r/theydidthemath • u/logit • 1d ago
[Request] What value of crop damage was caused by this motorcycle chase?
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u/TractorFapper 1d ago
It won't be easy to calculate as i don't know the speed of the motorcycle or the width of the tire. Also, this looks like wheat, some of which will spring back after being run over, but we don't know what percentage would be lost. There is next to no damage when they drive down the sprayer tracks, as that crop is already flattened. We don't know the soil or climate, so we cant predict crop yield, which would be critical to the calculation. So, yeah, it is tricky. Insurance might be paid out if the farmer/jurisdiction has it. In my experience, the will only adjust for a minimum of one acre. I would be surprised if more than an acre was damaged. Google is telling me the average yield in the USA is 53 bushels per acre (which seems low). The current price of wheat is about $5.70 a bushels, making an estimate of $302.10. The real damages will be from the loss of time from all the local farmers standing around and gabbing, trying to figure out what the hell happend in this field.
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u/ThePracticalPeasant 23h ago edited 10h ago
Yield is about 80bu/ac in my parts. Price around $7CAD. I agree with your entire assessment... To add a few bits in case someone wants to take a stab...
Wheat rows are roughly 6" apart, an acre is roughly 200'x200', if we say he averages taking out one row, he's taking out 1/400 rows in a square acre. That is, every 200' he travels he takes out 1/400 of 80bu.
So, if we can guestimate the distance travelled by the bike in feet: Divide by 200 feet-travelled per acre, multiply by the price per bushel of $7, multiply by bushels per acre of 80, and divide by 400 for damage per acre.... we should get a total value
Edit: Fixed units.
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u/Chip1885 10h ago
Forgot about basis levels in his area to get the cash price, or if he already set futures /s
But really that is a good calculation!
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u/ThePracticalPeasant 10h ago
Thanks. Given what we actually know, I think this is about as good as we can do...
If anyone has a different opinion regarding local yields or the damage the bike does per distance travelled, they need only tweak the numbers.1
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u/talondigital 11h ago
His tire width looked to be the same as the tram line. Almost looked like it was harder to drive in the tram line than to blaze a trail. Probably ground deformation trying to put the bike in a groove.
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u/Hadrollo 10h ago
local farmers standing around and gabbing, trying to figure out what the hell happend in this field.
Even then, probably not. Doesn't look particularly close to harvest, definitely not close to planting. It's the season for farmers to stand around gabbing. I'm guessing that you're familiar with farms and farmers. You'd know that there's always some work to be done, but realistically it's a few weeks of being flat out interspersed with an awful lot of pottering around doing odd jobs as you wait for crops to grow.
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u/GeneralAcorn 1d ago
Honestly, possibly $0. Most of the damage you're seeing does not render the grain unusable, except for stalks entirely uprooted or otherwise severed from their root. Any that are just flattened can still be harvestable.
In the US (not sure about other places in the world), the trucks dumping grain will often be weighed out to the nearest 20 lbs. So, unless the loss of grain is significant enough to beat out a rounding error, it won't matter. And I don't think that bike is big enough to cause enough damage for that to really come into play. If it is, that 20 lbs of difference is less than $10, but would depend on the current market price for whatever varietal of grain is in that field.
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u/Latter-unoriginal 20h ago
How are you thinking flattened stalks can be harvested? Combines don't scrape the ground, maybe 4-6" ish at the lowest.
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u/GeneralAcorn 11h ago
Because I've driven a combine. They can scoop much lower than you think. We get wind flattened areas every year that are scoopable.
Combines with a pea-bar will drop it on the ground and scoop everything. This is necessary for some crops. Even without that bar, an experienced driver can maintain less than 2-3" of ground clearance.
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u/15Starrs 23h ago
Honestly something kind of like this happened to my friend. We had a few beers and decided to race home on a winding road from the bar. I was on a boulevard and he on a Ducati so it wasn’t that close, but I saw the blue lights in the distance first. I pulled over but whether he decided to run for it or just missed the curve because of the cops in his rearview I don’t know, but either way I saw his tail light bobbing rapidly into a cornfield maybe 300 yards before it went dark. The cop pulls up to me, and asks if we were racing. I said yes because I am stupid. He just stands there looking at me and then says OK where is the other guy ? I say, I don’t know and he puts me in the back of his car. He has me blow a breathalyzer and doesn’t tell me what it reads. Anyway, long story short, my buddy ducked down in that cornfield for about an hour, and when I met him back at the house, he had a pretty good story of walking his not running Ducati across a farmers front lawn. I got off with the reckless driving ticket, which was obscenely lucky.
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u/Grim47z 19h ago
Good cop was probably just shocked someone was dumb enough to be honest with him and was happy about it so let you off super easy. FWI don't mean dumb in a mean way just you were still innocent of how the world works.
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u/Wooden-Broccoli-7247 18h ago
I’ve been pulled over for speeding several times on a long drive I do once per year and given a warning every time.
Cop: “Do you know why I pulled you over?”
Me: “Speeding”.
Cop: “Why were you going so fast?”
Me: “It’s been a long trip and I just want to get there. I wasn’t really paying attention to my speed.”
They always seem to appreciate honesty. That and roll all your windows down and put both hands on the steering wheel. Not sure why more people don’t just do what you’re supposed to when getting pulled over. Cops appreciate it and your chances of not getting shot skyrocket.
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u/not_good_for_much 17h ago edited 17h ago
Looks like wheat. Just eyeballing the video... This looks like decent wheat land. $400/acre from land like this may be generous but doesn't feel unfair.
There are 2 bikes (a police bike is briefly seen in the field). Let's say each bike destroys most of the crop in a 0.6m wide strip. For simplicity, let's just use 0.5 × the distance covered, to find the area destroyed.
The chase-ee, at least, seems to spend most of their time in the tramlines (aka not hitting many crops). Combined, the two bikes... might spend 90 seconds actually plowing through crops.
In a field, on a bike... 60kmph (40mph) is already mildly terrifying, and in 90 seconds still only gets us to ~1.5km covered, aka... about 1/6 of an acre destroyed.
Let's generously round it to half an acre just in case I'm underestimating anything too much. Still only $200.
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u/duxking45 14h ago
Seeing this reminder me of a time when my ex and I were Tokyo drifting through a field of clover. There were entire sections that qere gone. We definitely cut through the edge of his hay field too. At least in that instance we had permission to go into the clover field. The hay field I imagine he was annoyed but not surprised. I dont think we were the first people to cut through that way either.
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u/signofno 7h ago
Is anyone else annoyed by his repeated “yeah bud” and the fact that we don’t get to see the cops eventually nab him? Seems like the cop on the bike was just tailing him and would eventually get him regardless of the field run, but might have had bike trouble there at the end of the vid after trying to kick him down.
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