5 February (Part 2) - Fast and Furious
When
Princess Diana’s car crashed in Paris and the newspapers were saying it must
have been doing 120 m.p.h., my son who studies such things for a living said it
was doing between 60 and 65. He was right which seemed impressive to me so I asked him how fast he thought
the cars that crashed on Friday afternoon were going.
I was rewarded by far more techno-babble than I had bargained for and he sent me
this picture of a Hyundi i20 which had been smashed into a concrete block at
50 kilometres per hour (31 m.p.h.).
Subject to many caveats because of the absence of real evidence he felt the impact speed
could have been as low as each doing 30 m.p.h. and unlikely to be more than 40.
If both braked for one second before impact it would suggest someone might have been doing 60
but there are far too many unknowns to be sure. That is why the police would
close the road while they measured skid marks and how far each vehicle was
‘bounced’ after impact - and possibly other things in the workshop later.
Too fast anyway. No doubt about that.