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Porsche Supercup racer dies in crash in Australia

Even with great strides made towards increasing the safety of motor racing, fundamentally it's still a dangerous sport. And now it has claimed another life.
That life belonged to one Sean Edwards, an accomplished GT racing driver. Edwards was killed at Queensland Raceway in Australia, riding shotgun in a Porsche 996 GT3 while acting as instructor. The driver was airlifted to hospital with critical injuries. Sean Edwards was 26.
The son of former F1 driver Guy Edwards (whose car he drove in the filming of Rush), Sean won the European GT3 Championship in a Porsche 911 GT3 Cup and drove a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 to repeat victories at the 24 Hours of Dubai as well as this year's Nürburgring 24 Hours. Edwards had been competing in the Porsche Supercup, whose standings he currently leads with just two rounds to go, and could be crowned champion posthumously.

Woman rushing to pub nearly causes head-on collision

A woman in a rush to pick up her husband from a local pub caused this close call on a street in England this weekend. The near miss happened on Sunday on the B1253 between Rudston and Bridlington, East Yorkshire, England. A Porsche Cayenne driver attempted to overtake a blue Citroen on a blind curve but didn't see the white Skoda in oncoming traffic. Thanks to the Skoda driver's quick maneuvering on to the grassy shoulder the Cayenne only caused minor damage to the other two cars. Damian Hodgson is the owner of the dashboard camera who was behind the blue Citroen. After the close call Hodgson first stopped to check on the Skoda driver. Driver and car were okay, but a 10-year-old girl in the front seat was in tears. Hodgson then made his way down the road where the Porsche driver was speaking to the Citroen driver. He said the Porsche's driver gave some pretty lame reasons for putting so many people's lives in danger. "She said she was picking her husband up from the pub and was wearing a pair of slippers - but it's no excuse to be overtaking on a blind bend," Hodgson told the Mirror. "She did tell me she always overtakes at that spot though." Hodgson picked up the dashcam after a crash while on vacation in Florida last month. He offered the footage to both the drivers of the Skoda and the Citroen, but both declined. Hodgson told the Mirror that he hopes some good comes from the incident. "If anything comes of this, it is hopefully that the lady Porsche driver has learned a lesson and she will not put others in danger again." Related Video: News Source: The Mirror Weird Car News Porsche Citroen Skoda Driving Safety dashboard camera near miss

What do J.D. Power's quality ratings really measure?

Check these recently released J.D. Power Initial Quality Study (IQS) results. Do they raise any questions in your mind? Premium sports-car maker Porsche sits in first place for the third straight year, so are Porsches really the best-built cars in the U.S. market? Korean brands Kia and Hyundai are second and fourth, so are Korean vehicles suddenly better than their US, European, and Japanese competitors? Are workaday Chevrolets (seventh place) better than premium Buicks (11th), and Buicks better than luxury Cadillacs (21st), even though all are assembled in General Motors plants with the same processes and many shared parts? Are Japanese Acuras (26th) worse than German Volkswagens (24th)? And is "quality" really what it used to be (and what most perceive it to be), a measure of build excellence? Or has it evolved into much more a measure of likeability and ease of use? To properly analyze these widely watched results, we must first understand what IQS actually studies, and what the numerical scores really mean. First, as its name indicates, it's all about "initial" quality, measured by problems reported by new-vehicle owners in their first 90 days of ownership. If something breaks or falls off four months in, it doesn't count here. Second, the scores are problems per 100 vehicles, or PP100. So Power's 2015 IQS industry average of 112 PP100 translates to just 1.12 reported problems per vehicle. Third, no attempt is made to differentiate BIG problems from minor ones. Thus a transmission or engine failure counts the same as a squeaky glove box door, tricky phone pairing, inconsistent voice recognition, or anything else that annoys the owner. Traditionally, a high-quality vehicle is one that is well-bolted together. It doesn't leak, squeak, rattle, shed parts, show gaps between panels, or break down and leave you stranded. By this standard, there are very few poor-quality new vehicles in today's U.S. market. But what "quality" should not mean, is subjective likeability: ease of operation of the radio, climate controls, or seat adjusters, phone pairing, music downloading, sizes of touch pads on an infotainment screen, quickness of system response, or accuracy of voice-recognition. These are ergonomic "human factors" issues, not "quality" problems. Yet these kinds of pleasability issues are now dominating today's JDP "quality" ratings.