Originally published at: Rally legend Ken Block dead at 55 | Boing Boing
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That video of Block driving up the road in China is a great action sequence (like Top Gear, but without the arseholes, and James May). I wonder how many set-ups they had to in order to stitch together the action as a seamless sequence like that? The guy’s sense of the dimensions of his car were amazing; threading the needle like he did. The real stars of the show, however, are the people who built that insane road. I wonder what necessitated putting in a route like that?
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Holy shit! What a terrible start to the year. Block was an absolute legend in motorsport and we’re a less awesome world without him. 
He went way too young.
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Snowmobiles are one of the scariest methods of transportation ever devised. I have two friends who own them, and each has stories of near misses during normal operation. Shame about Block; I really enjoy his Gymkhana videos.
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Oddly, totally not into the cars, but the internet assumes that as a guy, I’d like to see videos of drifting and making noise, and so sometimes I do and have seen some Hoonigan videos. The drifting stuff I’ve seen was super impressive.
The other big scary sports news is Bills player Damar Hamilton dropped after tackling a guy in the middle of the first quarter. They did CPR on him for 9 min and used an AED and finally carted him off in an ambulance off the field. Then the game was suspended for the night.
Official word that he went into cardiac arrest. There is speculation that the hit was perfectly timed to interrupt his heart and caused it to stop or mess up, called commotio cordis.
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I was surprised to learn he was in his mid-50s and also surprised to realise that I had never seen his face before.
It’s a loss. His stunts were one of the really pure things to come out of internet culture.
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Ken Block was my childhood Hot Wheels imagination manifest.
Incredibly talented and skillful driver, making the impossible look easy.
His daughter may carry on in the family business, but as she’s 15 or so, it may take some seasoning.
I’ll miss his videos.
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I was aware of Ken in the sense that I’d seen some of his videos, but never really grew to be what could be characterised as a ‘fan’. Either way it’s alway terrible to hear someone that relatively young dying.
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Agreed. And who familiar with motor sports (especially Rally) would have guessed he would be outlived by Travis Pastrana? Ken seemed to be very precise but not take undue risks. He was thorough.
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