My local news had a story about a Airshow Crash.
It turns out it was not an aircraft but a jet powered vehicle.
The driver was killed.
It sorrows me when I hear about this.

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If it flies, I can crash it!

It was a three-jet engine truck of the "Shock Wave" team; the truck, one of several, was the "Aftershock" (here is the team's website: https://www.shockwavejettruck.com/index.php ), and here (see: https://www.google.com/search?q=jet...sclient=gws-wiz ) is the accident itself; Chris Darnell, the driver, was 40... (*Here* https://www.shockwavejettruck.com/i...15/neal-darnell , on the team's website, are Neal Darnell's--and his son Chris', as well as the other team members'--photographs.) Also:

There are a few of these jet-powered trucks (modified "semis"), which do demos and stunts at various events. The first one I saw (on television, back in the 1980s; it didn't crash in that coverage) had a License Plate (or "Tag," as we call it in Florida) reading JETTRK. It was powered by a single Westinghouse J34 turbojet engine (with afterburner, if memory serves), and:

This jet truck's run, at the Battle Creek Field of Flight Air Show and Balloon Festival in Michigan, was--either purposely or incidentally--arranged to be like one of Colonel (and Dr.) John Paul Stapp's rocket sled tests at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico (see: https://www.google.com/search?q=Col...sclient=gws-wiz ), in which he reached 632 mph, outracing a T-33 jet flown by (then) Captain Joseph Kittinger (who also worked with Col. Stapp in the Man High near-space balloon project; he later made jumps from the edge-of-space Skyhook-type balloons: https://www.google.com/search?q=Jos...sclient=gws-wiz ), and--speaking of Dr. Stapp, who was called the "Fastest Man on Earth":

Col. Stapp also designed the seat belt and shoulder harness restraint systems used in cars and trucks today, after noting a tragic but strange statistic: Test pilots were dying in automobile accidents--even relatively low-energy ones--far more frequently than in high-performance jet and rocket plane crashes. In today's accident, two high-performance (propeller-driven) racing planes flew inverted, low over a runway, sequenced to pass over the jet truck as Mr. Darnell brought the truck's three jet engines up to full thrust. As well:

While I am saddened at what happened--especially during a celebration of Independence Day, which was held in order to be a joyous occasion, there is no true safety--only relative safety--even if one sits in a chair or lays in bed, because falling meteorites, crashing airplanes, lightning strikes, and earthquakes have hurt and even killed people in such "safe" places. Mr. Darnell didn't die frustrated, thinking "I wish I'd driven a jet truck--that would have been exciting"; he went out and ^did^ it!

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Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see:
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