Students Fail to Engineer Car-Dangling Prank

Are these 1st year students? Not able to calculate the stresses of a weight on a cable? Assuming they somehow make it through school, I'm not sure I'd hire any of them!

Oops. These type of pranks are not unheard of. Fortunately no one was injured when it fell from beneath the bridge.

However, the cables eventually failed

Given this is from a media source I wouldn't trust this comment entirely, the failure point could have been the cars structure, not that the cables were undersized for the job and snapped. Perhaps the bumper fell off.

Jack "Fortunately no one was injured when it fell from beneath the bridge."

How does it fall from beneath the the bridge?

It isn't mentioned in the media article but I am assuming that they suspended it from the bottom lattice supports under the bridge (it is the easiest and safest place to suspend the car). It is possible that they suspended it from the top arch, but I would expect more than a $5000 bill for damages if it fell onto the road below, and more than a "criminal mischief" charge.

I'd guess your right. The only suitable point to hang a car from would be the frame rails. The dampers used to secure bumpers are built to attenuate impact during compression, they are not designed to get pulled.

I bet they didn't think to drain all the fluids and make the car safe from any environmental hazard. These students definitely didn't compile a complete plan.

When MIT put a car on the roof of a campus building, they did it in the least intrusive way possible. They actually only provided the illusion of a police car on the roof.

http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/1994/cp_car/

Fail! (their test)

Engineering students! The police should apologise (and pay some sort of restitution).

Engineeers are good at calculating.

Not at tying off cars with a cable over

a 100m gorge. Obviously, these ones

weren't good at calculating either.

may be they wanted a new car

During this type of prank there was probably alcohol involved.

Idiot #1: "Dude! Did you hook up the axel cable?"

Idiot #2: "I thought you did dude."

-car falls

Idiot #3: "Duuuude!!! That was cool."

Strange that in the world of "homeland security" the prank could proceed to the point of execution without intervention.

Yet another example of the impossibility to "protect everything" from those with the means, the determination and the resources.

Embarrasing. "I break rules, but do cool things" versus "I break rules and I suck". A failed prank is soo bad, especially one of this magnitude.