Oki, you are crossing the road, adn you spot a family saloon coming towards you. What do you do? do you stand and take it like aman, staring it down. Or, do you jump like a lunatic in an attempt to clear as much of the bonnet as possible, and hit thesofter( compared to metal) windscreen(shield), or even better clear the car. Or maybe you have some better idea for surviving as unscathed as possible.
I think that jumping would be your best bet, as if you stand and take it first teh car will hit your knees,thigh ( impact 1) then your care hits teh bonnet ( impact 2 ) then you flip over the car and hit teh roof maybe ( possible impact 3 ) then hit the road behind the car ( impact 4 )
if you jump you may be able to bypass the first impact, adn you have more descision over how you hit teh upper part of the car.
a number of assumptions are made here:
1, ther is nowhere to run to (you cant dive out of the way)
Second that the person in the car is dead with their foot on teh accelerator ( gas ).
I am working with , say a 30mph impact. How about a 50 or 100 mph impact, and how about a sportscar ( i am assuming that witha truck you are pretty much roadkill )
I know nothing about being hit by a car, somy idea of how you hit the car may be somewhat idylic ( or just plain wrong )
i figured that You guys could figure this out no problems ( without using siblings as test dummies ). so there you go, how do you stop these 3 seconds becoming your last?
This is my first question to the board, so please tell me if i have made any huge mistakes ( appart from spelling/punctuation).
right, I’ll attempt to throw my view into the spotlight…
Normal family saloon;
well your in trouble if you try to jump it, you’ll catch your feet on the bonnet, and end up going through the windscreen/shield.
Standing tall, yeh, your legs are hit, and again you hit the bonnet and windscreen/shield.
Now, if you were to crouch, you will be thrown out of the way by the impact. I’m not sure if it’s survivable, but…
Sports car;
since they are, in general, lower than normal cars, jumping is the best idea, just watch out for the ariel… friend of mine got caught and it’s just as sharp as any knife.
Truck;
well if you consider an Ambulance a sorta truck, it is survivable. pupil from a school in city that I live, decided to try standing out in front of one (he thought he could make it stop) the watching people couldn’t figure out where he’d gone after it sped off (it had been going pretty fast), he hit the ground behind them, alive, but probably with a lot of broken bones.
Hopefully you’ll never be in the situation Qis has described, but if you are… act fast and hope to survive.
damn. Glad your ok. I thought you were really about to be hit by a car, and were posting from a laptop or something, wanting to know what to do to save your life. As bogged down as the board has been lately, You could have been on your way to the funeral home by the time we responded.
I dunno about you sloths, but three seconds is enough time for me to leap out of the path of the car.
In my opinion, if you have enough time to react by jumping, I say jump left or right, not up. Just pray that the driver doesn’t swerve the same direction you jump!
If you absolutely had to jump up, I would suggest jumping like a high jumper – rotate into a horizontal position, and try to lead with your shoulder to help protect your lungs and heart.
But really, it doesn’t matter - if you’re struck by a speeding car, you’re hosed. (And if you see it coming, you’re probably doubly screwed, since you’ll have time to tense up in fear.)
I don’t if I am missing something or what, but I get the mental picture of an old west tavern sliding down the road with the front doors swinging wildly, the old rotting wood splintering as the base of the structure grinds against the ground. As it comes closer to me, I can see weathered looking outlaws looking over their playing cards and hearing the neighing of horses, still attached to their hitching posts, being pulled behind as the structure creeps ever closer to me.
I don’t know about anybody else, but I don’t think I could jump that.
Erm, yea, jumping out of the way is teh best idea i think, but in this hypothetical situation you cant, maybe you are on a bridge witha 1,000 foot drop onto rocks at either side.
So what do yuo do now?
3 seconds is enough time to limp away - but lets assume you can’t, maybe there is a wall on both sides. I would say (having a few more then 3 seconds to think about it) that you sholud run away from the car and jump right before impact. The theory is (and it’s my own theory) that you can manage a easy 10-13 mph. That will reduce the relative velocity of the car by 10-13mph so it will impact you at 18-20mph. By being in the air during the colision your trailing leg won’t be stuck to the ground and moving w/ you at the 10-13mph.
