How fast would you have to be going...

[Leslie]

Just random curiosity here.

There was an "accident" last week at my intersection here. A guy drove into a phone pole, drunk, yadda yadda yadda. The interesting part to me was that he sheared the bottom half of the pole off. I was picking up the kids at school down the road 2 small blocks away, heard a crash, saw the hydro wires on one pole arc all blue, and saw that the poles were actually moving. A LOT.

I get to where the incident was, and was shocked to see that the top half of the pole he hit was still dangling from the wires, and the bottom half was just laying in the street. It was a Suburban type vehicle. (amazingly, the windshield was still intact!!!)

How fast would he have had to be going to actually shear off a pole?!

 

[Professur]

The mass of the vehicle matters. A Civic would need to be doing 50+. A Suburban (specially the older, truck based ones) could easily do it at 30.

 

[Leslie]

I can't see that? only 30? huh.

These are the big fat rural type poles, not the usual skinnier in town type ones.I guess that's 'cause we're backwards up here.

 

[HomeLAN]

My boss's Yukon weighs 8,200 pounds (~3,800 kilos). At 30 MPH, that's a hell of a lot of force.

 

[Leslie]

That's awesome.

It sure went into the "wow, I've never seen that before!!!" books.

 

[greenfreak]

I saw that once with an old Cadillac but she was going much faster than that. We had to wait for an hour for the electric co to shut off the power to the pole and for the FD to extricate her. She turned out to be fine. She was drunk, of course.

 

[Leslie]

They took this guy away in handcuffs. He was up walking around when the police got there.

Amazing. And I'm sooooo pissed at him for driving drunk like that. Especially on a road with a school two blocks up at dismissal time.

 

[Luis G]

Was writing about Newton 2nd and 3rd laws but they were just numbers, nothing really usefull.

 

[tommyj27]

~653.3256522152423443 m/s

 

[HomeLAN]

1400 MPH? Damn right they arrested the guy!

 

[Professur]

I'll bid $20 for his truck.

 

[HomeLAN]

You'll have to replace the jet engine. Remember, he hit a telephone pole.

 

[Professur]

The engine was wrapped in a suburban. I'm sure it's fine.

 

[Leslie]

I'd have to venture that the engine itself was probably fine from the looks of the vehicle after. Looked like all body damage to me.

 

[tommyj27]

I'll bid $20 for his truck.

$21.83, and i'll toss in a bottle of gin.

 

[Professur]

$21.83, and i'll toss in a bottle of gin.

I think there might already be one in the back seat.

 

[tommyj27]

once he sobers up and realizes what happened, he'll probably need both.

 

[PT]

I've seen it happen in a compact car and the only damage was the passenger door and a barely noticable crinkle on the top of the car. I don't think that it was one of those "big fat rural type poles" though. Ironically, it was off of a gravel road in Iowa though.

 

[tommyj27]

the high ropes course i worked on this summer was constructed out of class 1 poles which are about as beastie as you can get with a wooden pole. i'd love to see a suburban hit one of those.