Read and learn: m5board.com loses a member

[Erik]

Read and learn. Hopefully things like this will not happen again.

http://www.m5board.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=111545

"One thing is certain. The families and friends of Jacob James Casey, 19; James Devon Hime, 19; Joshua D. Ammirato, 18; Dustin J. Dawe, 19; and Isaac Rubin, 20, are devastated.

All five were pronounced dead at the scene after an apparent high-speed crash that investigators say likely involved alcohol.

Ammirato was driving his father's gray 2008 BMW M5 sedan. The $80,000 car, registered to Santo Ammirato, was traveling north on the 1.5-mile-long airstrip that actor John Travolta and others regularly use to fly in and out of Ocala."

[Erik]

http://www.ocala.com/article/20080127/BREAKING_NEWS/274162577/1053/BREAKING_NEWS

Less than 12 hours before he died, Joshua Ammirato was posting messages on an Internet message board seeking advice about how to drive his 2008 BMW M5 faster.

Ammirato, 18, logged onto M5board.com Thursday and Friday, asking other M5 drivers how to shift smoother in the 500-horsepower machine.

"The problem is when I'm going pedal to the metal pushing 140 and upshifting, there tends to be thud noise with the gear change," he wrote in one post.

Ammirato and four other young Marion County men were killed at about 3:45 a.m. Saturday, when the BMW M5 he was driving sailed off the end of the Greystone airstrip in Anthony and crashed into a tree.

Messages on the board devoted to M5 enthusiasts show Ammirato logged on shortly before 10 p.m. Thursday as "AmericanM5."

"Let me say I am beginner when it comes to high performance cars as I am only 18 so take it easy on me," he wrote.


...

[HKS786]

I seen this a while ago, really really sad. The saddest thing is reading his messages from a short while before it happened. What a tragic loss, I hope this is a lesson to other young drivers. My condolences to the families.

[AndyBG]

R.I.P.

18, so early to go...

[DuckWingDuck]

ultimately this is part of the reason why as cars are built faster and faster that we need to have more defensive driving courses.

[nene]

Defensive driving courses aren't a deterrant to stupidity!
I'm only glad he did not take any other families down with him, besides the morons that decided to jump into that machine with him.

I for one don't feel sorry.

[DuckWingDuck]

Well, I wouldn't say that I don't feel sorry Nene, but what you said is right on and I agree with you for the most part. Glad you said it.

[IbisRS6]

Defensive driving courses aren't a deterrant to stupidity!
I'm only glad he did not take any other families down with him, besides the morons that decided to jump into that machine with him.

I for one don't feel sorry.


That's the worst thing I have ever read! Do you even understand how devastating the situation is. These kids were between 18 and 20 years old. I'm 20 right now and I have so much ahead of me / going for my self. Imagine them.. wealthy, possibly intellegent kids that made a single mistake by driving a car to quickly on a runway! Your a joke if you don't feel pitty for that, imagine if that was one of your children (If you already have / are able to have them) and they died right when they were about to become real functioning people in this world.

Death is death and it's somethign that invokes an emotion one way or another. These childrens lifes were put at an end so suddenly I only hope they were having a good time before they lossed their precious lifes.

I feel for all the famlies that this effects directly and I'm sorry that these families will never get to experince life the same way ever again.

Something I've learned in my short years in this world is have sympathy and love for everyone, because if you don't people that are like me and my friends (Intelligent and influential) will know that you are ignorant and unkind.

-Alan

p.s. People commonly say things without propperly thinking about what they are saying. If this post has changed your opinion in any way let me know.

[nene]

You find devastating the fact that 5 kids born with silver spoons couldn't control their desire to be extremely stupid? You need to get out of your house more IbisRS6. Hopefully you did not hold your breath waiting for a change in my opinion, because you may have joined those 'poor' fellas.

Clearly they did not value their lives. Had they been on a road regularly, and a drunk driver hit them and killed them,...now that is a tragedy!

There is much worse going on in the world that I feel sorry about than 5 kids playing with fire and getting burnt in the process.