Also assuming you will bounce off the car you bounce speed will be a factor of the diffrence in velocity between the 2 bodies.
Maybe not if it’s a sports car, but if it is a truck or the Wagon Queen Family Truckster, couldn’t you try to hit the deck? Maybe you’d only have one ear left or something, but aren’t the odds of living a little bit better?
Of course, faced with the situation, I’d probably react on reflexes and try to jump, but in theory, getting pancake flat might be better.
Don’t cross that bridge on foot. No shit man. When I was a little kid I was once with my dad when his car broke down. We had to walk a long way to wherever. When we crossed bridges, we would wait for traffic to thin out then run like hell while getting across. Pretty damn smart, IMHO.
OK, OK, (ugh), lets play along and suppose that it’s a life or death situation and I MUST cross that tall bridge. I suppose I’d run like hell or hitchhike. Let’s go into “but you must cross it NOW, traffic is really heavy, and blah blah blah.”
I have seen a man survive a 70 mph impact with a truck (he was a big man) being hit head on (he was in intensive care for three weeks), but I had a coworker of mine get killed in the same circumstances, with a lighter duty truck at the same speed.
In that situation, I think I would just pray. And If I died, at least I would be able to see my loved ones on the other side.
By the way, in all circumstances, it is best to look both ways before crossing a road.
I saw this thread title and imagined someone sitting in the middle of the road typing furiously onto his laptop and screaming “Oh crap! oh crap! LOAD THE DAMN PAGE ALREADY! AHHHH!”
I imagine the best bet would be to go over the car. If you jump to the side, your momentum is pushing you in a completely different direction than when (if) you hit the hood. You’ll lose your balance, hit the roof and splatter against the pavement. Run forward and you have a better chance, IMO. Hey, it worked for Jackie Chan.
I assume the question means you know you’re DEFINITELY going to be hit, so how can you minimise the damage?
If you can, try to spread the impact over a large area of your body - imagine the difference between being punched by a fist (unpleasant) and stabbed by a knife (much more unpleasant), where the same force is being applied in each case.
Also, some cars are more pedestrian-friendly than others - generally speaking, newer ones are better (plastic bumpers - sorry “fenders” - rather than metal ones, etc) so if you have a choice (e.g. you wake up and find yourself in the middle of the freeway in a bad Keanu Reeves movie ;)) throw yourself in front of the newer car!
I remember reading a statistic which suggested that 19 out of 20 people survive at 30mph, but 19 out of 20 die when hit at 50mph. If you know the driver is going to try to slow down and you have time to run away but not to get out of the way (narrow alley with no gap at the sides? we’re back in Keanu Reeves territory), perhaps try running away from the car so its brakes have had time to slow it a bit before it hits.
Well, me adn a friend were walking his dog and I noticed a low sportscar ( no idea what it was ) and I thought ’ I could completely clear that if it was going fast enough ’ then I started thinking about other cars, sure, I cant clear them, but by my logic you would reduce the number of times I went KWEERTHWAKKA! on the car, and I figured that would reduce the total damage i would be taking. He thinks that not matter if I jump or if I stand and take it I will get minced the same, in fact, he somehow thought I would get more pulverised jumping than staring the thing down. Any ideas?
He cant be right… can he?
I really didn’t get his point.
Gah…I was once driving down a residential road a few years ago, when a kid (about 8 or 9) jumped out in front of my car. I was only going about 15mph at the time. Even then, she jumped out so fast that my front end knocked her over. She wasn’t hurt, but she had to endure the indignity of being knocked on her arse. I got out of the car and asked if she was OK. She said “yeah” and walked away.
I hope that never happens again. It still gives me the chills to think about it.
Carefully line yourself up with the driver’s side of the vehicle. If it’s a saloon that would be the right side (looking at the front of the car from the outside); if it’s a station wagon that would be the left side.
Jump straight up into the air, throwing your legs forward and your torso backwards so that you are perpendicular to the ground at the projected point of impact.
Spear the windshield, and the bastard driver. Or, land on the ground flat on your ass. There’s a reason why cars are supposed to keep a three-second following distance between one another. It’s so they can halt in time should the car in front come to a complete stop. If said bastard driver can’t manage to stop in time, you may as well use his airbag, or his thick skull, as a cushion.
