New research has revealed that the stopping distance prescribed by the government’s Highway Code is too short. They now believe it could take drivers half as much time again to come to a halt in an emergency. Road safety campaigners have called on the government to undertake an urgent review. They want the stopping distance section of the Highway Code revised.
How is stopping distance calculated?
Experts split the length of time it takes a car to come to a halt into two. These are thinking time and braking distance. Thinking time is what it takes us to identify a hazard then for that message to travel from our brain to our foot and our foot to move onto the brake pedal. The braking distance is the amount of time it takes for the car to come to a halt once we’ve slammed on the brakes. Currently the Highway Code says it should take 12 metres to come to a halt from 20mph, 23m from 30mph and 96m from 70mph.
What should stopping distances really be?
Boffins from transport consultancy TRL examined a wealth of academic data that looks into drivers’ thinking time. They concluded that it takes much longer than the Highway Code estimates for drivers to see, recognise and react to an emergency. While the official thinking time is 0.67 seconds, TRL concluded that the human brain actually takes around 1.5 seconds. This is the figure used by the US equivalent to the Highway Code. And in Canada it’s 2.5 seconds.
Jason Wakeford from road safety charity Brake, which commissioned, the research explained: “We’re calling on the government to increase the stopping distances in the Highway Code as a matter of urgency. Even though car braking technology has improved in recent years, the majority of the overall stopping distance at most speeds is actually made up of the time taken to perceive the hazard and react. Our research shows that average thinking time is more than double that set out in the Highway Code.”
What does this mean?
According to the TRL’s calculations, rather than 12m, it will take 19m for a car to come to a halt from 20mph. That’s more than one and a half lengths of the average car more than the Highway Code. At 30mph, thinking time goes from 9m to 20m. That increases total stopping distance to 34m – nearly three car lengths more than the official figure. And at 70mph, thinking time goes up to 121m. This puts total stopping distance at just more than six car lengths longer than the Highway Code.
|Revised stopping distances||19m||34m||51m||71m||95m||121m|
Why Highway Code stopping distances are important
The Highway Code stopping distances are used by learner drivers as a gauge to judge their braking by. If that gauge is faulty and they think they can come to a stop quicker than they really can, they have a greater risk of crashing. Brake’s Jason Wakeford said: “A true understanding of how long it takes to stop a car in an emergency is one of the most important lessons for new drivers. Understanding true average thinking time reminds all drivers how far their car will travel before they begin to brake − as well as highlighting how any distraction in the car which extends this time, like using a mobile phone, could prove fatal.”