I do have a nephew that is about to be 20 years of age. And he drives daily the S4 I gave my sister. Albeit not an M5, and believe me, it does not take 500HP to do stupid things. They could have achieved the same goal (death) in a 90HP Smart Car. However, it is stories like this one that I bring up to him to keep him informed that we are not truly invincible behind the wheel. But I must say that I am not there to protect him, and he must learn from his mistakes.

So... NO, I don't feel sorry, and I am glad it is not one of my children.
I do hope that the driver's parents get their pants sued by the other parents, and get thrown off that lavish gated community they call home. Maybe that will help put some perspective into things. I did not read the story fully, so unsure if the kid took the car out with permission or without.

[01a6v8]

ohh my god
that is very tragic, i read all the bulletins on the m5 board and im really sad now
im only 19 but god i never drive like that top speed for me is 80mph thats it.
idk all my condolences go to the familys god bless and everyone be safe
drive carefull you never KNow what can happen
and if this story doesnt touch you in anyway then theres somthing wrong with you. put it this way somthing like this happens to one of your family members and you go on a thread and read where someone says they dont care how would you react??????????????????????????????????

[Erik]

nene, I'm actually a bit surprised by your comment too but I can see what you mean. I've been in cars (luckily the ones with 90 hp) where I've just jumped in at the wrong occassion but because I was young, inmature and drunk it felt like the totally right thing to do at the time. Didn't even give it a 1 second thought.
So I think similar things happen to a lot of people, it's like a Darwin award you have to pass to get older.

I guess that was the reason why I posted in the first place.
I'm sure it will happen again, but if the post can avoid just one occassion it's worth it regardless if the people are born with a silver spoon or not.

[Boosted-Bora]

I am only 20 and I must say I have many of acquaintances who do this same kind of nonsense and some so I've heard have ended with similar fates (death)
I feel deeply sorry for the families of the kids as well as the kid themselves all I can say is when some one my age gets there hands on a high power machine like the M5 I wish they would just be more careful as it is not a toy. This makes me remember more and more that life is not a joke.:nana:

I just wish more people in my age group (18-25) would think before they do certain things but i guess people are right when they say that my age group is one of the most dangerous on the road.

My condolences go out...... but as nene said what they did was still plain stupidity especially if alcohol was involved. :doh:

[DuckWingDuck]

damn I feel old, so many kids....

[skiwi]

man there are a lot of kids on this board....

for the kids:

1) you have a long time to get your thrills. you don't need to rush
2) if you really like driving cars fast - visit a track

for the old b@stards like me with kids:

1) it pays to remember what we got away with (i'm on my 4th "life")
2) rebuke is not teaching.

[iconcls]

Nene,

I couldn't agree more.

[Mr Balsen]

I could not agree more with nene.
I am already teaching to my children (10 and 7) that driving a sport car requires special driving skills. And alcool is out of the picture when it is about driving any car.

And I take them on regular basis as passenger of my Audi Sport Quattro Groupe B Replica. They know what power and safety mean...

Cheers,
Frederic

[KarlMarx]

Brave of Nene to post like he did (and I mean that in a supportive way). He's put into words what probably a lot of us where thinking anyway.

[JavierNuvolari]

Jeez man...that's very sad. But I guess inmaturity got him...I mean...he should have NOT been driving at that speed with others on board, no matter if they said" GO, GO GO"...so just for that I think he's an a**hole...because of him other families are grieving their sons.

On other side, my condolences for the family, truly...I can only imagine how much that has to hurt and it terryfies my to find out....even more now that I'm going to be a father(just heard at new year's eve in Brazil).

Truly a sad story

[RXBG]

i've done stupid things myself in cars. we all have. let's not be hypocritical.

i think any adult with children with licenses who buys a hi po car should sit and talk with them and/or make them take an anthusiast driving course where a pro driver they respect can tell them how dangerous these things are. at that age, having someone you respect and look up to makes it cool to listen to them and respect what they say. i know i'll do that. i just hope my children respect me as a ggood driver ;p

[JavierNuvolari]

i've done stupid things myself in cars. we all have. let's not be hypocritical.


