Monday, February 3, 2014

And if the brakes failed?


This is a gutsy demonstration of the braking power of the Leopard 2 tank . . . but it leaves me speechless at the thought of the possible consequences if anything had gone wrong.








Peter

9 comments:

Rev. Paul said...

Clearly, good brakes - but they couldn't pay enough to make me stand among them.

Wow.

Douglas2 said...

It's a bit of theatre really, so I couldn't help but ponder what I would do if asked to produce such a video.

My first inclination was something like dowty retarders set into the road surface and then a buffer-stop. Even after the victims start moving around in the video there is plenty of surface area in front of the tank that we do not see, so a hayes-bumper could be hidden by the people both before and after the "brake test", and the retarders by the people before and by the tank sitting on top of them after the stop.

But even there there is hazard. So what I would actually do is have PA speakers in the position of the stopped tank playing the sound effects of the brake test. That would get the appropriate reactions from the human talent, and then the video could be merged with an actual tank brake test.

Murphy's Law said...

YOu just know that the HR department had several job postings ready to go up...just in case.

raven said...

That is the difference between older folks and younger folks. Younger folks assume things will go right, and veterans of life are always expecting Murphy to show up at any moment.

Old NFO said...

Oh HELL no... And Murphy was an OPTIMIST!!!

Grog said...

Can that be retried with congress being substituted for the frat boys?

The Raving Prophet said...

Grog:

And a tank with no brakes?

Anonymous said...

The tank could have stopped sooner. It was obvious the driver eased on the brakes to time the final stop.

My machine had trouble loading and buffering the clip, so I got to watch the tank come to a dead stop four times. It's not as impressive that way.

Kansas Scout said...

You notice they were all young...I suspect they could not get older and wiser people to volunteer.