Keep your distance

On a motorway, the broken stripes are 3 meters long. The open space to the next stripe is 9 meters. The distance from the start of one stripe to the start of the next stripe is 12 meters. When driving at 100 kilometers per hour on a motorway, the following distance should be at least 55 meters. That means more than 4 stripes away from the car in front. In practice, people often keep too little distance as shown in the picture above. On a motorway, therefore, keep at least 5 stripes away from the car in front. Especially on the practical exam!

By law, a driver must be able to stop his vehicle within the distance over which he can overlook the road and over which it is clear. This means keeping a sufficient distance from the vehicles in front of you. However, what is sufficient? This is different in every situation. The government, insurers and the CBR recommend keeping a distance of two seconds.

This two-second rule consists of three steps:

• Find a fixed point along the road, such as a lamppost or hectometer sign.
• Start counting when your vehicle in front passes this fixed point.
• Pass this point at least two seconds later.

Keeping a distance of two seconds does give you a minimum distance. During bad weather conditions, such as low sun, fog, rain and snowfall, you will need to keep even more distance. You will also need to keep more distance when following cars with caravans, trucks, and buses because you cannot see the road in front of you or cannot see it properly.

Keeping enough distance can save dozens of road deaths and thousands of hospitalisations every year, and prevent an even greater number of road accidents. About 40 per cent of road accidents consist of rear-end collisions. In 90 per cent of those cases, it could have been prevented by keeping more distance.

Article 19 of the RVV:
The driver must be able to stop his vehicle within the distance over which he can overlook the road and over which it is clear.