Yup, guilty right here mate....thing is you see....everytime Iv'e done something stupid in a car I've driving alone, with no one on the back seat or the passenger seat....and I've done some reeeeeeeally stupid things...that ended obviously in a bad way, fortunely never injuring anyone.

Cheers RXBG:cheers:

[Leadfoot]

I would prefer not to comment on what has occurred only to say my prayers go out to each of the families. I would say there is possibly two parents who are currently beating themselves up over giving out the keys to their son and no doubt the other parents are resenting them too for doing it.

The reality of high-performance cars and inexperience mix as well as oil and water.

[Mr Balsen]

Leadfoot,

I am sure one parent is beating the other for buying this BMW M5...

Cheers,
Frederic

[RXBG]

Yup, guilty right here mate....thing is you see....everytime Iv'e done something stupid in a car I've driving alone, with no one on the back seat or the passenger seat....and I've done some reeeeeeeally stupid things...that ended obviously in a bad way, fortunely never injuring anyone.

Cheers RXBG:cheers:

stupidest thing i've ever done as an uninitiated audi lover was to take my new A4 quattro our for a drive in country. alone of course. it did not have ESP. and being a complete imbecil at 100 mph i jerked the wheel to see how stable quattro could be. i didn't do it far enough to lose control but it did scare the living F******G H***L out of me when the the car swayed laterally as the differentials tried to maintain grip. it did it for about 3 seconds. who loves me in heaven was with me that day.

best thing i ever did was take my current car to an autoX. for the rest of my days that is the first thing i will do with all of my new cars once broken in. no better way to get to know a new car and prepare for an all out track day. it also shows you how much you have to learn about vehicle dynamics.

[nene]

I am not looking for any awards on this issue, most certainly not at the high cost of someone else's life. I was simply stating my opinion, much like everyone else was stating theirs. I was not looking for anyone to agree or disagree with it. Nor was I attempting to persuade anyone to my point of view.

If you think my view is harsh, I understand where you are coming from. It is a public forum, and we can passionately state our opinions one way or the other without offending. The parties directly involved with the issue most certainly would be offended, but that is how I feel, and am not one to cover it with fake compassion.

Hopefully all that have posted on this topic will continue to be proud members of this forum, and certainly continue to contribute as they have on various occasions. My point of view is not of RS6.com or any of it's millions of members. It is simply my own view, and I stated it clearly as such.

[Ruergard]

I understand your comment nene, and I agree pretty much. But I still think it's sad that so young people getting killed by completely stupid. I'm sending my prayers and thoughts to the parents.

Alcohol and cars do not go hand in hand, and there's no excuse for that!

[Charles DLF]

No matter what the circumstances are, and was has been done or not, this is a true tragedy. If tomorrow my son was to die because he drove one of my fast cars i'd die in the second. My heart and soul would vanish in the second.

All of my thoughts are for the families, and really do careless about what went wrong here.

[Carl Lassiter]

My kid will get a new 2.5 liter VW Jetta with 150bhp. More than 200bhp for a teenager is madness

I feel for the families and four passengers involved.

[mmaturo]

I agree with nene as well and also really feel bad for the parents. No idea what the kid was thinking or not thinking driving on the runway and forgetting where the end of it was. Horrible. Lord knows i screwed around too much and got away with it, but in much different/slower metal. Now being older I know better. My RS6 when i first bought it a few years ago really scared me as to where the limits were, I knew I really had more than i could chew unless I had a nice long straight open road. I did not feel like i understood the car and the handling until i did do a track event with it, and then with it again in the rain on the track. The kid needed that same opportunity before seeing what it could do, these cars with this kind of power are too much.

[Benman]

I am not looking for any awards on this issue, most certainly not at the high cost of someone else's life. I was simply stating my opinion, much like everyone else was stating theirs.

If you think my view is harsh, I understand where you are coming from. It is a public forum, and we can passionately state our opinions one way or the other without offending.

