I live near Six Flags Over Georgia and used to visit occasionally. With a few exceptions, their coasters generally don’t get above 60 mph. Mindbender, for example, tops out at 50mph, but feels so ridiculously fast when you’re riding it. In a car on the highway, though, going 50 doesn’t feel like much of an event at all.
Why is this?
In: Physics
Your vision comes into play as well as others have mentioned. Skydiving feels more like you are floating because the ground is so far away even when falling at 140 m.p.h. When you look at a mountain in the distance while driving, it seems that you are hardly moving even though you are driving at 70 m.p.h. On a rollercoaster, the track and the landscape in your peripheral vision help to enhance the acceleration effects on the brain. I liked looking at the airplane while skydiving because it looked like it was going super fast as we separated.
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