{"id":33320,"date":"2024-01-30T09:42:32","date_gmt":"2024-01-29T20:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/resources\/?p=33320"},"modified":"2025-01-07T14:08:12","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T01:08:12","slug":"what-is-the-4-second-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/resources\/what-is-the-4-second-rule\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the 4-second rule?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>You&#8217;ve probably heard of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/roadcode-questions\/car\/core\/purpose-of-the-2-second\/\">2-second rule<\/a>. It&#8217;s a rule that light vehicle drivers can use in dry weather on good road surfaces to maintain a reasonably safe following distance to a vehicle in front. You simply count two seconds from when the vehicle passes a stationary object on the side of the road to when you pass it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, the 2-second rule in reality doesn&#8217;t give enough time to stop in many scenarios. In this case, you can increase the distance to 3, 4 or even more seconds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s recommended that you use the 4-second rule when:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>being tailgated (i.e. a person behind you is travelling too close)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>the driver in front is tailgating another vehicle in front of them<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>towing a trailer or caravan<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>driving a heavy vehicle such as a truck<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>heavily loaded<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>the weather has made the road surface more slippery (e.g. rain)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>the road surface is poor, e.g. gravel.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>In very slippery conditions, such as snow and ice, a driver might want to leave 6-8 seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Electric vehicles, with their additional weight, benefit from a 3-second rule in dry weather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Typically, a person takes around 1.5 seconds to react, so a 4-second buffer gives much more chance of stopping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The reason why it&#8217;s good to use a rule based on time is that drivers are not very good at judging distances. At 10km\/h, a driver should be 5.5m behind the vehicle in front &#8211; that&#8217;s not too difficult to judge because it&#8217;s just a bit longer than a car length. However, at 100km\/h, a driver should be 55 metres behind the car in front. This is about 12 average car lengths &#8211; not very easy to judge!  For every 10km\/h, the gap to the vehicle in front increases 5.5 metres for the 2-second rule, or 11 metres for the 4-second rule. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The closer you are to the vehicle in front, the more it blocks your view. Large trucks and buses are particularly bad for this. Dropping back to 4 seconds behind gives much better visibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" src=\"https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/cars-on-country-road-600x400.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-33322\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/cars-on-country-road-600x400.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/cars-on-country-road-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/cars-on-country-road-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/cars-on-country-road-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/cars-on-country-road.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The two trucks on the left are major blockers for the car following. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, leaving more room tends to invite people to fill the gap, especially on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/roadcode-questions\/car\/core\/multi-lane-road\/\">multi-lane roads<\/a>, but in reality, this doesn&#8217;t delay your journey as much as you think it would. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You&#8217;ve probably heard of the 2-second rule. It&#8217;s a rule that light vehicle drivers can use in dry weather on good road surfaces to maintain a reasonably safe following distance to a vehicle in front. You simply count two seconds<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/resources\/what-is-the-4-second-rule\/\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33322,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-road-code"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33320"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33323,"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33320\/revisions\/33323"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drivingtests.co.nz\/resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}