Talk:Babs (land speed record car)

Decapitation
This is on the talk: page, as I've no intention of sticking it in the main article.

user:82.69.76.17 has raised the old chestnut of him not having been decapitated, "because the chain didn't come off". Thanks for that, it's certainly a valid point to raise.

Firstly I don't think this belongs in the article at all. He was killed in a crash at high speed, that's notable. Just how gory it happened to be is sensationalistic and not encyclopedic. I really don't think any discussion of the details, beyond the note "There is some controversy" belongs in the article at all.

Secondly, he wasn't decapitated. He was partially decapitated, because his skull weas sliced in half rather than his neck severed. Eeeuuwww. The eyewitness reports are clear on this. Wording beyond that was just newspaper headline editorial picking up the simplest term.

An injury like this, given the relatively minor crash (for the speed, compare it to something like Lee Bible or Campbell's Bluebird crash) requires some narrow high-speed moving object to have hit him, such as the drivechain. This wasn't blunt impact trauma from the beach (read the inquest if you really care). So the flying chain is likely on that basis. If the chain did come off, I wouldn't want to be standing next to it - it's certainly capable of causing that sort of injury.

The RH chain and guard were missing when Babs was recovered, the LH were intact. That also suggests that the RH chain was lost in the accident. I don't know of contemporary crash photos that show it at the time.

The "motorbike chains don't chop heads off" physics-based argument is just wrong. Bad mechanics, bad science. We don't need to debunk such things here, any more than we need to debunk UFO claims.

Andy Dingley (talk) 12:30, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Landrover. (reg no. RDD 7)
The landrover that was used to pull babs on the trailor from her sandy grave has been restored. I last saw it a couple of years ago in bridgwater somerset. It was owned by one of my work mates who has sinse sold it so i no longer know of it present location.

John Blount. jhb@cloveruk.net 14:04 28/08/08  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.140.109.65 (talk) 13:08, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

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"Encyclopedic" Information
I see once again by the comment above that somebody is objecting to informational details felt "not to be relevant in an encyclopedia." I see this often in talk pages. I'm not familiar with all the Wikipedia fine points of inclusion and exclusion criteria, but as an encylcopedia reader, I go to Wikipedia TO FIND DETAILS I cannot find anywhere else. I really love the minutiae and little-known facts about events, people, and machines. You can read that Thomas died in a "serious racing accident" ANYWHERE. Any old newspaper article, book reference, old Pathe film clips, etc. I come to an ENCYCLOPEDIA to find out more detail: what, mechanically, caused the accident? What caused the injuries? What, exactly, where his injuries? How can the be explained by the physics of the impact or the mechanical disruption of the vehicle? I would like, in fact, to see the immediate law enforcement reports, witness interviews, and even autopsy reports. I'm not morbid, I just think this is the kind of detail that we look for when we come to this kind of forum. It's not a brief review of the material, it's not a precis of contemporary literature, it's an ENCYCLOPEDIA! Look up the term "encyclopedic." Let's do that.98.162.136.248 (talk) 06:21, 27 May 2018 (UTC)