A ball rolls out from behind a parked van at night

A ball in the road at night is almost never an object on its own; it is a proxy for a child running after it. Children are short, so they are hidden by the van until they are already in your lane, and they move fast and unpredictably. The realistic sequence to expect is: ball, child one or two seconds behind it, possibly a second child, possibly the delivery driver stepping out from the open doors.

So:

• Off the accelerator, foot covering the brake, ready to stop within the distance behind the van that you can actually see to be clear, not within the distance to the van.
• Look under and around the van for feet, legs or a shadow, and check the gap between the parked cars further back.
• Do not sound the horn as a first reaction. A sudden noise can freeze a child in the road instead of sending them back to the kerb.
• Do not drift left. The oncoming car is over the centre line, so your normal escape route is already occupied.
• At 30 km/h you are covering 8.3 m per second; the van is 30 m away, which is roughly 3.5 seconds of travel, so the decision has to be made now rather than when the child appears.

It removes the obvious swerve. Most drivers instinctively steer away from a hazard on the right, which here means into the path of a vehicle that is already straddling the centre line. That turns one problem into a head-on collision.

The revised plan is to stay in your own lane and make the stop happen earlier:

• Reduce speed further, to below 20 km/h, so the stopping distance fits inside the gap you can see behind the van. At 30 km/h on dry asphalt you need roughly 8 m of thinking distance plus 5 m of braking; at 20 km/h it is about half of that.
• Watch the oncoming car's wheels rather than its lights. Dipped beam at night glares and destroys your night vision, so look towards the left edge of your lane and use peripheral vision for the car.
• Identify an escape before you need it: a gap between parked cars, a driveway, or the pavement on the right if it is clear. Hitting a stationary object at low speed is a far better outcome than hitting a pedestrian.
• Keep the scooter behind you in mind. Braking hard without warning, with a scooter 10 m back, invites a rear-end collision, so brake firmly but progressively and let the brake lights do the talking.

Do the arithmetic honestly. At 30 km/h you travel about 8.3 m per second. Allow roughly one second of perception and reaction, which is 8 m, and then braking distance of about 4 to 5 m on dry asphalt at around 8 m/s². Total: about 12 to 13 m. The child is 12 m away, so a collision at perhaps 10 to 15 km/h is the most likely outcome, and only a very alert driver with the brake already covered gets below that.

Technically:

• Brake hard and in a straight line. Press firmly and hold; with ABS you keep the pressure on and let the system prevent lock-up. Do not pump the pedal.
• Steer around only if stopping is impossible and there is a gap you have already identified. A swerve at this distance, with an oncoming car over the centre line, usually makes the outcome worse.
• Stay on the brake after the impact.

The wider lesson is the one the exam is testing: 30 km/h was not automatically a safe speed. Thirty metres of sightline blocked by a van with its doors open means the speed that fits the visibility is well under the limit, and the difference between 30 and 50 km/h is the difference between a child walking away and a fatality.