Legendary Lawman Chuck Haggard sent me a video on Facebook showing an interaction between an individual and a car. His comment was:
People don’t realize how violent even low speed cars can be
Being a math nerd, I wanted to quantify this so I calculated the kinetic energy (KE) of a typical sedan of 1000 kilograms going 5 miles per hour. Then I calculated the energy of a 158 grain .38 bullet going 750 feet per second.
The comparison came out like this:
- car @ 5 mph KE = 2,498 Joules
- 158 gr bullet @ 750 fps KE = 267 Joules
So a barely moving car creates ten times the KE of a bullet. Let’s keep that in mind.
I’m not sophisticated enough to capture the video but these screencaps should give you an idea of the interaction.
Dude literally got scraped out of his shoes. My guess is the he will be spending some time in the hospital.
It’s a great example of don’t f8ck around in traffic, reach into another car in a hostile manner, etc…
Chuck
tacticalprofessor 
People need to remember if someone tries to carjack them they’ve got an enormous weapon under their control. Forget the Glock or .38 in their holster, remember the wheel of the Hyundai they’re in. Looks like this driver didn’t.
Excellent article Professor. That’s a pretty amazing difference a ton vehicle moving slow vs 124 or 147 grain bullets moving fast. . At 5mph you probably won’t even have any airbags deployed. I’ve heard people say to use your pistol to fight and get to your rifle. If it’s in the truck, I think I’ll just fight to get to my vehicle instead.
Dia ‘S mo Anail David Rodgers
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