The dealership eventually gave in, but it put up a big fight over a fraction of a second delay.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19704884

A Purdue University student thought he kicked his way to a two-year car lease for making three field goals in a contest held during the Boilermakers’ season opener in West Lafayette. However, the dealership sponsoring the giveaway later reneged on the deal because of a technical. The final kick – a 40-yarder – left his foot just a split second too late on August 31. Car dealerships really cannot help but be bastards, can they?

…

  • @jordanlund
    69•6 days ago

    Just so you know how this stuff works… Dealers don’t pay for this out of pocket. They pay for “prize insurance” in case someone wins and the insurance pays out.

    In this case, what looks like happened is the insurance company reviewed the footage and went “Nope, not paying.” Which then fell back on the dealership to make good.

    Source: Was a judge on a “hit a hole in one, win a Cadillac!” at a golf tournament. Someone did, in fact, hit a hole in one on my hole and won the car.

    • Maeve
      32•6 days ago

      It wasn’t even he won a car, either. It was a two-year lease. Also

      To get out of some of the responsibility for this PR fuck up, the group attributed the issue to an insurance company…In a post on LinkedIn, Trey Rohrman said Spangler missed winning the Kicks for Cash contest by 0.07 seconds…

      Dealerships, insurance companies, they ask really are dirty.

        • Maeve
          6•6 days ago

          It was from several different angles, from four? Cams with discrepancies between them.

            • Maeve
              3•6 days ago

              I know zip about photography, could you explain, please?

              • Trailblazing Braille Taser
                14•6 days ago

                Oh, this’ll blow your mind. Digital cameras don’t capture the entire image all at once. They typically capture one row of pixels at a time, so each row comes from a different moment in time.

                So the point I was alluding to is that two adjacent frames in a video carry slightly more timing information than they might appear to based on timestamps.

                Specifically, if you have two frames where a dot appears at the bottom and then a second dot appears at the top, you can’t be 100% certain that the first dot to appear actually showed up first, or whether it’s an artifact of the rolling shutter effect.

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_shutter

                • Maeve
                  7•6 days ago

                  I’ll check out the wiki, but your explanation is pretty simple to understand and concise! Well done and thanks so much!

                  ETA: just read it. Those distortions in the propeller and helicopter blades are wild. While not being a fan of car dealerships, I’m also not a fan of insurance companies. It would be fascinating to know the answer to this mystery.