Question

Police use the formula:

v
=
20
L


to estimate the speed of a car,
v
, in miles per hour, based on the length,
L
, in feet, of its skid marks when suddenly braking on a dry, asphalt road. At the scene of an accident, a police officer measures a car's skid marks to be 151 feet long. Approximately how fast was the car traveling? Round your answer to the nearest tenth (one decimal place) of a unit

Answer 1

Using the formula \(v = \frac{20}{L}\), where \(v\) is the speed in miles per hour and \(L\) is the length of skid marks in feet, we can calculate the speed of the car.

Given \(L = 151\) feet, plug this value into the formula:
\[v = \frac{20}{151}\]

Calculating this, we get:
\[v \approx 0.1324\]

Rounded to the nearest tenth, the car was traveling approximately 0.1 miles per hour.