High Speed Risk

A constable who did 160 mph on a motorway has been cleared of speeding and dangerous driving. Hed been trained to drive fast and said he was just practicing the skills hed been taught. But was this a wise thing to do? Accident prevention specialists think not! But expert drivers claim its a case of use it or lose it - high speed driving needs to be practiced. In this activity students decide whos right by extrapolating safety data and assessing the risk the constable took.

Curriculum link
9k Speeding Up Know the units in which speed is measured. Manipulate and apply the quantitative relationship linking distance, time and speed. Investigative skills Select and use appropriate methods for communicating quantitative data. Ideas about science

Assess risk.

Learning objective
Pupils will practice their graph plotting skills and increase their understanding of ethical issues by exploring the risks and benefits of sanctioning high speed driving.

Running the activity

Page 1 introduces the issues and sets the first task. Students have to extrapolate data from the Highway Code to find the PCs expected stopping distance at his maximum speed. Page 2 gives them the data they need and provides a template for their graphs. Page 3 sets a second task. Students score arguments for and against letting the police practice high speed driving on public roads. Plotting the graph A comparison the thinking distances for 20 and 40 mph, or 30 and 60 mph, shows that they double as speed doubles. Doing the same thing with the values for braking distance shows that they quadruple as speed doubles. Once students spot these patterns they can complete the table. Their finished table and graphs should look like this:
Speed km per mph 0 20 30 40 60 80 120 160 hour 0 32 48 64 96 128 192 256 m/s 0 9 13 18 26 36 52 72 Total Thinking (m) 0 6 9 12 18 24 36 48 Braking (m) 0 6 14 24 56 96 224 384 stopping distance (m) 0 12 23 36 74 120 260 432 distance distance

Stopping distances
500 450 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 0 50 100 150 200 250 Speed in km per hour Stopping distance Braking distance Thinking distance

Distance in metres

Web Links
http://www.thinkroadsafety.gov.uk/ The road safety web site. http://www.iam.org.uk/ Institute of advanced motorists. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/shropshire/4559173.stm BBC coverage of the news story. http://www.physicsclassroom.com/mmedia/energy/cs.html Animations of the relationship between speed and braking distance. Science upd8 is a joint initiative from ASE and the Centre for Science Education, Sheffield Hallam University. We are grateful for core support from GlaxoSmithKline. Copyright rests jointly with the Association for Science Education (ASE) and the Centre for Science Education, Sheffield Hallam University (CSE). Teachers and others who have signed up may download and use UPD8 materials freely within their school, but other usage, or any other organization wishing to use the materials, should consult the joint owners of the material (ASE and CSE) through janehanrott@ase.org.uk