No one was hurt, thankfully, and the Electric Blue Streamliner put in a beautiful qualifying run at 139mph.  During its record attempt, however, one of the wheels caught in a groove and caused the motorcycle to flip after some heroic control attempts by the rider.  The parachute deployed and the streamliner safely stopped.

I went to school at Utah Valley State College, which is basically in the same town as Brigham Young University (BYU).  The two schools don’t have much of a rivalry, neither being in the same league size or budget-wise.  UVSC is very small in comparison and started out as a trade school before becoming a 4-year university (much of that actually happened while I was attending).

At any rate, I don’t know anyone from the Streamliner team personally, but am glad that all went well in the end, despite the wreck.  Hopefully they’ll get their bike back together and go back out to Bonneville to put it through another speed run.  It’s definitely more than capable of 200+ miles per hour with its 150kW motor.  It broke the 170mph mark before the crash.

Here’s video from the Electric Blue’s on-board camera:

Watch the shadows and you’ll see the driver extract from the bike safely.

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