This has been something I’ve often wondered about (for some reason)…
In the action movies you often see a homicidal maniac behind the wheel of a car trying to run down an enemy who is on foot. The enemy usually does some sort of last minute dummy move and leap to the the side, or if he’s feeling particularly macho, might prefer to jump straight up, and barrel-roll over the car’s roof, to land relatively unharmed. These scenes usually take place in narrow waterfront alleys, with lots of strategically placed 44 gallon drums for effect.
Now, what would happen if you took a person (say, thirty year old male of average fitness), and placed him in the middle of a huge concrete or tarred area such as the taxi-ing area of an airport. Then you have a driver of average ability in a standard family car (Camry or someting), who is to approach from the edge of the area and attempt to hit the pedestrian. Let’s assume an allowed time of five minutes, so that we can ignore the pedestrian becoming exhausted, or the car running out of fuel.
Could the driver do it? Speed versus agility. Should the pedestrian just stand there and make a sudden move at the last minute? Or should he keep running in strange wide circles and patterns? Should the driver approach fast or slowly? Every time he makes a failed pass at speed, he’d lose a lot of time reorienting the vehicle, but is speed the key to it?
Just one of those strange things that’s been bugging me.
The pedestrian is toast.
The average guy isn’t going to be able to jump over the Camry, and if he dodges so what. The driver of the car only has to guess right once and the guy on foot is history.
in five minutes the driver could make what, 10 passes at the guy on foot. Bound to get it right at least once.
The person’s agility strongly outweighs the car’s speed. Cars have a limited turning circle, and even if the driver does guess right, if the human being is as agile as the average human he can simply move out of the way of the car.
Once, I was on my way to Uni. I was crossing past some stationary cars (at a junction with a roundabout) this idiot in a Jag decided to set off (at max acceleration) while I was halfway across. I managed to get out of the way (almost contorting my body to form a car-shaped line)
but don’t forget the guy in the Jag wasn’t aiming for you. In the OP he is.
If I were behind the wheel, I would approach the victim er guy on foot at say 25-30 mph, and try to hit him. If he tries to dodge one of three things will happen. Either he dodges too early and I can adjust and hit him, or he dodges too late and I hit him, or if he times it just right I miss him. If I hit him I either kill him or wing him. If I kill him game over. If I only wing the guy that means he won’t be able to get out of the way when I make my next pass. If he manages to dodge fine, I whip a u-turn and repeat. At 25 MPH I am going slow enough to be able to turn rather quickly.
I am guessing that in five minutes I can make 5-10 passes at the guy on foot. I don’t think that the average guy would be able to guess right every single time.
Should have clarified in the OP. A “kill” is not necessary. Just wondering if the motorist can ruin the pedestrian’s day. I think 25MPH sounds like it could be the correct speed.
You need to trick the pedestrian. Drive straight at him at a moderate speed, but biased slightly to the right as if you meant to hit him in line with the driver’s position. His instinct will be to deftly move out of the way as quickly as possible - to the left. Just as your bumper passes him, open the car door and hit him with it as you pass. This may not incapacitate the pedestrian, but will likely knock him over, and in any case will buy a bit of time to shift into reverse and back over him before he gets up and/or composes himself. If that doesn’t work, repeat that same move a couple of times - eventually your target will realize that the only way to get out of the way is to dodge to the right, or to jump up and roll over top of the vehicle. You need to anticipate this. As you approach, watch his eyes - they will tell you when he plans to move, at which point you swerve slightly to the right and hit the brakes, hard. As soon as you are close to stopping, let off the brake and floor the accerelator. If he tried jumping, you will cause his timing to be off and can run him down as he lands. If he moved to the right, you’ve got him.
If all else fails and you can’t possibly anticipate which way he’s going to move, approach at about 60 km/h with the target in line with the right side of the vehicle. At 8 meters distance, put the wheel hard over to the right and apply the emergency brake. This will cause your car to spin right and slide sideways, left side on to the target’s position. The length of your vehicle provides a margin of allowable error. The reason you do this to the left, is if your spotting was not quite on, you can then open the driver’s door and sweep forward or reverse as necessary.
