My wife was driving and I was passengering on our way back
from the store. As we came over an
overpass, the speed limit changed sharply from 50mph to 35mph, with effect
directly at the bottom of the hill that was the overpass. My wife commented that it's hard to
decelerate that much on a downhill run of that distance. I suggested that she not decelerate.
Her response was that there might be a cop with a radar
gun, and then came the fun with physics.
I suggested that she accelerate instead of decelerate;
after all, once she achieves a certain speed, she'd get past the cop's radar
gun before it could trigger. In fact,
the task would be a bit simpler since the cop's radar gun's photons would have
to make a round trip over the same distance my wife and I would need to cover
only once.
Furthermore, having achieved that certain speed, she'd
likely get abeam the cop's radar gun before she'd left the overpass
hilltop. From that, any causality
problems ensuing from the cop choosing to trigger his radar gun anyway would be
on the cop—textbook police brutality.
As my wife put it, #photonlivesmatter.
Eric Hines
