30th March 2007

So how fast should you drive in fog?

posted in Elly, Fog, My Sweetie, Road Manners, Road Safety, Useful tip, accident, ellybabes |

On tuesday last, Ireland witnessed one of the worst traffic accidents in our history. It’s been covered plenty on breakingnews.ie so I’m not going to go into details here, my sympathy goes out to all those involved and their families and friends. This was a truly terrible accident, myself and Elly passed the scene about 10 minutes before it happened. I hope you’ll forgive me for feeling relieved that we weren’t involved.

Something positive has to come from a tragedy like this and I hope it’s helped others to think about the way they drive, the way it has made me think about how I drive. The question that comes to my mind is “so, how fast should you drive in fog?”

Tonight, I did some calculations and worked/puzzled this out. At 120Kph you move a little bit more than 33 meters every second. That’s obviously far to fast to be travelling if you can only see 20m or 25m and thats still only a light fog. If you come up to a stationary object it’s already too late to brake.

So what speed is safe?

Lets say you can see 20m. That’s about 65 feet. What distance can you stop your car in, from what speed? is 70Kph slow enough? Well, you travel about 19.5m in 1 sec. Could you react and stop your car in 1 sec? I know I don’t want to find out.

Even at half that speed you only have 2 secs to react and avoid something thats happened 65 feet ahead. Think about that next time you start your car, I know I will.

Lets make that the positive thing that comes from this, think about how you drive. Not just the speed, your road manners as well. Indicate when you’re going to make a turn or change lane not as you do it. Don’t stay in the overtaking lane if you’re not overtaking and leave earlier so you’re not in a hurry. :) and maybe we’ll all help make our roads safer for us all.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 30th, 2007 at 7:19 pm and is filed under Elly, Fog, My Sweetie, Road Manners, Road Safety, Useful tip, accident, ellybabes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are currently 3 responses to “So how fast should you drive in fog?”

Why not let us know what you think by adding your own comment! Your opinion is as valid as anyone elses, so come on... let us know what you think.

  1. 1 On March 30th, 2007, Grannymar said:

    Remember the ‘cargo’ in the car is precious!

    Life is the most precious cargo we have.

    Drive safely

  2. 2 On March 30th, 2007, Niall said:

    I drove down from Dublin on Tuesday night at around 12:30 after the M9 and M7 was reopened. With less than 6 or 7 meters of visibility, traveling at under 40mph on the inside lane, there was still people overtaking me on the outside lane. This was after the news of the crashes earlier on that morning.

    Saying that, I did come across of cars traveling at ridiculously low speeds of 10mph or 15mph which is probably almost as dangerous as the speeders. At least they were all using Fog lights though.

  3. 3 On July 20th, 2007, ellybabes » Good invention - SuddenStop lights said:

    […] Most people don’t think of the time needed to both react and brake when traveling at speed. After a bad multiple-car accident that happened in thick fog earlier this year, the hubbie did some calculating of just how quickly you cover distances and how quickly you can stop. He was shocked by the calculations and realised that a lot of people drive too close to other cars in this country. […]

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