Objekt Orient: The benefit of driving fast, a deadly counterintuition

Friday, January 7, 2011

The benefit of driving fast, a deadly counterintuition

The misperception of the time savings when driving faster cost lifes.
Actually your benefit diminishes with increased base velocity.
$\Delta t = d \left ( \frac{1}{v_{1}} - \frac{1}{v_{2}} \right ) = d \left ( \frac{v_2 - v_1}{\mathbf{{\color{red} v_2v_1}}} \right )$
The counterintuitive curvilinearity shown in red screws you badly. You sure always thought its linear. Wrooooong! The higher your initial speed the lower your benefit from flooring it.

Need for speed? How many hours do you gain? Distance is 100 km, increased speed to V2 = V1 + 30 km/h at various base speeds V1. After approx V1= 50km/h you get diminishing returns [try here].

Together with another non-linear behavior: the quadratic increase of crash energy as a function of velocity
$E_{k} = \frac{1}{2}m{\color{red}v^{2}}$
should show you one thing: Driving fast is deadly stupid.

As a heuristics:

Drive faster when you drive really slow, don't speed up on the Autobahn.

Inspired by http://journal.sjdm.org/10/10816/jdm10816.pdf

1 comment:

Jolandi Kerstetter said...: Great explanation. I agree, driving really fast on the road is dangerous. That's why I believe it's best to race on the track and not on the street. It's safer because of the controlled environment. Even the autobahn is enforced by the law.; October 21, 2011 at 7:42 PM