I feel there is nothing wrong with stating one's opinion. Not at all.

This would be one of the rare times that I do not agree with you however.

As a father of two, to those parents that often say, "That would never happen to my child", they certainly many times find it can happen to their child.

While I too would like to think my parenting would teach my children the values of life and that they would never be too stupid to do a similar stunt as they grow older, the reality is that 18 year olds are extremely impressionable. Rich kid's parents let him drive their M5. Said kid is friends with my children. My children go for a ride (and yes, despite what most parents think, we do not always know where our 18 year old offspring are), said kid loses controll and now a child of mine is dead. My child, from no real fault of her own, no longer breaths. Silver spoon or not, the only mistake my child made is getting into a hi-po car that was piloted by (what she thought was) a competent driver.

Again, as parents, training only goes so far and the one thing that I do agree with Nene on is that we need to continually beat these kinds of stories into our childrens heads to drive the point home. Always think smart and do not allow peer pressure to keep you in a car when the driver is about to engage in retarded behaviour.

And NO, had my child been a passenger in that car, I would NOT sue the driver's parents. No amount of money gained in a lawsuit will ever bring back my cherished loved one. And no amount of money lost by him, will equal his loss...

To all,

Best Wishes

Ben:addict:

[RXBG]

happened not too far from where i live guys. my mother comes up to me today at lunch and starts talking to me about what she just read in the paper. she wasn't surprised to know i already knew more than she did.

have you guys ever seen rotten.com?

that filth has its uses. like scaring the sh*t out of people when they can see how horrible death can be. i used to treat myself to five minutes of it before i got in my car and drove down to miami for the weekend when i was a single guy. let me tell you. it would definitely temper my aggression if i came up on some guy who wanted to race me on the way down. i'm going to sit my child down and make him see some of the car wrecks if i find out he even remotely likes to drive fast.

seems kind of like a clockwork orange type of thing. but whatever.

[Rutkowsky]

happened not too far from where i live guys. my mother comes up to me today at lunch and starts talking to me about what she just read in the paper. she wasn't surprised to know i already knew more than she did.

have you guys ever seen rotten.com?

that filth has its uses. like scaring the sh*t out of people when they can see how horrible death can be. i used to treat myself to five minutes of it before i got in my car and drove down to miami for the weekend when i was a single guy. let me tell you. it would definitely temper my aggression if i came up on some guy who wanted to race me on the way down. i'm going to sit my child down and make him see some of the car wrecks if i find out he even remotely likes to drive fast.

seems kind of like a clockwork orange type of thing. but whatever.

I already commented on the tragedy and i still think that we all have weak moments and kids are especially susceptible to silly ideas. None of them deserved to die. I, like you - stared at car accident images..horrific ones and it scares the s**t out of me. I went and did multiple advanced driver courses, did many track day. A standard driver training required to pass for your lincence gives you very basic skills and doesn't prepare you at all for high performance cars/high speeds etc

[Rutkowsky]

I also did silly things. No one's perfect, especially kids. I wish i had the knowledge and experience of today when i was 18.. I have to say it - it felt strange, reading nene's post...
Drive safe everyone

[s42ski]

This story and the posts hits hard. I have two kids - 12 and 10, and I know that at least my son has some of my "go fast" gene in him. What us "older" folks can do is make sure we educate our kids as best we can for the driving world. My kids will get a driver training class from a driving school like Bondurant where they teach that go fast is OK, but keep it on the track. This is before they will be let on the road by themselves. Also, "trust but verify" - I will install a data monitor device on the car to see how fast and how hard they drive. If we see poor choices ( trying to learn to shift at 140 mph qualifies) then they lose the privilege of driving. In the US we get a drivers license as a right of passage at 16 years old with a test that is a joke. Many parents I have seen send the kids out onto the road with the basic training which teaches you how to use turn signals and parallel park. And then to allow an 18 year old unsupervised access to a 500 hp car ?

Autoweek magazine has run a series of articles about teen age driver education and they have some very good suggestions, such as 100 hours of parent training prior to first solo drive. 100 hours is a lot, but this story reiterates the importance of this type of education.