If the pedestrian had any sense about him (and the driver didn’t) he could evade the car forever. Rodeo clowns can usually get away from a bull using maneuverability, even though the bull could easily outrun them. I’ve seen on tv guys saying that you just have to run around the bull in circles (the right direction of course). As it turns to chase you it can’t just spin around on the spot like a turret and charge; it’s gotta get it’s whole body spun around too, which is what, 8 feet long? You can keep ahead of the horns if you can run at a normal speed. Of course the damn thing can decide to pivot on different feet, or switch direction on you, make a side step, or numerous other things. A car can’t do that though.
Car goes forwards or backwards on it’s compartively huge turning radius - no jumping or spinning. You’d just have to get beside the car and stay on his inside … side. If he switches turning directions zip across in front or behind him (depending on which direction he’s going) and get on his new turning side. You could probably do it all at a quick walking pace. The only way he’d get you is if he could switch forward:reverse really fast while you’re crossing over to get on the inside of his turn.
This is assuming the driver will foolishly chase you around when you’re close; of course the logical counter to this would be for the driver to speed away, turn around, and take several charges at you. Then it comes down to timing your dives and guessing right which way to jump, and over 5 minutes I’d say the odds are on the driver’s side, as most others agree with.
What’s a win for the driver? A brush touch? A glancing blow? Wheels actually passing over the body?
With average people, I agree the pedestrian is toast. Even a sucessful leap out of the way will likely result in a fall, a couple seconds of disorientation. The driver hits the brakes, and backs over the pedestrian. If that doesn’t work, a couple more leaps/falls cycles will end up with some kind of sprain, and loss of mobility will make the pedestrian’s odds worse.
i would say the driver would win. he would have to be approaching at a high speed, such that turning radius would not be a problem and with only a a few degrees turn he could catch up with the guy on foot. also it would not take as much time to turn the wheel a few degrees as it would to turn it a full turn.
the common denominator would be lateral acceleration, and for camry its about 0.7G for a human probably slightly less, and given that a car is not a point but has considerable width …
the unarmoured samurai is toast, but if it’s your average 30 year old ninja, he would run straight at the car and leap, latching on to the top of the car, katana through the top and the driver is dead. no sweat.
While Im driving my car, I like to swerve towards Vikings fans and then pull away at the last second. One day Im giving the local reverend a ride and we see a Vikings fan. Naturally, I swerve towards the Vikings fan and pull away at the last second. The Vikings fan goes down by the side of the road. “I missed him didn’t I?” I said. “Don’t worry I got him with the door,” said the reverend.
But why does the pedestrian have to stand still when the car is charging? That’s madness. If the car was heading straight for me I would start running at a right angle from it. The car would then have to start turning, if it was going to fast it would shoot past me, and if it was going slow enough to turn then all I would need to do was cut another right angle. Rinse then repeat.
I think if you ran towards the approaching car and then made a 45 degree cut either way at the last second you would fare well. If the car is coming at you from the north - approach the car at a jog and then cut either to the northeast or the northwest. The timing would have to be perfect each time. The turning radius of the car verses the vector that you are using should be in your (the pedestrians) favor. Even if the car turned the same way that you cut (NE, or NW) you should be able to clear it. ** Of course, this technique would require the pedestrian to possess extremely large gonadal units.**
The trick is that you must approach the car with some speed in order to give yourself the advantage. Standing still or running away from the car will not work.
The best chance of hitting the pedestrian if you`re the driver and the pedestrian is using the above technique, is to approach the pedestrian by swerving back and forth erratically. This will screw up the timing of the pedestrain and you will eventually guess right.
Congratulations to TheLoadedDog on an excellent thread! Class.
Whuckfistle, I’m not sure how effective swerving left and right would be. Most cars experience some loss of control, especially at speed, if you start yanking the steering wheel ''erratically." In fact, if you were going fast enough there’s even a chance you might roll the car, at which point the pedestrian hauls you out of the wreckage and hunted turns hunter… Perhaps a more controlled skid attempting to ‘broadside’ the evading target might work?
then on second pass you could run him over