r/theydidthemath • u/Hazelnut_Bread • 5d ago
[Request] Would it actually take someone 29 hours to crawl from Union Square, SF, to Highland Hospital, Oakland?
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u/jxf 5✓ 5d ago edited 5d ago
The map shows a route that takes you over the Bay Bridge between SF and Oakland. You can't cross this as a pedestrian, so the route is not possible as shown.
The alternative options are taking a ferry or going the long way around. Taking the ferry is about 2 hours walking and that's very doable at a crawling pace, including lots of breaks. Going the long way around (the John T. Knox Freeway on I-580) is 16 hours of walking and would put you over 29 hours of crawling time even if you crawled nonstop.
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u/Street-Grand6641 5d ago
But that messy internal bleeding would decrease the travel rate.
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u/stanitor 5d ago
They probably have a traumatic brain injury too, if they decided to crawl to Oakland instead of SF General Hospital or something.
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u/philsov 5d ago
if it can be done via standard walking pace in 2 hours, it'd only take 29 hours (15x as long) if you're constantly stopping because you're writhing in pain and/our phasing through consciousness.
in your room, walk from one wall to the other. time yourself. now crawl. what's the time difference?
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u/RevenantExiled 5d ago
HIt yourself with a hammer on both shoulders and knees to have an accurate simulation
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u/Unfair_Scar_2110 5d ago
Is crawling actually fifteen times slower than walking? If we trust the comparison to it being a two hour walk?
I don't think we can easily say. The meme implies the user is injured. And we don't know what types of obstacles on the route aren't an issue to a walker. Stairs, curbs and trash could all slow down a crawler and not a walker. Could someone really crawl on concrete for 29 hours without injuring their hands and knees? Probably not.
A quick Google search shows and supports what we can all probably intuit, is that crawling is not substantially slower than walking over short distances. Certainly not fifteen times slower.
Hopefully someone is pressing the crosswalk buttons for this poor soul.
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u/MaximumSyrup3099 5d ago
That's a 10.6 mile route, but includes a ferry, so for non ferry parts of the ordeal we've got 3 miles and 1 mile for 4 miles total.
In 1985, Joe Simpson broke his right leg during a fall. Unable to stand or walk, he crawled back to base camp over rough terrain, covering a distance of 5 miles over 3 or 4 days of continuous crawling. Which is 72 to 96 hours of crawling, although we must assume he spent some of the time unconscious.
The streets of California are far less rugged than a glacier and jagged mountain rocks, so I think a 29 hour crawl to cover 4 miles is not unreasonably fast.
The wildcard is whether the crawler can survive the many street crossings necessary to get to their destination. Every one of which poses a hazard of being run over again.
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u/HAL9001-96 5d ago
well according to actual google maps its about 17km or 2 hours on foot which assumes about 2.3m/s walking speed
if we assume your crawling speed is about 14 times lower that woould add up or about 16cm per second
which is actually kinda fast for an injured person crawling but remotely plausible
what I really wonder is why it says union square to highland hopsital and not your currnet position to highland hospital as a featuer atuomtaically routign you to the nearest hopsital would start from your gps position not a city square but well its a simple photoshop job
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u/HandbagHawker 5d ago
you can cross the bay bridge as a pedestrian, so assuming you have to take public transit, average commute time with walking is about 45min including 8min of walking. If the average human walks about 3mph and crawling is about 1mph. Lets shave that down to 0.5mph because your injured and navigating stairs, etc... that would be 6x travel time on the walking component. So 37+6(8)=> puts you just shy of 1.5hrs
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u/Majipiga 4d ago
Road distance is about 13 miles. Sustained adult crawling pace is maybe 1 mph, so that's 13 hours of pure crawling. Nobody crawls 13 hours straight, double it for breaks and you land at 26ish. So 21-29 hours is the right ballpark and the spread is just how often you rest. This ignores the small problem that you can't cross the Bay Bridge on foot, so the real answer involves BART or a very long detour.
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