Agreed- its called driver error.

Ya and it wouldn't be instantaneous either. You'd have to do a full rotation of the steering wheel in both directions to their maximum to bleed out all the steering fluid. It just doesn't work like that and typically gets stiffer and stiffer as you continue to drive - doesn't just seize up all of a sudden.

NBC showing a story now on Paul Walker, hearing his dad talk about him was heart wrenching

Police have ruled out a 2nd car and are focusing on speed, donut spins and possibly a blown tire

I think we would need to know more about the technology Porsche uses in a new Carrera GT before we can determine what did or didn't cause it.

I'm probably wrong, but i'd think a $500K Porsche super car is a bit more complex than your everyday chevy.

he was probably rolling with Firestones.

I would say extremely unlikely in this case. While I'm sure if I wanted to spend the time I could find the manuals/exploded parts diagrams to be 100% definitive. I'm about 99% sure it's traditional steering setup. Why? Because the only way it's really a critical error is if it's steer by wire system, frankly I'm not sure anyone is doing that yet.

The primary reason(especially for sports/supercars) is feel. With direct linkage you feel the car and feel the road, if your steering doesn't have a direct linkage to the wheels you lose feeling and have numb steering which is quite bad for performance driving. Hell the Porsche community was up in arms when the 997 came out because it was coming with electronic steering assist versus hydraulic.

People used to hate on electric power steering assist because it gave that 'numb' feeling. For any supercar that's meant to be raced/tracked it would be unheard of to remove the driver feedback by unlinking the steering, much less a Porsche.

Steering links could have broken which would have disabled it, but no way a loss of fluid alone caused a loss of steering control. The mechanical connection would have still been there.

and USUALLY at speed its still fairly easy to turn the wheel

It wasn't a new one. 2006-2008. Brand new they were a million IIRC


And they were bad ass. Should be a carbon fiber monocoque.


Edit: just looked it up. Pure carbon fiber monocoque and subframe. They were hauling balls to cause that much damage. Also, not buying power steering leak as the cause. Driver error is my bet.

Lets say it is a traditional power steering set up (I agree, it most likely is), then it's not unreasonable to believe that there could have been a failure in a steering line. The pumps i deal with at work can put out as much as 2200PSI, which is certainly enough to turn a small leak into a complete bust if it's leaking from the fitting/hose end.

I'm not trying to argue with you, just stating that we don't know enough to dismiss what the report is saying.

I know my Trans Am is a pain in the ass to steer when i lose power steering, i could only imagine how difficult it would be to steer it around a corner at 120+ MPH.

Driver error is the most logical, but according to reports, it would also mean he drove straight ahead into (whatever it was that he hit).

If there was a stream of fluid before the impact and no tire marks....that COULD mean mechanical error.

again there would be less tire friction at those speeds and it wouldn't be as hard to turn as one would think IMO.

I think the bigger question is if the fluid caught fire and caused something to explode

and actually there are quite a few cars that have a pressure switch that cuts down the line pressure at highway speeds.

they get too easy to turn if they don't do it and make the car feel like you have to herd it down the road

Or the car realized it was about to die and pissed itself before impact.
(sorry couldn't resist. :p)

Frankly if there's any fluid loss that could have caused said event I would put my money more on a brake fluid loss.

If the driver lost it and realized it was going badly and put both feet in but the brakes were gone the resultant confusion might have lasted long enough for him not to turn depending upon how fast he went.

The hood isn't wrecked to shit. They had side impacts to do that damage. It looks like they may have hit shit with both sides of the car.