Family Road Travel

Stops

How often should you stop on a long drive?

Roughly every two hours for the driver, more often for young children, and an electric car will want to stop at about the same interval anyway.

Updated 2 min read 23 citations Evidence strength 4/5

The driver comes first

Fatigue degrades reaction time, attention and hazard perception, and it does so gradually enough that you are a poor judge of your own state. Reviews of road safety risk factors consistently place it among the significant contributors [3].

The conventional guidance — a break of at least fifteen minutes roughly every two hours — is pragmatic rather than derived from a sharp threshold. It is also, conveniently, close to what a modern electric car wants; our charging stop explainer covers why.

Driver fatigue and crash risk

Children need it more often

Younger children tolerate restraint for shorter periods, and infant guidance in particular advises against very long unbroken periods in a car seat, because a semi-upright position sustained for hours can affect breathing in the very young. For toddlers and older children the constraint is behavioural rather than physiological, but it is no less real.

A workable cadence
PassengerIntervalStop length
DriverEvery ~2 hours15+ minutes, out of the car
Infant in a car seatFollow your seat manufacturer guidanceOut of the seat, lying flat
ToddlerEvery 1.5-2 hours20+ minutes, running about
Older childEvery 2-3 hours15+ minutes

Restraint use

Systematic reviews of paediatric crash injuries [1] and of road safety interventions [2][3] repeatedly identify correct restraint use as a major protective factor. The word doing the work is correct — misuse is common, and a seat installed loosely or with twisted straps performs far below its rating.

On a long trip it is worth checking the installation before setting off rather than at the first stop, and worth knowing that many countries offer free checking services.

Common questions

How long can a baby stay in a car seat?
Follow your seat manufacturer guidance and take the baby out at stops. Prolonged unbroken time in a semi-upright position is the concern.
Is it better to drive overnight while they sleep?
It trades a child problem for a driver problem. Fatigue risk rises sharply at night, and that is the more dangerous of the two.
Do stops make the journey much longer?
Less than expected, because tired drivers slow down and children escalate. Planned stops are usually faster than unplanned ones.
Where should we stop?
Somewhere with facilities and space to move. Our motorway food site assesses stops on exactly that.

References

Every citation below links to the original peer-reviewed record on PubMed or via DOI. Nothing here is a substitute for medical advice.

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  2. Surveillance methods and interventions implemented in American Indian and Alaska Native communities to increase child restraint device and seat belt use in motor vehicles: a systematic review Virtue C, Goffe C, Shiang E, et al. · Injury prevention : journal of the International Society for Child and Adolescent Injury Prevention · 2024 · Systematic review DOIPubMed 38302282Full text
  3. Saving lives through road safety risk factor interventions: global and national estimates Vecino-Ortiz AI, Nagarajan M, Elaraby S, et al. · Lancet (London, England) · 2022 · Systematic review DOIPubMed 35779550
  4. Systematic review of child passenger safety laws and their associations with child restraint system use, injuries and deaths Sartin EB, Lombardi LR, Mirman JH · Injury prevention : journal of the International Society for Child and Adolescent Injury Prevention · 2021 · Systematic review DOIPubMed 34011513
  5. Facilitators and barriers to child restraint use in motor vehicles: a qualitative evidence synthesis Bhaumik S, Hunter K, Matzopoulos R, et al. · Injury prevention : journal of the International Society for Child and Adolescent Injury Prevention · 2020 · Systematic review DOIPubMed 32447304
  6. Systematic review of child restraint system interventions (2007-2018) Glerum KM, Zonfrillo MR, Fleisher L, et al. · Traffic injury prevention · 2019 · Systematic review DOIPubMed 31725324
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  8. A systematic review of community interventions to improve Aboriginal child passenger safety Ishikawa T, Oudie E, Desapriya E, et al. · American journal of public health · 2014 · Systematic review DOIPubMed 24754652Full text
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