It's common knowledge that when you're rushing to catch a plane or train, carrying a suitcase can slow you down. Especially if your two-wheeled bag starts rocking from side to side before it eventually topples over.

Luckily for us and just in time for holiday season, scientists have shared their tips for overcoming this travel problem.

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Bear Grylls//Digital Spy

Researchers in France studied a model suitcase on a treadmill to find out exactly what happens when a suitcase travels at high speed, the BBC reports. They discovered that if a regular side-to-side swing develops, going faster led to smaller swings.

"Thus, one should accelerate rather than decelerate to attenuate the amplitude of oscillations," they concluded. "A non-experienced suitcase puller would not react this way. The outcome should not be a dramatic for a suitcase, but it could be troublesome for a trailer towed by a vehicle."

This all sounds very intense and confusing, but basically, the faster the better.

The results, published in the the journal Royal Society Proceedings A, explain that the lack of stability in a two-wheeled bag is because the two wheels are fixed together on a rod. "The friction force at the rolling wheels constrains wheels to roll without slipping," the report states. "This constraint imposes a coupling between the translational motion and the three-dimensional rotational motion of the suitcase that drives the rocking instability."

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Bear Grylls//Digital Spy

And this theory applies to more than just bags on wheels. "The suitcase is a fun way to tackle the problem but the study would be the same for any trolley with two wheels or blades," Sylvain Courrech du Pont, of Universite Paris-Diderot, who led the study, told BBC News. "So it will be the same for a caravan or maybe also for airplanes."

In basic terms? Next time you're lugging a suitcase around, the quicker you walk the better.

From: Country Living UK