Money > (Brains + Driving Skill)

 

The average person has no clue how to handle 700hp. That much power on public / imperfect roads is for sure gonna lead to more incidents like this. Not saying I'm against having 700hp cars being readily available to the public, but I'd for sure be careful driving next to someone with that much power under his foot

 

Of course already

 

I think this has been going on with modern crotch rockets for a while.

 

Not surprised, at all.

 

Who are we kidding here. Most people, including most people on this forum, are handling <350 hp. Even the lowly S2000 without any TQ gets people in trouble with the rants about bad handling, and snap over steer. Go into the other sections turning the start of fall and everyone is reminding each other about good tires. Every year a few poster boys post up 'learn from me' regarding some bits of rain.

The 'average' driver is a horrible drive at anything but staying in the lines. Given anything but perfect roads, a zippy car is a coffin. It's been this way for years.

Having gone from fast, to nearly 500hp fast, I will tell you an entirely new side of me has come out. After many track days and autox, I rarely put my foot into it. I also kept this same beast of a car on the road in a flash snow storm, full white out and 6 iches of snow, on summer tires, rwd and dark. I thought I was an average driver, my wife nearly threw up in the car with anxiety, a woman who has never once spoken up about my driving or been anything but relaxed. A story for another time but the best of judgement was used. I'd consider myself slightly above 'average' on the larger population sense of it.

The average buyer of these hellcats will suffer the same poor fate of any fast inexperienced driver, a crash or worse, death.

I wanted a hellcat, and still might get one in a few years. By then I think we'll be seeing 1000hp sedans as they compete with the green electrics. The question I have for myself, where do I ever get to use all that power? At the track it's hard enough, public roads putting down all that TQ is going to result in trouble. Heck it does now with less...

 

Rob-2, I think it's mostly about bench racing. People just want to brag about what they've got. They care far less about actually learning to drive quickly.

 

last two posts

Very true.

 

I'm surprised the NHTSA hasn't stepped in yet to curb the rising tide of horsepower.

 

This, I feel that when 500hp falls into the price of the average car transaction ($34k in 2014) then they will be forced to step in by either making mandatory passive always on traction control or putting a hard limit on weight to power ratio.