<story><title>Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash</title><url>http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/06/23/michael_hastings_sent_panicked_email_hours_before_car_crash.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>DigitalSea</author><text>How does a 2013 model Mercedes Benz with a five star ANCAP safety rating (the highest rating you can get) scoring 35.51 points scored out of 37 (an Australian car safety rating for reference) with more airbags than wheels (8 airbags for those of you playing at home including a curtain airbag that drops in-front of the passenger and driver protecting the head and upper-body from impacting anything) crash into a tree without there even being another vehicle involved?&lt;p&gt;The car has stability control, traction control, ABS, EBD, brake assist and three-point pre-tensioning seatbelts. If you&amp;#x27;ve ever driven a modern BMW, Mercedes or any other premium European vehicle than you&amp;#x27;d know it&amp;#x27;s impossible to crash these things unless you honestly wanted to crash them. I am pretty sure it has been standard on most cars in this price bracket for a while now to respond to impacts by shutting off fuel, disconnecting battery terminals and unlocking doors. It varies from model to model, but most premium cars react to emergencies by cutting off as many points of danger as possible. Something doesn&amp;#x27;t add up here.&lt;p&gt;Was he drunk? Was he poisoned with a cocktail of drugs that perhaps made him lose concentration and crash into a tree? A new 2013 Mercedes don&amp;#x27;t just malfunction and crash killing its occupants so easily. They build these cars to withstand a lot of impact, this isn&amp;#x27;t the movies, new cars don&amp;#x27;t just crash and explode on impact. You hear of gruesome accidents everyday in vehicles, but you rarely hear of them exploding, mangling in a ball of metal and plastic yes, but rarely exploding. Is there CCTV footage of the minutes before he crashed showing perhaps what happened?&lt;p&gt;Perhaps a recreation of the accident might help shed some light on what really happened. A computer simulation I am sure would be more than enough, coupled with CCTV footage and you should have a pretty close to accurate simulation of how it all went down and how the car would fare.&lt;p&gt;If the FBI were interviewing close friends and family, someone needs to come out at least dispelling the suggestion he went crazy or was suffering from paranoia. Because at present, there&amp;#x27;s nothing to suggest foul play other than speculation. And as usual, we all point fingers and call someone crazy when they claim the FBI is watching them and after all of this PRISM controversy, claims like that don&amp;#x27;t sound as crazy as they once did...</text></comment>
<story><title>Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash</title><url>http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/06/23/michael_hastings_sent_panicked_email_hours_before_car_crash.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mrschwabe</author><text>This Hastings incident has interesting parallels to Andrew Breitbart&amp;#x27;s death.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rt.com/usa/coroner-arsenic-death-breitbart-456/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;rt.com&amp;#x2F;usa&amp;#x2F;coroner-arsenic-death-breitbart-456&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Namely the fact that both of these men were prominent journalists, living in the US, each with &amp;#x27;big stories&amp;#x27; they were working on that have not seen the light of day due to their untimely death shortly after proclaiming they were working on said stories.&lt;p&gt;To compound the dire possibilities, in February the US Justice Department confirmed the existence of legal justification for the assassination of American citizens:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/us/politics/obama-orders-release-of-drone-memos-to-lawmakers.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;politics&amp;#x2F;obama-orders-r...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not drawing conclusions here, but I think it&amp;#x27;s important in this day and age to be diligent in connecting dots and evaluating ALL possibilities.</text></comment>