Question

A police officer arrives at the scene of the collision of the two snowmobiles (Figure 1) to find both drivers unconscious. When the two vehicles collided, their skis became entangled and the two snowmobiles remained locked together as they skidded to a stop. One driver was thrown clear of the mishap, but the other driver remained in the driver¡¯s seat. The posted speed limit for snowmobiles in this cottage area is 60 km/h. The information the police officer obtained from eyewitness accounts and collision scene measurements are provided in Table 1. One witness described how driver A was thrown horizontally at a constant speed from his seat (0.5 m above the snow) surface to his final resting position.
a) Use the physics of kinematics, projectiles, conservation of momentum, and metric conversions to estimate the pre-collision speed of both vehicles.

Table 1

Mass of driver A