The faster an object is moving, the longer the distance it takes to stop. If a vehicle’s speed doubles, it needs about 4X’s the distance to stop. If a vehicle’s speed triples, it needs up to 9X’s the distance to stop. Weight works in the same way that speed does in relation to stopping distances.

Use the 4-second rule. Count the number of seconds in between the car in front of you passing the object and your vehicle passing it. If you count at least 4 seconds, you are at a safe following distance.

How fast you drive does not affect the distance your vehicle travels after you brake to come to a stop. When driving in high-speed traffic, it is extremely important to stay well behind the vehicle in front of you. As your speed increases, the distance it will take for your vehicle to stop also increases.

A tripling of the speed would increase the stopping distance by a factor of nine. And a quadrupling of the speed would increase the stopping distance by a factor of 16. The stopping distance is proportional to the square of the speed of the vehicle.

2 Answers By Expert Tutors. By the Work-Energy Theorem, the work done in stopping the car = change in kinetic energy. Hence, the stopping distance is quadrupled if the speed is doubled.

Although a car traveling at a speed of 20 mph will take about 20 feet to stop once the driver has pushed the brake pedal, a vehicle going 40 mph will require 80 feet of space to be covered before it ceases moving.

Answer. We know from third equation of motion that s(distance) is directly proportional to u^2. Thus, if the speed is doubled then then the stopping distance becomes 4 times the given value. so, we can see as, speed is doubled, the braking distance goes increases by 4 times .

Kinetic energy increases with the square of the speed. Neglecting friction, an engine does four times as much work to make a car reach a speed of 60 miles/h as to make it reach a speed of 30 miles/h. When the speed of a car is doubled, its kinetic energy increases by a factor of four.