quattro fatal accident

[Lawrence C Leung]

Quattro's fishtail just like any other car in sudden transition
situations. In fact many driving schools will state that at the limit,
all cars will react the same. It's just that most of us don't really
reach the limit in a controlled manner.  I recall that when a car
suddenly turned left into my path when I was passing him (legally) on a
wet two lane in Maine, my 4KQ set up quite a violent fishtail at nearly
70+ MPH on a road lined with trees. I was lucky that my experience in
high performance driving (at that time, 10 yrs of Autocrossing, with at
the time one regional championship) and presence (sp?) of mind kept me
from lifting in the situation. I recovered the car and continued onward,
but myself and my companion at the time didn't say a word for at least 10
minutes! 

LL - NY



On Mon, 13 Nov 2000 08:28:44 -0500 "Mullen, Shaun"
<mullens at phillynews.com> writes:
>A timely reminder (with the arrival of winter weather in some parts of 
>the
>globe) that neither quattros nor their drivers are fool proof.
>
>About 2am Friday morning, Nov. 10, a quattro sedan with a driver and
>front-seat passenger and single rear-seat passenger entered the 
>southbound
>lanes of I-95 in Wilmington, DE.  From a preliminary state police 
>report and
>what I myself have gleaned, this is what may have happened:  The 
>driver
>accelerated onto wet leaves at a fairly brisk but not terribly high 
>rate of
>speed.  The car began to go out of control.  The driver probably over
>compensated.  The quattro slid into a median guard rail and flipped 
>over.
>The driver and front-seat passenger were injured, but not seriously.  
>The
>rear-seat passenger was projected out of the rear window and onto the
>pavement.  He was killed.
>
>The quattro was an early 90's model.  It is impossible to tell from 
>the one
>photograph that I saw whether it was a 90 or 100 series.  No info on 
>whether
>the driver and front-seat passenger were belted.  It would seem that 
>the
>rear-seat passenger was not belted.  No info on whether the car had 
>one or
>two airbags, or had ABS.  Or whether the driver had been drinking.  
>
>Shaun Mullen
>Yorklyn, DE