Indeed! But that is what it takes to stop comfortably. This shows that most motorway drivers are not following the basic rule that you should always be able to stop in the distance you know to be clear.
It is often impossible to maintain such distances, but ideally we should, and I try to do so when I can.
Well, it can happen. If it does there will be a very large multi-car pileup if there is only 2 seconds between each car.
As I pointed out sonething like that happened on the M12 last year, and I was only about 30 seconds away from it. Several people were end.
Tailgating through traffic lights 5149they were saying : 60mph - 18m thinking distance, 55m stopping distance = 73m. 60mph - 2 second gap is 1-30 mile, 1609-30 = 54m. 60mph - 3 second gap is 1-20 mile, 1609-20 = 81m. The Highway Code braking figures...
And it doesn't need a concrete block, someone having a tyre blowout and hitting the Armco or a bridge support, or losing control of the car for another reason would do just as well.
So I have to ask the question How interested in road safety are we? If the powers that be were really concerned, they would be working to stop this kind of accident from happening by improving road engineering and educating drivers to follow at a safe distance. No amount of speed cameras will do this.
But then, serious road safety improvements cost money. Speed cameras raise money.
Martin
-- Created on the Iyonix PC - the world's fastest RISC OS computer.
