Six questions on the Gibraltar theory paper ask you for a stopping distance, and they are pure recall. There is no reasoning your way to the answer in the exam room. Learn the six figures and you have banked six marks.
Here is every one, exactly as the Department of Transport paper marks them.
The six figures
| Speed | Thinking | Braking | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|
| 32 kph | 6 m | 6 m | 12 m |
| 48 kph | 9 m | 14 m | 23 m |
| 64 kph | 12 m | 24 m | 36 m |
| 80 kph | 15 m | 38 m | 53 m |
| 96 kph | 18 m | 55 m | 73 m |
| 112 kph | 21 m | 75 m | 96 m |
Why the numbers grow the way they do
The two halves behave completely differently, and understanding that makes them far easier to hold in your head.
Thinking distance rises in a straight line. It is simply how far you travel while your brain catches up, and it goes up by 3 metres for every 16 kph. Six, nine, twelve, fifteen, eighteen, twenty one. Once you spot that pattern you never have to memorise it again.
Braking distance does not. It roughly quadruples when you double your speed. At 32 kph you need 6 metres to stop. At 64 kph, double the speed, you need 24 metres, four times as much. At 112 kph you need 75 metres, which is most of a football pitch.
That is the point the question is really testing. Doubling your speed does not double the danger, it multiplies it.
The conditions questions
Three more questions ask what happens when the road is not dry, and the paper is specific about each one.
- Wet road: your overall stopping distance is doubled
- Freezing conditions: expect it to increase by up to five times
- Ice or snow: braking distance can increase by ten times
Those three are easy to mix up because they sound similar. Wet is two, freezing is five, ice is ten.
The following distance questions
Separately, the paper asks how much of a gap to leave behind another vehicle. On a wet road the answer it marks is three seconds. Pick a fixed point, a sign or a bridge, and count after the vehicle in front passes it.
Learn them by testing, not by reading
Reading a table once does almost nothing. Reading it, closing it, and being asked is what makes it stick. Every one of these questions is in the practice section here, marked the moment you answer, with the thinking and braking split shown each time you get one wrong.