Let’s say you are in a big empty parking lot, with nothing to hide behind. Is it possible to just wait until the car is close and run or dive to one of the sides? Will the car be able to react in time and hit you?
A trained stunt man could probably do it easily, but an average Joe?, not so much.
25 feet per second is a very good clip for a human sprinter. A car is about 6 feet wide, half of which is 3 feet, so if the car was aiming at you dead center, it’d take you about 0.12 seconds to get out of the way.
That’s pretty quick for a driver who might have a reaction time of 0.1 seconds, but if you want to make the most of that, you have to wait until the car is nearly on top of you to make your move. If you dodge left while the vehicle is still 0.5 seconds out, the driver can probably take a puff on his cigarette before turning the wheel in the direction you decided to run.
So would you say that the best avoidance move would be the movie stunt of jumping on the hood? Looks good on film but is it practical?
I can’t jump that high, and I sure can’t do it several times in rapid succession.
I think the runner is pretty well screwed on a treeless plain. In more varied terrain, there are lots of places cars can’t go. The trick is to get to one of them.
Not practical.
Unless the car is going real slow any attempt to jump onto the hood is going see you smashing into the windscreen.
There is a reasonably well known piece of australian TV history from the 70’s which involved a stunt man attempting a very similiar trick on live TV. I believe it was the Don Lane show.
The idea was this ‘daredevil’ had a stunt whereby he would leap clear over an oncoming car. I seem to recall the timing needed to be exact with the car having to travel at a certain specific speed.
The stunt man having succesfully pulled it off dozens of time previously, was apparently having an off day, and went straight into the windshield of the car. To his credit he came back months later after recovering from his injuries and successfully pulled it off.
So I suspect an average joe, without months of prior practice trying to jump on the hood or clear the car is going to wind up roadkill pretty quickly.
The problem with dodging at the last moment is that the driver just has to guess which way you’ll jump. If he guesses wrong, he can try again. He only needs to get it right once.
I have actually heard jumping on the hood is the best way. I mean its better to go over the car than under it right?
Cars don’t change direction instantly, and that change is constrained by speed, traction, and time (reaction time and the time needed to turn the steering wheel).
If you could draw the kill zone (for lack of a better term), I expect it would be a narrow line (straight if the target is stationary) that then curved out like the bell of a trumpet. If you make your move 0.5 seconds out, even with a perfect reaction from the driver the car’s range of motion is limited.
I think there’s more to it than just relying on the slim margin of reaction time.
Never mind jumping on the bonnet (hood) - if your assailant was driving a Lotus you could probably jump clear over the whole car…
If it’s a car I would jump over it head first and roll out. We use to jump over fences like this as kids and ironically it was done to imitate jumping over a car (mimicking some spy movie that I can’t remember). Wouldn’t work on a truck or van. a large vehicle would require the opposite strategy of running away and diving at the last minute so that the driver couldn’t react in time.
I’m sure I’ve seen that. Did his foot catch the roof of the car and get twisted right round?
Jumping over a stationary fence and a speeding car are two very different things. I’ll bet that even as young strong stress-free kids you didn’t jump the fence properly every time; there were bloopers right? Well the first failed attempt here will be the last. Assuming you do get it right, how many times can you do it in a row, say with 10-20 seconds rest in between (while the car turns around for another charge)? I’d say that by the 6th or 7th jump you’d be a lot slower and not jumping as high. Combine that with all the bumps and scrapes you get with each jump, and I’d say you won’t last more than 2-3 minutes… whether you jump over the car or to the side.
With wide open space the car just has to do big figure 8’s to get you. Accelerate towards you, then slow down, turn around, and make another charge. If the passes he makes are long and fast enough, you won’t be able to run up behind the car and hop on it. You have to be lucky every pass, he just has to be lucky on one pass… and you’ll run out of gas long before the car.
Olé!
That 0.5 seconds only lets you travel 12.5 feet, a bit over two car widths.
Let’s calculate the angle the driver has to turn through to hit you at two different vehicle speeds:
60 mph = 88 fps … ATAN(12.5/88) = 8.08 degrees
30 mph = 44 fps … ATAN(12.5/44) = 15.9 degrees
Now you need to add a bit for to those to compebnsate for the drivers actual reaction time, but neither constitutes a dangerous or difficult to achieve turn.
Oooh, definately no bloopers, that would have taken a testicle with it. It would be a matter of timing just as hitting a tennis ball or any other feat of skill. I don’t plan on testing it anytime soon but a stuntman did it so it’s certainly possible. Any form of avoidance is going to require timing of some sort. I suppose if you were to jump over the car you would have a head start in the opposite direction giving you more time to run away.
I’ve also seen a stunt where the car was going fast enough that the person jumped feet first into the windshield (thus taking out the bad guy). I use to jump feet first into an above ground pool (much harder to clear the height) so I know it’s possible to at least go through the motions. Wouldn’t want to try it. I often had to grab the edge and push up to successfully clear it.
Yep, can’t find a copy of the video anywhere to link to, but yeah he caught his foot, on the roof? or the front of hte car, I can’t recall exactly which, but he went flying.
I did discover his reprisal of the stunt on the show was actually six years later not a few months.
Ah yes - but that car is stationary, which he jumps over sideways, plus look at the related links just to the right and the number of ‘failed’ attempts
Related question:
Is there any safe way to test this? Maybe Mythbusters should take a look at it.