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"Darwin Award" Nominee

You all know about the Darwin Awards - It's an annual honor given to the
person who did the gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the
most extraordinarily stupid way.  Last year's winner was the fellow who was
killed by a Coke machine which toppled over on top of him as he was
attempting to tip a free soda out of it.

And this year's nominee is (drum roll, please):

The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal, embedded
into the side of a cliff running above a strip of highway,  at the apex of a
curve.   The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was
actually the remains of a car.  The type of car, however, was unidentifiable
at the scene.

The crackerjack police crime lab, after much pondering and computing of
highly improbable and annoyingly complex physics formulas, finally figured
out what it was and the details of what had happened.

It seems that the driver of the car had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit -
as in, Jet Assisted Take Off - which is actually a solid fuel rocket used to
give heavy military transport planes an extra "push" for taking off from
short airfields.  He had then driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and
found a long, straight stretch of road, attached the JATO unit to his car,
jumped in, got up some speed, and fired it off.

Silly boy.

The facts as best as could be determined by what little was left of him, are
that the operator of the former 1967 Impala hit the JATO ignition at a
distance of approximately 3.9 miles from the final crash site.  This was
determined by the very prominent, and somewhat smelly, scorched and melted
asphalt at that location.

If operating properly, the JATO would have reached "maximum thrust" within 5
seconds after ignition, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of
350 mph, and continuing at full power for an additional 20-25 short but
certainly harrowing seconds.

At this point, the driver, now pilot, and soon-to-be cadaver, would be
experiencing g-forces usually reserved for dog-fighting F-14 pilots under
full afterburner blowout, and reducing him to nearly two-dimensional status
for the rest of the ride.

However, the trusty Impala managed to remain on the highway for an additional
2.5 miles (15-20 seconds in rocket travel time) before the driver, in a
nearly superhuman (and superstupid) effort to stop the car, applied the
brakes.  Not completely un-like ice cream on a hot summer day, the brakes
immediately melted, and the tires subsequently blew, leaving thick streaks of
steamy rubber on the road surface.   The Impala, now without either brakes or
wheels, and therefore . .
.
. airborne . . . . continued for an additional 1.4 screaming miles of fun,
before impacting a cliff face at an amazing height of 125 feet, leaving a
blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock.

Sadly, but not unbelievably, most of the driver's remains were not
recoverable.  However, small fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted
painstakingly from the smoking crater, and fingernail and bone shards were
removed from a piece of debris believed to be a portion of the steering
wheel.

All in all, about enough to fill a maraca.