{"id":11522,"date":"2019-02-15T18:05:13","date_gmt":"2019-02-15T18:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/?p=11522"},"modified":"2019-02-15T18:05:16","modified_gmt":"2019-02-15T18:05:16","slug":"watch-the-weight-vans-take-longer-to-stop-when-loaded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/11522","title":{"rendered":"Watch the weight! Vans take longer to stop when loaded"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Man<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

You hire a van to move house<\/a> and drive it home empty. It seems almost like a car, quick to accelerate and easy to stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What you may not be prepared for is how much longer it will take to stop when you’ve loaded it up with the contents of your house. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

New research by Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles have shown that a mere 500kg of weight will increase braking distances by up to 36%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 30mph, VW found that braking distances increased by 33% with a 500kg load. That’s an extra two metres, which is a lot in heavy urban traffic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 60mph, the braking distance only increased by 19%, but because of the much higher speed VW found that their vans needed an extra five metres to stop. That’s roughly the length of a medium-sized van.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even that may not be enough. If you’re moving house, you might find your load weighs considerably more than 500kg. A typical 3.5t luton van or long wheelbase Transit<\/a> will carry around 1,000kg. And you might be surprised how the weight of your furniture and other belongings adds up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this extra weight on board, I’d expect your stopping distance to be considerably longer than the figures suggested by Volkswagen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a rule of thumb, the more heavily loaded your van is, the more space you should leave to the vehicle in front, especially when in town or on busy high-speed roads like A-roads and motorways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more tips, check out our first-timers guide to driving a van<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A loaded van takes much longer to stop than an empty van. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[463],"tags":[2174,2173,1678],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11522"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11522"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11526,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11522\/revisions\/11526"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}