The first part of this article may be a bit simplistic - but hang in there for a while. When you are driving on patrol you are managing time and distance. We measure time and distance by using the car's speedometer which indicates speed measured in miles per hour (MPH) or the time it takes to cover a given distance. It's a natural unit of reference that everyone is familiar with in driving discussions. But for EVOC training it may not be the best reference for measuring time and distance. When driving through an exercise the student does not have a mile or an hour to make a decision. Stuff happens in feet and in seconds. It would be a good skill to have to be able to convert MPH to Feet per Second (FPS).

CONVERTING MPH TO FPS

If you moving at the rate of 40 MPH how many feet do you travel in a second? At 40 miles per hour you are traveling 58.8 feet per second. To convert miles per hour to feet per second, multiply the miles per hour figure by 1.47. There are 5280 Feet in a mile and 3600 Seconds in a hour so if you divide 5280 Feet by 3600 Seconds (5280 FT /3600 SEC.) you get 1.47.

SPEED = DISTANCE
30 mph = 44.1 ft/sec
40 mph = 58.8 ft/sec
50 mph = 78.5 ft/sec
60 mph = 88.2 ft/sec

If you don't mind being off a bit in your calculations, or would like to explain this concept to your students but don't feel like multiplying by 1.47 every time you want to convert mph to fps there is an easy way of doing all this. The first thing you do is round off 1.47 to 1.5. That's a mathematically legal maneuver. Now to change MPH to FPS, multiply by 1.5 instead of 1.47. If you want to multiply by 1.5 you do it by adding. If you multiply 20 by 1.5 you take half of 20, which is 10, and add it to 20, which will give you 30. (Half of 20 = 10 and 20 + 10 = 30) so if you were going 20 mph you would be moving at the rate of approximately 30 fps.

If your student is traveling

40 MPH, half of 40 is 20, 40 + 20 = 60 they are moving 60 FPS
50 MPH, half of 50 is 25, 50 + 25 = 75 they are moving 75 FPS
60 MPH, half of 60 is 30, 60 + 30 = 90 they are moving 90 FPS

PRACTICAL USE OF FPS - Routine Patrol

You're on a routine patrol, driving along at 40 mph (or 60 fps). Something causes you to look away from the road for three seconds. At the same moment, another driver starts to cross an intersection 300 feet (the length of a football field) in front of you. Since your attention was diverted for three seconds and you were traveling at 60 fps, you drove a total 180 feet (3 seconds x 60 fps) without looking where you were going. This puts you 120 feet (300 feet minus 180 feet) from the intersection. At this point, you look forward again, see a car blocking the intersection and realize that if you don't do something quick life is about to become terribly exciting.