FOR decades physicists have been stumped by an everyday problem: why do even slow-moving cars skid so easily on wet roads? Now a team in Italy and Germany has come up with an explanation that could make wet-weather driving safer.
A vehicle on wet a road typically requires double or triple its normal stopping distance, and skids more easily. If the road is flooded or the vehicle is travelling faster than 60 kilometres per hour, the cause is usually aquaplaning, which occurs when the tyre is moving too fast to flush water from the road beneath it.
But aquaplaning does…
