The "tailgating" (i.e. stopping-distance) exercise has the virtue
of being /important/. This is a real physics application. This
is literally the physics of life and death, in some cases. When
I talk to grown-ups and ask them what they learned in high-school
physics, and what they _wish_ they had learned, it is common for
them to say they wished there had been more coverage of real-world
applications such as this.
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For some additional problems associated with driving, see:
Staying Alive: The Physics, Mathematics, and Engineering of Safe Driving
<http://www.sci-ed-ga.org/modules/driving/index.html>
Especially Investigation 6.
Another rich real-life problem is determining the amount of time for the yellow traffic light for different speeds.