Does any of this prevent this tragedy, not necessarily, but I hope that my kids will learn to say no when someone says " lets go for a ride in my dad's M5 and see how fast it can go"

[Benman]

This story and the posts hits hard. I have two kids...


Agreed. Driver training courses are in my children's futures as well.:cheers:

Ben

[Leadfoot]

I know what I said earlier but like everyone else here I have done silly things which on other occasions could have got me killed too. My first car was a Ford Escort 1600sport Mk2 which over the course of four months was modified into a street legal rally car with a 3/4 race engine capable of revving to 9000rpm, full racing suspension but like all kids of the day the brakes were bog standard :trash:. The thing would spin the rear tyres (185/60x15") up to 90mph in the wet and 60mph in the dry and on more than one occasion I seen myself leaving a roundabout backwards at speeds I won't care to mention here.

But I was lucky enough to fall under the wing of someone with a wealth of rally experience and learn the trade. I reckon that was what kept me alive and would definitely recommend any parent to enroll their kid into something which will not only teach them how to handle a car properly but also to respect other road users.

[muskis2]

I wasn't going to make a comment but since I'm coming from the medical side of the world (work in cardiac testing in a local hospital) this is a very sad but very avoidable problem. One of the amazing things is that what in the heck is a driver that young doing in a car like that? My 1st car was an old Ford Escort that I thought I was cool when I put a turbo sticker I got from a dollar store and people asked was that 1985 escort turbo? But back to the topic. I'm 35 yrs old and many years seeing the absolute worst of what happens to the human body working in er's, hospitals etc. At that age you are untouchable and it won't happen to me. Powershifting at 140??? wow no comment, because at these speeds we call it the point of no return. Death is a terrible thing but someone somewhere needs to remind or state just how dangerous and just how easy these cars are able to reach amazing and deadly speeds. Heck I race my 66 shelby hertz mustang that is modded to the hilt at the dragstrip.(with 12 second time slips in full fire suit/helmut/gloves) Acutally while crusing in it I get all kinds of stoplight wars, and I tell them to pay their $35 and go up to the loacal dragstrip and I'll race them there. This is one of the reasons why I do plan on doing something pretty grusom with my 2 young boys. When its time for them to learn to drive I plan on having them take a drivers course and also comming with me down to the morgue and actually looking at a person who has passed on. Reason why? Reality folks, if you want to play sometimes you have to pay the ultimate price. And that payment may be your life. And drinking ontop of that, yea it was a matter of time before something was to happen. Plus I'm sorry that they passed, but glad that they didn't hurt any non involved bystandards because of their poor judgements for that evening. Yep I grasp that its no guarantee but reality of this situation is forever. Even when I get my own RS6 I'll try to avoid the temtation of goosing it more than whats safe. It will be hard but man 140 on a non autocross type of situation, very very sad.

Ok I'll get off the soapbox,
Bill in colorado- saddened and also irritated at this situation

[LIRS6]

What is fact is that 5 young people have died too early and without good reason. The rest is subjective ... was it the fault of the driver, the parents, the car manufacturers who develop 500 hp in a sedan etc.... Pray for the kids, pray for their families, pray for your children.

[Carl Lassiter]

, the car manufacturers who develop 500 hp in a sedan etc....

Anyone who thinks this is retarded.

[Rutkowsky]

Anyone who thinks this is retarded.

I agree, why not go back to 50bhp!

[IbisRS6]

Then we would have to have really light cars with a lot of down force to reach excess of 140...

[raulg]

I agree with NENE 100%.

The kids and the parents are to blame equally; the kids for fooling with the car like that and the parents for letting their imature kid drive the M5. If you wanna give them a BMW at least start them up with a 328i, not the fastest bimmer out there. That much power makes you crazy, especially when you are 20, parents should better!! You can kill yourself in a 328i just as good, but the chances you wanna hit 150 in 10 seconds are smaller, much smaller when u don't hear the crazy exhaust (of the M5) or when u don't feel the kick the V10 gives u!