Can humans run faster than a car?

Meera Mahesh

Picture this: you’re minding your own business walking along the road, when the cyborg, the Terminator, races past you to catch up with a speeding car driven by his next victim. Have you ever wondered if it would be possible to catch up with a car, or who would win in a race between a car and a human? This post is for you.

How do we walk and run? The Gait cycle

While we all walk and run in slightly different ways, we follow the gait cycle. The gait cycle is the pattern in which humans walk, where one leg swings in front of the other, followed by the opposite leg doing the same, until we reach our destination. There are two phases of the gait cycle: the stance, and the swing. When you put the heel of your foot down, and start putting your body weight on that foot, up until you lift that foot off the ground through your toes, you are going through the stance phase. The swing phase is what your other foot is doing in that time, as it isn’t touching the ground, and it is moving from behind you to in front of you. The gait cycles during walking and running are generally similar, but there is one important difference: during walking, both of your feet are in contact with the ground 25% of the time, whereas when you are running, there is a period when neither of your feet is in contact with the ground, and you are floating. This float phase gets longer the quicker you run.

Who would win?

So now we’ve discussed some context to how we run, let’s answer the burning question at hand. Who would win in a race between a human and a car? Let’s use the 100m distance, which is one of the most gripping Olympic races. Currently, the fastest human to have ever run 100m is Usain Bolt, in 9.58 seconds. The Ferrari 458 Italia covers 100m in 4.95 seconds. The answer is that, no, humans can’t really compete with cars.

However, there are some learning points we can take from this defeat. Humans are not efficient when they are running. Only around 8% of the energy that Bolt used was put into the acceleration. Most of it was used to overcome the wind resistance that he faced, called drag. Humans also waste a lot of energy because of the ‘float’ phase that we talked about earlier: it is a waste of time and energy to raise our feet and drop them to the floor when we run. So theoretically, if we were to reduce our contact time with the ground, we could dramatically increase our running speed.

Will a human ever get as fast as a Ferrari?

Sadly, it seems unlikely that humans will ever get fast enough to race luxury sports cars. The good news is there are very limited times outside of Hollywood blockbusters where we’ll need this skill. The records that humans have set for running distances have gotten lower and lower, and scientists have mixed opinions about how low these records can go. At the minute, these millisecond differences are coming down to the technology of the shoes the athlete is wearing, and how technical the runner is. There might be a breakthrough in the future which will help us run even quicker, but this will not be due to our body’s capabilities.

If you’re looking at getting faster at running, try to reduce the time where your feet are in contact with the ground. The best way to do this is to incorporate some strength training, like squats, so that you can channel more power when you run, and some sprints into your routine. Make it a personal goal to be as fast as The Terminator.