What distance should you maintain from the vehicle in front in the presented situation?
Show the correct answer
Correct answer
A. A distance necessary to avoid a collision in the event the preceding vehicle brakes or stops.
Explanation
In the photo you are driving in town in a line of vehicles behind a silver car; next to you there are a tram, a low-loader carrying an excavator and a red minibus. The question is about the distance from the vehicle in front: it must be the distance necessary to avoid a collision if the vehicle in front brakes or stops - answer A.
The Road Traffic Act states that a driver is obliged to keep the distance necessary to avoid a collision if the vehicle in front brakes or stops. The rule does not give a number of metres, because a safe distance depends on the speed, the road surface, the load of the car and your reflexes - that is why answers B and C, with a specific "10 metres", are wrong; the Act gives fixed values only in exceptional cases, e.g. on a motorway and an expressway (a distance in metres of no less than half the speed in km/h) and in long tunnels. A practical measure in town is the two-second rule: when the vehicle in front passes a post, you count "one hundred and twenty-one, one hundred and twenty-two" and only then do you pass it yourself; on a wet roadway you double this. In traffic like that in the photo, with vehicles changing lanes, it is worth making this margin even bigger.
Legal basis: Art. 19 para. 2 point 3 and para. 3a of the Road Traffic Act (Prawo o ruchu drogowym)