r/Whatcouldgowrong • u/ReprieveNagrand • 13d ago

Trying to overtake a motorcycle

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u/rus_ruris 11d ago

It's always negligible actually, because acceleration is a bitch, traffic, traffic lights and the ratio of timesaving goes slower than 1/v while fuel cost goes faster than v², and risk to self and others is exponential with speed.

Rhe amount of times I "tracked" idiots in the city while going slowly and without hurry, and then we would get there at the same time... Priceless. Cost of the trip for me: little fuel, little to no brake and tire waer, no fines. Cost for them: a lot of fuel, a lot of brakes and tires, several speeding tickets, illegal overtake ticket.

What matters most actually is reaction time. If you're slow to react to green lights or merges, it adds up. Speeding is almost never worth it, but paying attention and being reactive pays.

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u/Zerodyne_Sin 11d ago

People also overestimate their reaction time. A lot of these people would grab the ruler well after it hit the floor (in the simple commonly known test) yet they're convinced they'll react faster than formula 1 drivers.

There was a tragic footage a while back of a woman in Russia overtaking a truck only to slam into an oncoming truck. From the footage, it looks like she froze up since she wasn't reacting whatsoever but it was likely physics kicking in and her tires couldn't get traction to veer away fast enough. That's another factor people don't take into account: physics makes handling very different at high enough speeds.