Braking Distances

Stopping distance:

This is the distance your vehicle travels from the moment you realise you must brake to the moment the vehicle actually stops.

You will need to leave enough space between you and the vehicle infront so you can pull up safely if it should slow down or stop suddenly.

To do this you need to be able to judge your OVERALL stopping distance.

Stopping distances depend on:

* How fast you're going

* Whether you're travelling uphill or downhill or on the level

* The weather and the condition of the road itself

* The condition of your brakes and tyres (so make sure these are well maintained!)

* Your ability as a driver, particularly your reaction times when applying the brakes.

Your Overall Stopping distance divides into

* Thinking distance

* Braking distance

Thinking Distance this depends how quickly you react. If you are tired or unwell your reaction times will be slowed to some extent, and if you are on certain medications so check with you doctor before driving.

For example if you're driving at 20mph you'll travel 6 metres(20feet) before you even begin to brake. So thats 6 metres before your brakes even begin to work!

Braking Distance
This depends greatly on the speed of your vehicle and the size and weight of it. It has even more effect on your overall stopping distance.

At 20mph good brakes on a good dry road surface will stop your vehicle in about 6 metres(20 feet) So remember, this is ONLY the braking distance, we now need to add the time on that it will take us to get to the brakes in the first place ,the Thinking Distance.

As you can see above it has taken us 6 metres (20 feet) just to get to the brakes(thinking distance) so we need to add that on to our Braking distance to get the overall stopping distance.

The total will be 12 metres or 40 feet to stop at 20mph on a good road, remember if our reaction times are not top notch or our tyres or brakes are not in top condition this total will be more!

Overall stopping distances

20 mph it takes 12m (40ft)

30 mph it takes 23m (75ft)

40 mph it takes 36m (120ft)

50 mph it takes 53m(175ft)

60 mph it takes 73m (240ft)

70 mph it takes 96m (315ft)

Allow much more time and room to brake in bad weather. Your tyres won't grip the road surface so well in wet weather or on loose road surfaces.

You need to have thought about this before you find yourself needing to brake suddenly! So pay attention to the road surface and weather conditions. Try to avoid driving if you are tired or unwell due to reaction times being slower.

An easy way to figure out your actual braking distance in feet is by knowing that whatever speed you're doing your Thinking distance will be that in feet.

So if youre doing 30 mph your thinking distance will be 30 ft. Once you've learnt your overall stopping distances in feet just deduct your speed in feet from your overall stopping distance. This leaves you with the actual braking distance.

At 30mph the overall stopping distance is 75 ft. So we will deduct 30 feet for our thinking distance from our overall stopping distance which leaves 45 ft. That must be our braking distance.

At 40mph our overall stopping distance in feet is 120ft. We need to deduct 40ft for our thinking distance which leaves 80ft. That must be our braking distance and so on.

Steven....