1,300HP Mercury Comet BRAKE FAILURE CRASH

This is Russ, as I sat in the hospital for a couple days, I replayed everything in my head hundreds of times, things that I should have noticed as a warning, and what I could have done differently. I’ve seen lots of comments so I’ll address a few of them, not being defensive at all. In a normal car throttle sticking at 2200 RPM’s is not the end of the world, in my car that’s 900 ft/lbs of torque. I should have realized the load that was putting on the brakes. Didn’t cross my mind at the time. FYI: It had double springs on the throttle. In a normal car, I could have pulled emergency brake, I even got a quote at Good Guy’s Del Mar for an electronic e-brake & bigger brakes. Hindsight’s 20-20, I was just gonna trailer it to a few shows & not drive it much till I could do that. Why didn’t I downshift? Car had a B&M ratchet shifter, once I shifted up thru the gears you can’t downshift till you put it in park. So much going on in those last few seconds, forgot to downshift it after putting it in park, but it was probably too late to have had a big reduction in speed. As far as I know, driver of van was not seriously injured. Beauty of a modern car with crumple zones, self tightening seat belts & air bags. Car had liability coverage but no collision, I was still in the process of getting stated value insurance A

Kinda weird to not even mention whether the person you crashed in to is okay. Afterall he/she is the ACTUAL victim.

Someone who has worked as both a Tech and an Advisor, it blows my mind how little people think about brakes and tires. No matter if your vehicle makes 10 horsepower or 10,000hp, you need to be able to turn and stop. The fact that this gets overlooked on performance builds is just scary.

Guy works on a car for 23 years and forgets to do the brakes. Unreal.

the real miracle here is that comments are still open 2 years later

No emergency brake, sticky throttle, old and heated up brakes, only lapbelts then uploading everything to the internet for the Minivan's attorney to use in court. Priceless!

That owner is 100% responsible. Those brakes are definitely not designed for 1300 hp. You mentioned smelling the brakes. That's a huge warning sign. I feel bad for the poor people he smashed into.

- No brakes - No airbags - No shoulder belt - Steel dash It's just perfect.

He built the car to try and show off what a badass he thinks he is, but now 10 million people just think he's a dumbass. Life is strange.

Out of all of this, the biggest shock to me is that this dude only had liability insurance on a car he’d poured over 200k into.

The fact that these guys had to be called out hundreds of times to even get them to write a clarification on the health of the mini van driver. Really shows their character, they didn’t even think to address it in the first 12 min long video

Russ is probably living in a tent after the lawsuit.

Imagine sitting with your family at a stoplight and two divorced dads come flying through your trunk. Then they make a video letting everyone know the car is ok.

Imagine sitting at a light with your family of 4 and two divorced men rear end you at 55 mph, Then they make a YouTube video to let you know the car is ok.

23 years, $200,000, two marriages, and you can't even drive the damn thing around the block.

This video is a lawyers dream

These guys are getting tons of hate in the comments and other channels. They deserve all of it.

"Install harnesses." -Don't upgrade or even maintain your brakes after serious performance upgrades. -Ignore that sticking throttle--got enough coin in this thing already. -And hey make sure to take it out into rush hour traffic for that youtube vid. -Brakes smell real hot but let's do some quick pulls in the middle lane. -Make a video of both of you acknowledging then placating glaring safety problems before even leaving the shop and never even mention the innocent people you smoked in a completely avoidable/negligently caused accident.

0:53 "we were involved in an accident" My brother in Christ, YOU caused the accident

A car with 1300 HP needs all the braking power it can ever have!