40ms : a car going 150 km/h travels 1,6m during that time.
Like see here:
http://abload.de/img/allh0es8.jpg the paths were cars went off track, like at top the hairpin. The dots (MCI packets) are still pretty far apart. (I do not remember what update rate was used there. Not the minimum but still..)
But I did actually not mean the update resolution.
I meant 'worst case' as in: Imagine the car drives frontal into wall. The car bounces back. If you are unlucky then the two MCI packets before/after crash have the same coordinates because car is bouncing back to same spot.
Extreme situation ofc but shows a principle problem that would always be there, just less extreme.
Hm, I think best might be to combine coordinates and speed into some movement vector of the car. Beside movement vector there is also the heading of the car, which ins not nessecary the same. (Think drift / spin)
If there is HLV message but speed does not change much and movement-vector & heading are still mostly parallel: It was harmless brushing wall with side etc
/edit
Oh, found something more:
This shows how sideways cars were during a race:
http://abload.de/img/multidrift_race1wka43.png
I do not remember the scale, but blue means "slight sliding", normal 5° or whatever cars always do in turns.
Red means more than happens during normal driving. Where is nothing painted, there was no drifing. (on straights)
Now look at the slides of the "alex" driver. (last row, 3rd from top)
Compare his sliding with his coordinates & speed:
http://abload.de/img/plot11j9bw9.jpg
Wiggly coordinates-lines mean of course he was crashing there, or close to crashing. It lines up with the drift-picture. With both data together one can guess a bit what happend. A program would have to same as a human who looks at those pictures: Compare speed, movement-vector, heading, coordinates.