48 Replies to “Rainbow Bridge Driver?”

  1. Bentley now has to convince the public that their cars don’t explode whenever there’s an accident.

    1. That’s the detail that tells me there’s something else: it’s not possible for a 50+ yr old rich guy to go Thelma&Louise berserk just because a KISS concert got cancelled.

        1. I went to school in Windsor and drove home past the Casino. Regularly I had to brake/swerve to avoid cars blasting out of the parking garage. Unlike usual, I did not honk….

    2. Yup, my thought as well. Jeff Childers of Coffee and Covid blog has been rounding up a lot of those lately, and many of them cause car accidents.

  6. This reveals just how much $$$$ an Ace Hardware franchise generates. I know my local Ace Hardware is a massive cash cow. Why? Because Ace Hardware is the Walmart monopoly of the hardware business.

    We used to have two fantastic local hardware stores … actually MORE than two … but two were superb! Ace Hardware drove them all out of business. And now we get ONLY the ChiCom sourced CRAP hardware and nothing else. Gone is “choice” we used to have. Our economy hasn’t been much of a FREE MARKET environment for a very long time. We are far closer to a monopolistic economy than ever. Where a very few people get very $$$ rich. Pssst … he wasn’t paying his store clerks even $15/hr … nope. Taco Bell wages for Ace Hardware employees.

    1. Gui’s isn’t just a hardware store. It’s a full-service lumber yard as well. A fairly big difference. I shopped there periodically when we lived in the area.

      This accident may indeed not have been more complcated than a stuck accelorator. A Bentley can reach high speeds very quickly, and they certainly weren’t in an area of open road. I wonder, given the incineration of the car, and presumably the VIllanis, how much medical information will be able to be gathered, such as a possible hesrt attack, etc.

  7. From the about us page:
    “NYS Certified Minority & Woman-Owned Business/Supplier”

    Wonder what the minority is?

    1. No minority, except “woman. That the name the state has for certified suppliers to minority and women-owned businesses. One or the other and somrtimes, but not necessarily, both.

  8. Not saying the Bentley was the same year listed on this recall notice but it does make me go “Hmmmmmmmm…that’s interesting”.
    https://www.drive.com.au/news/2018-2021-bentley-continental-gt-and-flying-spur-recalled/

    “… if the accelerator pedal is fully pressed whilst driving and is unable to return to its resting position, the vehicle will continue to accelerate, even when the driver’s foot is removed from the accelerator pedal.”

    Yikes. How scary would that be?

    1. That’s a find. Also might explain the U- turn which I think happened. If he could not stop the car, he would not have wanted to head onto a bridge with traffic. What a nightmare.

        1. Exactly
          Turn the ignition off.

          Also, lots of these are driver error, mistaking the gas for the brake pedal accidents.

          1. No, it doesn’t lock the steering wheel until you turn the key past the “off” position to the “lock” position.

      1. I had an accelerator pedal get stuck once on Deerfoot Trail. It took me a second or two to realize the pedal wasn’t coming back up. I put the shifter in neutral and guided it to the shoulder of the road from the right lane and turned it off. Maybe 10 seconds in total.

        1. Not sure what your vehicle was, but this road sure isn’t the Deerfoot. And in a car with near as makes no difference 700bhp a couple of seconds is a loooong way, especially while attempting to steer around everything that is now coming at you at warp speed on what looks like a pretty average street.

  9. Could have been seizure or something like that. The problem I have with today’s insanely high powered cars is that you can go from zero to sudden death in seconds. Not a big fan of driver compartments that are inaccessible in case of emergency. What would a passenger do in this case? The electronic transmission shifter may need a specific motion/button press to get it into neutral. The electronic start may be designed to prevent one from turning off the engine while the car is in gear.
    Poor passenger had only a few seconds to make a decision on what might work.
    About 50 years ago, my mother was driving her aged Ford Falcon when the gas pedal stuck to the floor. Not a critical emergency because the Falcon had about 80 horsepower, and we were going up a hill. So maybe we were doing 30mph. Still, she panicked. I told her to put in neutral and the engine began to scream. She shut it off. Because the Falcon had manual steering and brakes, the car handled same as always. We unstuck the pedal and carefully drove home.

    1. Not a seizure or heart attack — the vehicle was “fishtailing” i.e. it was under conscious control. I do think it was a stuck accelerator; there is reporting now that the couple had mentioned to friends that their car had problems with the accelerator. If that’s true, they would have had a hellish ride down Niagara St; the driver deserves some posthumous credit for managing to avoid other cars.

  12. Apparently three people died, the Villani couple, and an Ottawa politician, Pierre Pollievre, who was seen making an erratic lane change and broadsided by Tucker Carlson, an American who is what our government calls a scary far-right figure seeking to destroy democracy. What this actually means is normal person who rejects globalism.
    Pierre Pollievre is apparently in danger of becoming one of that sort, even though now dead, roadkill created by an enormous explosion of Liberal self-righteousness.

    Onlookers said this explosion came quite suddenly in a flash of irony, where Liberals talked about freedom and democracy and building houses that everyone knows they will never build, because if they were going to build them, why did they not build them already? (possibly too busy waving flags and inventing globalist lies)

    1. Former Formula 1 driver and later color commentator Martin Brundle once noted the dichotomy between Formula 1 and the British automotive industry. At the time, all of the formula 1 teams except for one had their design offices in England and the cars were the most advanced automobiles in the world, but you couldn’t drive two blocks in a British car without the doors falling off.

      I guess all the good engineers worked in formula one and the hacks worked in the auto industry.

    1. I saw that obituary, it says his eldest son is also named Kurt Villani. Not sure if this tells us it was Kurt Jr (who could still be around 45-50, the obit says Kurt Sr died in 2022 at age 72). Also not sure if it would be his widowed mother as a passenger (or driver?) or some other passenger.

      Anyway, unintended consequences, but PP made a mess, allowing Liberals to trot out the one card they still hold, not being white nationalists. They even picked the name of a random white guy as his supposed inspiration. Confusing Tucker Carlson with Alex Jones is understandable, all white people look alike I suppose.

      Anyway, the Libs are busy building houses, apparently, it’s the only thing they think about night and day. In the eight years they have been governing, they have built what I estimate to be zero houses, and abandoned one pre-existing house at 24 Sussex Drive.

  18. Recall for accelerator is well known: A manufacturing fault could cause the accelerator to get stuck when engaged, according to the manufacturer. Bentley has recalled 400 examples of its Continental GT and Flying Spur, citing a potential fault with the accelerator assembly. The affected vehicles are stamped Model Years 2018-2021

    1. That was an Australian recall — didn’t apply to American Bentleys because the gas pedal is on the opposite side of the footwell. That said, I have since learned that the Villanis had told friends recently that their Bentley was having problems with the accelerator.

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