----"How fast do you think they were going?" the policeman asked.
----"Haven't a clue," Michael said. "The author hasn't worked it out yet."
During the climax of novel 2, the goodie and the baddie race along a road. One of them overcooks it on a corner, and they both crash. I kept putting this scene aside because I want it to be realistic, but I couldn't work out the mechanics of the accident. How fast are they going? Which car loses it first? Does he spin or slide or roll? Which way does the car go after that?
I contacted the [get this] Road Policing Department Force Collision Investigation & Reconstruction Unit (someone just said "crash team" when he picked up the phone) and spoke to a really helpful chap!
It was a bit like going back school. He had an equation to work out the speed, but I had to decide how sharp the corner was. Well, I have a particular corner in mind, so withthe help of such modern technological marvels as Google Earth and photoshop, I found the value of r.
I already had values for µ and g, so I plugged all the numbers into the equation, and the answer was....
----Michael scratched the back of his neck. "About eighty, I should say."
So, I guess I could have just made that up...
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