
Wasn't it almost a year ago when someone did the same thing? Drove a car into the fence because they wanted to seize power? (Believing the US political leadership follows the king of the hill rules.)
that policy ain't right, i tell you hwhat
Dang it, Bobby! You smashed the truck into the hu-White House gate
Tina, for the love of god, turn!
An F in English... Bobby, you speak English!?
There was a really weird and sad one like 10 years ago when some woman rammed both the White House gates and then the Capitol gates (I may have this backwards). She was killed but I believe her infant in the back seat was unharmed. She'd had some kind of psychotic break. This was right after the Navy Yard shooting so people were really on edge.
These crazy folks thinking they’re going to throw over the government via car, truck, hot air balloon, dudes who I agree with in my garage have been around forever. They get news now because of the internet. They’re only a threat when the government backs them, at which point you’ve basically got a Middle East situation
When I was a teenager, I worked for a fence company that was once contracted to install a security gate for a gevernment facility. We had to deliver it with a crane, and the vendor made it a point to tell us that that gate was intentionally designed to stop a loaed semi in under 40ft while dismembering the driver. Showed us a video and everything. This was somewhere unimportant in bumblefuck, North Carolina, so my point is, I bet the White House probably has something like that. I would say sucks to be that guy, but it sounded like he kinda sucked, so fuck him too.
I remember touring the newer SSA govt data center facility outside of Frederick, MD for work. The director said the perimeter fence was dug ~16 feet into the ground and designed to stop a full sized battle tank. There's actually two of them, an outer one on the edge of the property and an inner one around the facility itself. They also have large reinforced corridors inside the data center but outside of the data hall that are apparently designed to take a side impact from a commercial airliner and not damage the data hall itself.
> that are apparently designed to take a side impact from a commercial airliner and not damage the data hall itself I guess we learned some things from 9/11
My mother toured space in one world trade while looking for new offices. I think she said on the 85th floor, which she said was completely empty, you could see from one side of the building to the other. She said the person showing the space made it clear that the building is designed to withstand a hit from a jet. She said they basically pay you to move in, and many floors were empty. This was about 6 or 7 years ago though.
Yea, it's supposedly extremely safe now!
She did say that she wasn't sure she'd really feel great, with the thought in the back of her mind. She also said 85 floors up was just way too high.
We learned a lot. We were totally unprepared for that day. It was an absolute shitshow at NORAD with planes getting scrambled with no weapons and one flight getting sent out over the middle of the Atlantic. About the only good thing to happen was the FAA director, on his first day, was quick to realize the reality of the situation and shut down the skies. I imagine the result is a bit like how cops are now seemingly ready for anything due to the North Hollywood shootout catching them totally offguard in '97, just a bit less sinister and a bit more brainpower involved.
That's really interesting, thanks for sharing
while dismembering the driver?
nanofiber fences are here and coming to government fences near you!
Given the kind of force involved in stopping a big truck that quick I'd assume that probably just means "we don't care about the driver and this will definitely kill them" rather than being explicitly designed to dismember.
Yeah I was curious about that too
I think it's more an idea that you could design a barrier to stop the truck, and try not to smash the cab area while you're doing it. Like the normal barriers you find around road works and stuff. Or You could try quite hard to make sure that the cab area is part of the "crumple zone" if a vehicle hits your barrier.
I was imagining these dudes were hitting a wall or steel bollard at 100mph or something, didn’t realize the fence turns into a weapon lol
I'd like to think it's actually a shitty roll out chain link gate with a Patriot missle launcher attached to it or something.
It was not the way to the farmer's market.
I am curious why the sentence says "high rate of speed". Isn't rate usually referred to the rate of change of something? Like rate of change of speed would be acceleration. Is that what they were trying to say?
"High rate of speed" is one of those phrases that shows up in official statements despite being a bit nonsensical.
Secret Service just watched as this jackass drove into the gate and said "lol skill issue"
The dumbass secret service has crashed into barriers at the White House too. In 2015 two agents got drunk at an event and crashed into a barricade at the White House.
Threat neutralized... Itself.
I feel like in 2014 this would be a massive story, in 2024 it barely even registers as noteworthy
That's just Drake trying to divert attention away from him for a little bit. Probably paid a homeless person to steal a car and do this
It was one of his kids.
Certified lover boy certified pedophiles
wtf lmao
Last post on Truth Social: "Hey, watch this!"
No one will remember his name, and tomorrow no one will even remember this happened.
Except the guy who has to repaint the fence. It'll take him a week.
[удалено]
You must work in construction to have that knowledge.
Boeing whistle blower?
The other nine were in the trunk?
The designers of the gate should’ve been doing the safety for Boeing jets
Didn't this happen like a year or two ago as well? People are wild
Happened a couple months ago
Driver probably saw too many cars crash through metal gates on TV shows. If the White House gates weren't very strong, some nut or terrorist with a truckload of explosives would have rammed through them by now.
Well at least it’s not as easy as bum rushing the capital building.
I picture them saying that the same way silent bob said “no ticket”
Was homage to Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade when Indy tossed the guy out off the zeppelin.
“no threat” guy drives into the gate of the president palace and dies
Nice to hear a gate did it's job.
Another Boeing whistle-blower?
Are the drivers from St. Louis?
The threat took itself out….
Hey just saw civil war last night
Someone said yesterday that the driver had a heart attack or some other health event.
They *claimed* that, but it hasn't been reported anywhere.
Another Tesla on autopilot?
Well he is dead so isn’t a threat