How Fast Was Michael Hastings Really Going?

When this website reported on the death of Michael Hastings, your humble author’s comments regarding the odd nature of the crash wound up everywhere from the front page of the Fox News website to the Facebook pages of various relatives who didn’t notice that I was the author.

There’s now surveillance footage of the crash, which frankly looks more like the Castle Bravo test than a regular car crash. And at least one source has “calculated” an awfully low and suspicious-sounding speed of impact from that footage.

From the not-always-100%-conspiracy-theory-free Infowars comes a report that Hastings might have been going just 35mph at the time of the crash:

Analysis of the recently released surveillance footage of Hastings’ vehicle in the moments before the crash, which was carried out by SDSU professor Morteza M. Mehrabadi, Professor and Interim Chair Areas of Specialization: Mechanics of Materials, also suggests that Hastings was not speeding before his Mercedes hit a tree… By measuring the distance traveled by the car on the surveillance clip and the time that elapsed before the explosion, Professor Mehrabadi was able to calculate that the car was only traveling at a speed of 35 MPH, and not speeding as some reports claimed.

“The pre-explosion and slower speed could also explain the minimal damage to the palm tree and the facts the rear tires rested against the curb. It also provides an explanation for the location of the engine and drive train at more than 100 feet from the tree impact area,”

So the theory works like so:

• Michael Hastings was investigating something really scary.
• Somebody set him up the bomb.
• Explosion, and a hell of an explosion it was
• Crash.

Again, I have to say that I’ve seen plenty of cars crash at 100mph. I’ve crashed a car myself at 100mph, at Mid-Ohio, with a standard fuel tank in it (which seemed like a good way to save a few bucks right until I ran into the Armco) and I didn’t explode. I’m not ready to say that this was the work of whatever Star Chamber exists in this country, but it continues to look awfully odd to me.