With another government campaign to slow drivers down, using more scare tactics like showing a child being run over by a speeding driver, we at Midnight-Racing thought it was about time we conducted our own stopping distance test to see how true these figures are.

Some of you may not have seen the recent adverts on TV.  Basically a car is driving at 35Mph through a crowded town centre, when a little boy steps out in the road.  The driver slams on his brakes, locking the front wheels and drives straight in to the boy, possibly killing him.  A narrator then goes on to say that it takes an extra 21 feet to stop at 35Mph than it does at 30Mph.

How we performed the tests

For our tests we took two average family cars.  Bens white Escort TD and Tony's mums Peugeot 205 (sorry Tony's mum).  We picked a cold night where the roads were slightly damp as typical British weather always is, two tape measures, a stop watch and a bit of wood (to mark the stopping point).  The idea of the test was to measure the extra time and distance needed to stop at different speeds, but we also wanted to allow for driver reaction time.  To do this one of us drove keeping the car at the set speed, whilst the other would watch for the marked point to start the stop and yell "STOP!!!".  From yelling stop the timer was started, and then we measured the distance and time it took the car to reach a stand still.  We performed the tests four times for each speed in each car so that we could get an average result, and all tests were performed on Private Land.

Notes about the cars
The Escort is not standard.  It is fitted with 17" Alloy wheels with 205/40 rubber, this is much wider than the 165/60 tyres that Ford fitted the car with and will improve grip reducing the stopping distance.  However the car is also fitted with a pumping sound system and most of the boot is taken up with speakers, amps and neons, this added weight will increase the cars stopping distance.

The 205 is completely standard.  All tests were performed with two people in the cars.

Escort stopping results (Ben driving)

Peugeot stopping results (Tony driving)

Results

As you can see from the results (and this shocked us too), the government figures are actually very close the actual stopping distances in the real world.  Being honest with you all we suspected that 21 feet would be conservative and that we could stop in a much shorter distance than that.  How wrong were we?  Of course in the dry the distance would be less, but it does make you think.  In the summer we hope to perform the tests again, this time in the dry and with Bens MR2 Turbo with uprated brakes and Tony's Escort Cosworth, personally we think these performance cars would out stop the standard ones without a doubt, but we'll see.

Below is the road surface after we finished and a few extra pictures that we also took that night.

Skid marks on the road and the tape measure.

Here you can see how damp the road was, notice the Pugs thin tyre marks.

Classic action high speed gear change shot!  Only not moving :-(

Warming up the cars for the stopping tests, reaching break neck speeds of 35Mph!

Both cars after killing the brakes.