Well, those that doesnât freezeâŠ
Well done!
And I get what youâre saying, but I still donât get why âpedestrianâ instead of simply âpersonââŠ?
Well, Troll picks on you for other things. Mostly to do with burning heaps of swedish aluminiumâŠ
Come to think of it maybe the cops, who undoubtedly were called to the scene, made the decision to call the victim a pedestrian. They tend to follow the closest protocol and that would be pedestrian motor vehicle accident.
Sort of when the local cops were called to the scene of a Piper Archer going off the end of the runway. Based on the skidmarks that indicated touch down and where the vehicle (aircraft) came to rest, they applied the same protocol for determining stopping distance a of a car and concluded that the poor Piper must have landed at a speed in excess of 300m/s⊠For those not fluent in metrics, Mach1 equals 343m/s.
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âŠIâve been adding some Russian aluminum to the mix lately. MiG-21s are a â â â â â to land! 
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This subject has a connection with Ernest Hemingway:
He had tried to kill himself before, including throwing himself into an idling-airplane propeller.
I remember learning that in a high school English class - we were probably reading the Old Man and the Sea. Weird how oneâs brain can recall things decades later.
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OMG just re-reading my post makes my eye twitch 
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The absolute worst for me is âindexesâ instead of âindicesâ - I have to mentally correct it in order to continue reading. 
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Iâll it brief as I have no additional information than what has been reported on this specific incident. KAUS was part of my old patrol district, but actual âinside the fenceâ patrol was the responsibility of our airport patrol unit. I had the exterior, 17R would not be difficult to access from the roadway. However this time of the year and the terrain, the majority of access options would be highly visible to most people driving by. There are a few spots on the south side that are a bit more secluded.
The term pedestrian is the applicable term for a crash report here in Texas (which if the plane is on the ground we would complete). If one of the parties involved in not a vehicle (this includes bicycles, and animal based transport), they are a pedestrian. So they may have simply been using the language used in the crash report.
Regarding doing a speed calculation based on tire skid: Assuming we have a landing weight and tire width and diameter, we can do the math just fine. Iâm assuming the investigating officers in your example @Troll probably either moved the decimal point one place (30m/s sounds reasonable), or they used a completely incorrect weight for the Archer.
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I suspected that had something to do with why the headline used the word⊠
Thatâs what the local officers on the scene thought.
But, when calculating the speed of an aircraft, based on itâs stopping distance, you also need to factor in use of power, flaps, landing technique, runway slope and wind direction and force. And, you must assume application of brakes and that the wheels were in contact with the surface, that the wings werenât producing lift, that the engine was at idle, instead of perhaps producing power for a balked landing. A lot of assumptions that these local cops werenât qualified to make and lacking most of the facts they needed to investigate the accident properly. But that didnât stop them from confiscating the pilots license and issue a fine, the day after the accident with the injured pilot still in hospital care. The pilot won it back in court at a later date.
It sparked a very important debate over here about criminal liability of pilots. We have the equivalent of the NTSB whoâs mandate is to find out what happened, so you can learn from the accident or incident. Pilots are encouraged to speak openly to the investigators. Based upon the findings of the NTSB, the CAA decides upon disiplinary actions, issuing of safety information, rules, etc. And everybody have been fine with this arrangement for ages. But in recent times thereâs been an increase in accidents being investigated by the prosecutors office and this requires a police investigation. Suddenly pilots arenât as open towards investigators anymore⊠And when the police doesnât have the necessary training for investigations of this kind, things can get ugly. I know you have special aviation investigators in the US Police force (federal?), but we donât over here.
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I was referring to calculating the minimum speed the could have caused a given skid trace. Anything beyond that is a reconstruction job, and Iâd imagine in the US for planes the FAA would be the investigating agency. I am certified for vehicles, and there is an airplane course offered, but I have never taken it. For field crash investigation, your normal non-reconstructionist officer is going to use skid to determine a minimum speed. The maximum speed could of course been quite a bit higher, but the math investigation and work required to determine even an approximate speed is MUCH more involved. For enforcement and criminal law purposes a minimum speed works just fine 99% of the time.
In short for a given tire to create skid of a given length, I need to know the approximate weight of the vehicle and the approximate size of the contact patch of the tire. I can calculate the coefficient of friction on scene with a drag sled (or now days digitally), and measure as you mentioned any slope or bank to the surface. Everything else is in the vehicles favor, as being light (for vehicles cresting a hill and getting tires unloaded), engine at idle, etc, all will decrease the width and length of the skid in the braking area. From there with some relatively uncomplicated math (well compared to reconstruction work), and I can have the minimum speed necessary to produce a given skid trace. Now it is possible that exoctic tires made of unconventional materials might throw a wrench in all that, but the software we use these days is pretty extensive. So in short, I couldnât tell you the actual speed, but I could tell you the minimum speed something was traveling to leave a given skid trace.
Again Iâm going to assume the FAA has oversight. Provided the plane didnât strike a vehicle on a public roadway, or wasnât being operated by someone intoxicated, I donât have any authority to do a crash investigation, and wouldnât do so. Additionally we have no legal authority in Texas to seize a license beyond a drivers license in case of the driver being intoxicated. The most that I could do, in the case of say a plane landing on a highway in an emergency and striking another vehicle, would be to document the driver via their drivers license or state issued ID # on the paperwork. So overall while I would find it an interesting exercise, it is one I will probably never have to worry about.
Yes and I was referring to a case where the cops used their knowledge for calculating the speed of a vehicle with a stopping distance like this aircraft had, and it didnât go well. But that was the tool they had, and they used it. Iâm not saying this is how you or any other cop, for that matter, wouldâve treated the same situation.
Neither did these cops. But unlike you, they didnât consider that to be a problem 
They just followed the closest protocol they had and that was for a vehicle going off the side of the road, and reported that the aircraft must have been going transonic, when it landed.
This case, with theâŠpedestrianâŠon the runway made me think of police protocol. If a person is hit by a car, and this person wasnât in or on another vehicle, a cop would probably call that person a pedestrian, in the report. The choice of that word, in the article headline, struck me as a bit curious, until I realised that.
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Yikes! Couldnât even blame ATC since you got landing clearance?
I laughedâŠI know its a real thing but I laughed.
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