Stopping distance investigation

There is a slight mathematical content to these articles. They are for interest only.

The graph shows that whilst the thinking distance is directly proportional to the speed, the gradients of the curves of the braking and total (overall) stopping distances increase considerably as speed increases.

This basically tells us that as you put more speed on it will be more difficult to get rid of it again than you think!

For the maths geeks:

The gradient of the total stopping distance curve starts at about +0.65 increasing to a gradient of about +1.8 at the end of the curve, which shows a gradient increase of around 300% through the range.

For interest, the imperial braking distances in the highway code was a degree two polynomial model (quadratic). Now that the figures have been converted into the metric system, regression shows the exponent to be about 2.2. This is a result of rounding and it is better to think of braking distances as a quadratic model.