"Inexplicably, the palm tree Hastings’ car hit has scorched bark and slightly wounded base --approximately 16"W x 4.5" H x 1"D-- seemingly minimal damage for a 3,538 pound car striking the tree at a reportedly 100 mph."
Here's a data point. A street race on a street where I live got out of hand and a mid-size sedan went at an estimated 80mph into the trunk of a magnolia tree in the median. The car body was literally torn in half, and four of the five occupants were killed.
That magnolia has a chunk out of its bark about the size indicated in the quote. It is still very much alive, and five years later, people forget which tree to put memorial candles underneath.
I live about 150 meters from the site of that accident. It also sounded like an explosion (big "thump", that brought me and my neighbors out of our houses at around 10 or 11 at night).
I don't know one way or another about the specific crash in the OP -- just pointing out that armchair forensics is prone to error.
Second sentence: "A new surveillance video from a nearby business obtained by San Diego 6 News and posted by LA Weekly graphically shows multiple explosions consuming his 2013 Mercedes Benz." Did you see the video?
I'm not trying to explain all the facts surrounding the incident, I'm just taking issue with the interpretation of one fact, and extrapolating to say none of this is obvious.
Part of the reason I felt a need to chime in, is that I used to live not far from where the accident in the OP took place (north Highland in LA), and the accident I referred to in my comment happened very close to where I live now, again in LA, and the median and curb construction are quite similar.
Did you? There really aren't multiple explosions visible, it's grainy and from pretty far away(not to mention, not actually newly released surveillance video). We see one continuous light source, consistent with an explosion and a fire recorded by a grainy, B/W COTS security camera at night.
I saw the video and it is about as clear as the videos that show "multiple explosions" during the collapse of the WTC towers. Maybe there is actually something there, but I don't think a layman can see it from the provided copy of that video.
Even if we assume multiple explosions, that doesn't prove anything other than multiple explosions. Since we're playing with unlikely events anyways, how unlikely is it that a car violently slinging around gasoline and breaking fuel lines near a running engine and a very hot catalytic converter undergoes multiple explosions during a violent crash?
The surveillance video also shows the car driving at extremely high speed. Indeed, with a little work you could probably id the location and model of the surveillance camera and extrapolate the speed data from the footage. I don't find this especially convincing of anything new - cars don't blow up at the drop of a hat nowadays, but if you crash one fast enough explosion isn't an especially remarkable outcome.
Offhand that looks to me like 70mph+. I haven't done any measurements, and am just relying on my film industry experience, which has naturally entailed watching a great deal of footage from a variety of cameras over many years. I could be totally wrong.
Here's a data point. A street race on a street where I live got out of hand and a mid-size sedan went at an estimated 80mph into the trunk of a magnolia tree in the median. The car body was literally torn in half, and four of the five occupants were killed.
That magnolia has a chunk out of its bark about the size indicated in the quote. It is still very much alive, and five years later, people forget which tree to put memorial candles underneath.
I live about 150 meters from the site of that accident. It also sounded like an explosion (big "thump", that brought me and my neighbors out of our houses at around 10 or 11 at night).
I don't know one way or another about the specific crash in the OP -- just pointing out that armchair forensics is prone to error.