Friday 18th January 2002

Ignorance is Bliss?

Does ignorance of the Highway code make us bad drivers?

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[mcecm]

Does it really matter if you know the "proper" stopping distances? These are qouted for rare perfect conditions in some ancient car that is now irrelevant. Who checks if they are 96 metres behind the car infront on a motorway(assuming you were doing 70!!) Not me for sure.

CM

[kevinday]

When I 'learnt' them they were in feet and there was a useful 'rule'. Take the speed in mph and add to the previous total stopping distance eg. From 60 = 245 feet, add 70 to get a total stopping distance of 315 feet for 70. It worked for me.

[nonegreen]

Yes but the total stopping distance includes a thinking distance calculated on the basis of a thinking time that is similar to the time taken for species to evolve. Therefore the stopping distances in the highway code are b*****ks.

[SMiles]

So let me think...I'm doing '70mph', the car infront has jammed his anchors on....looks in mirror, the bloke in the car behind is on his phone...glances in lefthand mirror, lorry driver coming up fast reading the paper....starts to do mental arithmetic....it takes xfeet per mile per hour to stop (bearing in mind the difference in speed between my car and the one in front, it takes x seconds thinking time and it takes .....15 seconds for the unmarked plod in the car behind to leap to my assistance and stick a presenter on my bleeding corpse.

[domster]

I always go on Autocar's 100-0 braking times, anyway.

At 100 mph a Porsche 993 TT will stop within approx 4 seconds (including a nanosecond of thinking time), or about 35.6 centimetres in distance travelled.

An Austin Allegro would stop within the calendar month, and be in the next county, by the same measure.

Works for me.

Domster

[PetrolTed]

Off Topic: Smiles - did you get my email regarding the Motor Show competition? You won mate and I need your address.

[philshort]

Having witnessed an HGV taking out a car on the hard shoulder on the M6 (occupants were killed, HGV driver convicted), I shudder to think that people would even think about using the hard shoulder for phone calls.

Motorways (despite anything the "speed kills" mob would have you believe) are the safest roads for the simple reason that all the traffic is moving in the same direction, and great care has been taken to ensure that there are no solid roadside masses to get in the way, and where such masses do exist they are suitably armco'd.

A stationary vehicle on the hard shoulder is like King Canute waiting to be washed away by the tide.

Phil

[kevinday]

Domster, An Allegro would not take that long to stop because they cannot go more than 39mph