Reality Check on the Need for Speed

Monday Feb 27, 2012

Here is a list of the ten fastest tracks at NASCAR. Note the comment that NASCAR has changed the rules to bring speeds down in the name of safety. Hmm, really?

Eyeball the list and the ninth and tenth track come in about 188 mph.  Now just how fast is that, glad you asked.

Let's convert that to feet per minute. By the way 188 mph is 300 kilometers per hour. This is the electronically limited to speed for super bikes or motorcycles like the  Honda Black Hawk. Presumably that is in the name of safety as well.

188 x 5200/3600 = 271.5 feet per second! (5200 feet in a mile and 60 x 60 or 3600 seconds in an hour)

So at 188 mph one is travelling 271 feet per second. Let's put that in perspective.

A football field is 300 feet long. So at this speed one has covered 90% ( 271/300) of the field or 90 yards roughly

in, yes

one second.

I have a digital watch that counts off seconds, You might look at a watch right now to get an idea of just how quickly a second goes by.

The point of all this, do you really think that a human has fast enough reflexes, or that there is mechancial ability to adjust direction, at 271 fps. I don't think so, Consider that in the major baseball leagues, hardly anyone can do better than a 30% batting average against a pitcher throwing a baseball at 90 mph. So double that speed, put you in a 3500 pound car, and...

I suspect the person in the car is not driving so much as just pointing the car in one direction and hoping nothing goes wrong.

My point here is that one should consider all statistics in light of what is humanly possible.

Danica Patrick has moved to NASCAR and had two crashes in qualifying for Daytona 500. I wonder if she has done this sort of calculation. Earnhardt was going about 170 MPH when he crashed as I recall. We wish her well but really

 

wWouldn't this be just as interesting at say 100 mph?  But then I thnk flag rather than tackle football results in a very different game by requiring much more agile players.

We wish Danica well.

Comments

[Paul Casavant]

http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2012/08/self-braking-cars-mandatory-in-europe-by-2014.html

Why is the American auto industry usually the last to develop life saving automotive safety features?
Apparently we had the patent for the air bag back in the mid-50’s, but it was not cost effective. How long until an American car company ( I would say American owned but who knows which is really American owned) puts this auto-braking feature into their vehicle?