So to procrastinate doing my math homework. I did math that is not my homework…
This stems from me being suspicious of all the people getting hit by trains around here. Lets just say, if I need to get rid of a body I will be leaving it on the railroad tracks. Each time a person gets hit A) the body is so mangled they often cant tell race or gender from it, so you certainly could not determine that someone had been beaten to or near death shortly before being left on the tracks, B) after someone gets hit, the papers just say ” a person was hit by the train and died. ” end of investigation, end of story. And when drunk people just happen to pass out on the tracks… Honestly, on a six block walk home from the bars, the odds that you are going to pass out dead center on the track instead of somewhere else on your trek seems unlikely. But since no one investigates people who get hit by the train since it is so obvious that they were killed by a train… It would be easy and low risk to drag drunk people onto the tracks just for fun. People around here just get hit by trains. It’s just a thing that happens.. Freaks me out…
Anyway back to my original point, I ran the numbers to see how far away you would have to notice a train coming to be able to get out of the way. Here are the parameters I used:
Train width= 12′ No idea if that is really how wide trains are, I just guessed..
Persons speed getting out of the way= 4 mph I assumed they are slow or only willing to walk out of the way of the oncoming train.
I left the speed of the train as a variable since the train speeds very based on type of train, area, loaded/unloaded etc.
The plot below is the result. The x axis is the speed of the train in mph. The y axis is the number of feet away that you must detect the train to have time to walk out of the way.
x=mph, y=feet
So if the train is going 50mph you must notice it when it comes to within 74.98 feet of you to be able to walk out of the way.
if the train is going 60mph you must notice it when it is 89.98 feet away.
If the train is going 100 mph (not around here) you need to notice it when it is 149.96 feet away.
I feel like I could hear a train rumbling toward me within ~100 feet. Also I would most likely run and or jump out of the way, not walk. So I am still suspicious of all the people who don’t get out of the way.
Anyway, back to homework doing pointless math for no reason other than to waste paper……………….
Mr. Stranton 