One in four Walloons does not respect safety distances
One in four drivers does not respect safety distances, reveals a recent survey by the Walloon Road Safety Agency (AWSR), the results of which were communicated on Tuesday.
Published on 07/16/2024 at 07:15
One in four drivers does not respect safety distances, reveals a recent survey by the Walloon Road Safety Agency (AWSR), the results of which were communicated on Tuesday.
Twenty-eight percent of the 1,000 Walloons surveyed said they sometimes stick to the vehicle in front of them to prevent someone from getting in front of them. About the same proportion of motorists (25%) say they sometimes stick the car in front of them to get the driver to accelerate or pull back.
However, these behaviors can sometimes lead to serious accidents, underlines the AWSR. In Wallonia, almost one injury accident in five (18%) involves rear-end or chain collisions (three or more users). Of these, at least one in six (16%) is specifically linked to non-compliance with safety distances, or around 300 accidents per year. These collisions cause an average of more than 500 victims each year, including six deaths.
A little more than half (53%) of accidents involving failure to respect the safety distance involve two motorists, specifies the Walloon agency. The majority of these accidents occur on highways. There are in fact five times more accidents where one of the drivers involved did not respect the safety distance than on other types of roads (15% compared to 3%).
In Belgium, the Highway Code does not explicitly impose a safety distance. It specifies that all drivers must, taking into account their speed, maintain a sufficient safety distance between their vehicle and the one in front of them. It must also in all circumstances be able to stop in front of a foreseeable obstacle.
In practice, motorists are recommended to leave, between their vehicle and the one in front, a distance equivalent to that covered in two seconds. “The reason is simple,” explains the ASWR, “the brain needs one second to react before the driver presses the brake pedal, only after this time does the braking will truly begin.”
On the highway, at 120 km/h, a distance of two seconds corresponds to approximately 70 meters. To easily assess this distance, the Walloon Road Safety Agency recalls the “two crocodiles” technique which consists of choosing a landmark along the road and starting to count “one crocodile, two crocodiles” as soon as the vehicle in front passes this landmark. If the driver passes the marker before having finished counting the 2nd crocodile, it is because he is too close to the vehicle in front of him. In the event of bad weather conditions, safety distances must increase: “three seconds/crocodiles” on wet roads, and “four seconds/crocodiles” on snowy or icy roads.
