Run Down By a Car - Sneakers

Ah yes, Newton's little known 4th law

Maybe if they kept their sneakers on, they would have been able to run out of the way.

Re: Run Down By a Car - Sneakers

I witnessed a road accident where a friend of a friend was hit by a fast moving car on a dual carriageway at about 60 mph.
They spun up into the air arms and legs akimbo like someone doing an amazingly high star jump.
Their tightly laced boots along with their socks flew off and landed many tens of yards away, their jacket vanished into the sky and their t-shirt was torn into a rag. The chap's jeans only stayed on because he was wearing aparticularly tight belt.
They were dead before they came down.

It's all down to the amount of energy input into the body.
A car travelling at 60mph has a fantastic amount of kinetic energy, some of which is transferred to the body of the person.
If they are hit in roughly the right way then all of that transferred energy goes into rotation of the body about an axis.
Hence the arms and legs akimbo position.
The arms and legs are flung outward by the energy input and massive rotational movement resulting.
So anything attached to the fastest moving parts had better be attached pretty securely or it's going to come adrift and carry some of that energy away.

Tie a boot to the tip of a helecopter rotor and start the engine.
The boot will last for a few rotations before flying off through the window of the nearby canteen to startle the diners there.

The other reason that the shoes come off is because it seems to be fasionable to not tie the laces.
So it's even easier for them to come off.

Maybe they took he's sneakers off, to provide a bit of a visual euphemism, of empty shoes?