III Work Road Safety Week: "Braking distance"
Fraternidad-Muprespa celebrates the III Workplace Road Safety Week from November 4 to 15 with the aim of raising awareness among our mutual members about the importance of road safety to reduce work accidents and road accidents work.
Today we want to focus on a crucial element in driving safety, which is braking distance. The braking distance is the distance that a vehicle travels from the moment the driver begins to brake until it comes to a complete stop and these meters that are needed to stop the vehicle can save lives or put them in danger and a key factor in this is the speed at which we travel.
Travel speed is a fundamental element in braking and it is essential to emphasize the idea, already known but sometimes forgotten, that at higher speeds, the more meters we will travel during the second it takes us, on average, to react, and the greater the distance we will need to completely stop the vehicle. It is estimated that this process takes only about 0.75 seconds, but that short period of time is enough to advance 10 meters if we drive on urban roads at 50 km/h or 25 meters if we drive on the highway at 120 km/h.
Another factor to incorporate is the reaction time, which depends on several factors such as the other vehicles, the driver's mood, their physical conditions and of course external issues such as the state of the road or weather conditions such as rain or ice. We must also remember that fatigue can increase the time up to 2 seconds, playing music on the radio or looking at our cell phone can take 6 seconds, and having consumed alcohol or drugs we react up to 10 seconds later.
Finally, we must take into account the condition of our car and good maintenance of the vehicle is also important in braking safety. For this reason, recently the General Directorate of Traffic created an animated infographic titled Bad maintenance lengthens braking in which they want to influence this idea and also incorporate the factor of good maintenance as another essential element to guarantee our safety behind the wheel.
In the video that we present below you can see the most outstanding actions of our III Work Road Safety Week:
