Stopping distances — Texas Permit Test
Stopping distances on the Texas permit test — 6 rules, each with the reason behind it and a question on it while it is fresh.
The rules
At 20 mph a car needs about 63 feet to stop, counting reaction and braking, with good brakes and tires on dry level pavement.
Even at a crawl the car keeps going for four car lengths. That is the shortest number on the whole table.
63 Feet to Stop
At 60 mph a car needs about 303 feet to stop, counting reaction and braking, on dry level pavement.
Three hundred feet is the length of a football field. That is what sits between the decision and the stop.
303 Feet to Stop
At 70 mph a car needs about 387 feet to stop, counting reaction and braking, on dry level pavement.
This is the figure at the top of the Texas speed limits. Anything that appears inside that distance is going to be hit.
387 Feet to Stop
The stopping distances in the Texas handbook assume good brakes and tires on dry level pavement.
Every figure in the table is the best case. Worn tires or a wet road make all of them longer.
And this is with good brakes and tires on dry level pavement
A driver should always be able to stop within the distance they can see ahead, and should not over-drive their range of vision in the dark or bad weather.
Headlights reach a fixed distance whatever the speed. Past a certain speed the car cannot stop inside the light.
Slow down and increase the following distance when your vision is limited. You should always be able to stop within the distance you can see ahead of your car
Speed reduces a driver's field of vision, which is 180 degrees or more when stationary but about one fifth of that at 60 mph.
The faster you go, the narrower the world gets. The things that disappear first are the ones at the roadside.
Speed Reduces Your Field of Vision
On the test
About how far does a Texas car take to stop from 20 mph?
About 63 feet. Even at a crawl the car keeps going for four car lengths. That is the shortest number on the whole table. Texas Driver Handbook, p.45: “63 Feet to Stop”
How this works
Most practice tests hand you a bank of questions and leave the manual somewhere else. This one puts them together.
You read one law and the reason behind it, then answer a question on that law while it is still fresh. Get it right and you move on; get it wrong and you have found the gap while it is cheap to fix, not on the morning of the exam.
Learning one rule at a time, and proving it immediately, is what turns a manual you skimmed into something you actually know — and it makes studying feel like getting somewhere rather than like waiting to find out.
What it costs
- One payment, once — not a subscription. Nothing renews and there is nothing to cancel, for an exam you sit one time.
- Free to start: a 10-question test and the first section of cards. No sign-up and no account.
- Paying opens the rest of the cards, unlimited full-length practice tests, and retests built from exactly the questions you got wrong.
- Every level up to Prepared — 3 tests passed in a row.
- Do the work, fail the real exam, and we refund you.
Where these come from
Every rule here is checked against Texas Driver Handbook, published by the Texas Department of Public Safety, and against the state code itself. Last checked 2026-09-16.
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/TX.pdf (Texas Driver Handbook, form DL-7, Revised January 2026, Texas Department of Public Safety, retrieved 2026-09-14 from dps.texas.gov)
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/TX.pages.txt (plain pdftotext over that PDF; sha256 pinned in SOURCES.json)
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/SOURCES.json (sha256, folio offset 6, nonLawPages, the four extraction traps and the extraction flag, each with its measured basis)
- docs/plans/texas-exam-shape.md (the search that established that no official source states the question count, and the two decoys it disposes of)