[dram]

The article and your comment are misleading. Despite the professor's calculation, it contradicts other evidence including the eye witnesses.

Michael Krikorian observes that Hastings' car was going at least twice as fast as the other cars in the video. He estimated that the car was travelling at least 80 mph.

And the video from Loudlabs' clearly shows Hastings' car speeding through a red light prior to the crash.

And in the Krikorian article, a special effects expert said the bright flash of light could be due to the auto exposure of the camera causing the explosion to look bigger than it actually was. The "pre-explosion" appears to be the car hitting the 30" x 2' wide metal protusion for a water main between the curb and the tree.

And the expert noted that a bomb would blow the car and engine upwards and not forwards.

http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/07/14/the-michael-hastings-wreck-...

[unclebucknasty]

I'm not clear on a few things here:

>Michael Krikorian observes that Hastings' car was going at least twice as fast as the other cars in the video.

Does that tell us anything without knowing how fast the other cars were going? For instance, could they have been slowing for a light as the article suggests?

>He estimated that the car was traveling at least 80 mph.

Not sure why some dude looking and estimating (i.e. "eyewitness") is more reliable than calculations based on time/distance caught on video? Granted he could have been slowing down or speeding up, but that could be so with the eyeballed account or the video. So, still not sure why this "eyewitness" estimate has more weight than the video in your mind?

>And the video from Loudlabs' clearly shows Hastings' car speeding through a red light prior to the crash.

Speed could have changed between then and the accident a couple minutes later, right?

>And the expert noted that a bomb would blow the car and engine upwards and not forwards.

Why couldn't it be both? In fact, even if the engine were blown upward, wouldn't it still have inertia from the car's forward momentum, thus also continue traveling forward?

[dram]

Fair points but the author of the article, Kimberly Dvorak, appears convinced that Hastings' was murdered. It seems she found someone to support a theory that his car was travelling 35MPH. I think you can deduce from him speeding through the red light, the lack of brake lights in the 2nd video, the witness who said the car was travelling 100MPH, and the nature of the impact that he was in fact driving very fast.

If the video evidence was so clear that he was travelling 35MPH, I'm sure other people would be supporting this claim which would easily confirm a bomb was used.

[unclebucknasty]

>I think you can deduce from him speeding through the red light, the lack of brake lights in the 2nd video, the witness who said the car was travelling 100MPH

I don't think we can deduce that. There are gaps. And witnesses are notorious for being wrong. Besides, why should we be deducing anything when there is actual video?

>If the video evidence was so clear that he was travelling 35MPH, I'm sure other people would be supporting this claim

That's an odd position to take. I mean, how many people have to agree before it's "clear"? Instead of asking for other people supporting, shouldn't you be asking others to refute it? It's out there for all to see. So, tell us the timing is off, the distance was wrong, the video was not real-time, or something which would prove his conclusions wrong.

In all of the mystery surrounding this, this particular point is easy. There has to be a physics based reason that his video analysis is wrong.

One thing I would like to know is the possible range of speeds the car was traveling at the point of impact. The most that can be deduced from simple time/distance is that the average was 35 MPH, unless there was frame-by-frame analysis. I don't think that was the case here. So, given what's known about the car's acceleration/braking performance, as well as the distance traveled, what is the maximum speed at impact? I don't think it's too big a delta because the distance is relatively short. Still would be nice to be more precise.

[dram]

Let's be fair. Krikorian had access to the ENTIRE video and this professor only a short Youtube video clip. Kirkorian wrote, "Three seconds later, another vehicle goes by, traveling from the restaurant front door to the crash site in about seven seconds." And you can see from the video clip, that Hastings' car travels the same distance in about 3.5 seconds- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjaPHWNzTHQ

The car that slowed down was travelling the other direction. There's no indication the two cars travelling the same direction slowed down.

Why wouldn't Krikorian, a former LA Times reporter, want to not break the biggest story ever, proving Hastings was driving 35MPH? His investigation also contradicted other things Miss Dvorak claimed- http://krikorianwrites.com/blog/2013/7/24/michael-hastings-i...

EDIT: I did a rough estimate of the professor's math. The pizza shop to the impact is about 200'. Looking closer, it appears it takes Hastings 2.5 to 3 seconds to travel that distance. So if the video surveillance is played at real time, Hastings was travelling between 45MPH and 55MPH? To be 35MPH, the time would have to be about 3.8 seconds.

Sure someone could do a more accurate estimate but it seems very unlikely that he was going 80MPH assuming the video surveillance is not delayed. It'd be interesting to get accurate measurements and use some video analysis to get a real answer.

[unclebucknasty]

Fair points. I think it's good that we're focusing on the video, BTW.

>Why wouldn't Krikorian, a former LA Times reporter, want to not break the biggest story ever, proving Hastings was driving 35MPH?

I have no idea. Maybe because he's a former reporter? Some other reason? I don't know. But, I think it's good to keep focusing on verifying or refuting the numbers from the video.

>Hastings was travelling between 45MPH and 55MPH?

That's what I get.

>It'd be interesting to get accurate measurements and use some video analysis to get a real answer.

It would be good to have more precise numbers (distances, times, etc). But, even with rough (but reasonable) numbers, this takes us way under 80MPH and definitely the 100MPH that some have suggested.

But, doesn't it seem like such analysis should be part of the police investigation?

[junto]

Why is the "security camera" moving? It looks like someone was holding the camera. Aren't security cameras usually mounted to walls?

[dram]

The investigative reporter lives nearby. He recorded the surveillance camera playback with his camera or phone. Perhaps the recording of the playback slowed down the video slightly?

Maybe someone could load the video up in Physics Toolkit (http://www.physicstoolkit.com/) or another program (http://jabryan.iweb.bsu.edu/VideoAnalysis/) and get a more accurate estimate of how fast Hastings was travelling.

[talmand]

Well, I'm not a special effects expert but I would assume a bomb placed between the engine block and the firewall would indeed push the engine forward. One placed beneath the engine would seem to push it upward. Until placement (big if on placement in the first place) is determined, it doesn't seem likely to be able to explain the results.

[Tloewald]

The single biggest piece of evidence is that the engine and drive shaft were blown 200' away from the rest of the wreck. That seems like quite a big explosion, based on my extensive viewing of Mythbusters.

I doubt any witnesses saw much beyond the fireballs (which would have ruined their night vision), so whether the car was thrown up or not is unlikely to have been noted.