My car came with ABS as an optional extra. Unfortunately the buyer didn't pay for ABS, fortunately though, the brakes are so bad that they don't lock up at all.
My first experience with an ABS equipped 53" tandem trailer was an eye popping experience. Moderate grade down hill, stop light at bottom, and way slipperier than I thought. I knew from experience that I would be unable to stop before the light, and excessive braking would cause a jacknife. I laid on the horn as I explored my brakes, and was astonished when the whole unit stopped well back from the light, trailer dead straight.
Hahha must have felt a little silly, honking like an out-of-control freight truck just to come to a stop at a very safe distance. I love the story though! I had something similar.....shook me! Emotionsly and also....you know....physically shook me!
14:50 I am glad you mentioned this. I had a car without ABS until 2019, I practiced threshold braking and was able to brake steadily without locking my wheels. And yet when I later got into emergency situation (car in front of me started braking because deer jumped in front of it), I was just sliding to it. Luckily I had enough distance to stop and not hit the car. Then this year I had another emergency when a car didn't give me the right of way. I again just pressed the brake pedal as hard as I could, but now in a car with ABS and ESP I was able to steer and not hit the other car. Without ABS I would just slide into it.
That's the biggest advantage of ABS, no matter how good you are at threshold braking, when you have some emergency situation you're just gonna mash the pedal like a dumbass, and ABS is gonna save your ass.
Because different roads have different coefficients of friction, practice with threshold braking on one road is meaningless if you're on a different road. Or if it rained, or if the temperatures changed, etc.
@@imnota I was in my dads 70's car after a light rain going down hill to a traffic light, just sliding into the cars until I remembered to let off the brake and the front wheals caught and threw me in the ditch with like 10 ft to spare. It was a big ditch, and a really heavy door at a 35 degree angle. The car was fine after a pull out of the ditch, and I have no idea if any of the cars in front knew how close they were to getting hit.
Every day you learn something is a good day. Today, I learned that what I've been telling my HPDE students is false (unless they happened to have a very old ABS-equipped car). Which means my future students will also learn something. Learning is good. Thanks Jason!
@@bigbadwrastler22 yep, a lot of commuter cars have HORRIBLE ABS. I used to have a nissan versa and if ABS activated while I was going in a straight line, the car would start swerving in the lane because it would pull so much power from one corner, but not the other. I'm sure performance cars are much better, but like you said test it out first.
My previous two cars were a a 2002 and 2006 Subarus. Both of them were downright dangerous in snowy/icy conditions with the ABS on. The ABS would completely overreact and cut nearly all braking power as soon as one wheel was on a patch of ice. After it nearly sent me across a busy intersection, only saving myself by the very last centimeter by using the e-brake, I started pulling out the ABS fuse for the winter. The difference in braking distance on partially icy surfaces was very noticeable. However I now have a '15 Subaru that does not have this problem at all. It really looks like all ABS are not born equal. A shitty ABS system can truly be worse than threshold braking.
HA! I just wrote a reply saying exactly the same thing! Crazy that we had the same experience. My 2002 Subaru WRX was terrifying in anything by warm, flat, dry pavement. Exactly as you observed it seemed like if one tire struggled, it would take down the whole system. I just pulled the fuse year-round because, like with the snow performance, if there was a bump or dirt patch on dry pavement, you'd get the same issue, which seemed like taking braking power down to almost zero. I had a super close call due to this in the dry and gave up on the system entirely. Which was super sketchy, because I had to remember to pull the fuse again after oil changes (or remember to replace it prior) and notify anyone driving the car that it didn't have ABS. I think it was very car specific. My 2005 Subaru STi didn't have any of these issues, FWIW.
My 2001 wrx does the same thing. They were simply not built for ABS use, but rallying, where you don’t really give a dime if a wheel locks up for a few fractions of a second, you plow thorugh the corners. Even modern WRC cars still don’t use ABS - though for a very different reason whatsoever.
@@vilbenasvienuolis I don't fault the decision to leave the fuse in, but I sort of think it may have been different in your case. This loss of braking was astonishing on some models. So far from the limit of traction that it didn't require special attention / skill to easily beat ABS without any slippage or locking up a single wheel - in some cases with the ABS on braking wasn't much different from just rolling to a stop. It may have been really car specific. I had a 1998 Legacy, 2010 Forester, 2005 STi - where the ABS was fine. The 2002 WRX was singular unique in its abysmal performance.
had this ABS discussion for years now. The first systems increased the breaking distance slightly but remaining to be in control of the car was deemed more important then. AFAIK: One of the main problems with drivers is that they actually do not break hard enough or let go of the pedal when the car starts rattling under ABS.
I find steering under abs sucks in icy conditions. Using over steer and the throttle pedal have been much more efficient for avoiding obstacles. Obstacle avoidance is much more than breaking.
Most cars (even my 06' minivan) have an emergency function, so when it detects that I started braking suddenly and with quiet a big force (my car, others might use other methods) it boosts the brake as much as it can, so basically my foot unintentionnaly starts braking 100%, instead of lets say my self in shock who would only brake with 60% force. I guess its an early system, but works fine, on a very basic principle: you brake more if the brake pedal is lighter than what you are used to. It used to europes safest car for a year, until the same manufacturer came up with the bigger brother model. Side note: the brakes are fine, it just passed inspection 2 month ago, this is intentional, its a system on the car and its not that my brake pedal falls in. It has fine brake pressure, it has new discs and pads all around, bled out and everything!
@@LOGIBEAR01 yep, hard braking just loses it no matter how good the driver is, better to gain traction smoothly and slowly, if u go sideways u should using more throttle before u even think about braking
I think that in addition to the ONE TIME that you are going to press the brake, you are probably going to be panicked, which means you are not focusing on the threshold braking, like the system will! Great video Jason! Makes total sense to any one that has any!!
People say this but ehhhh, I was focused enough during a near crash to heel-toe down during braking. If you practice sport driving, regular road stuff is a lot more tame.
The key there is to practice emergency and hard braking regularly so you keep control of the car subconsciously. Also, oversteer/understeer situations.
@@RhodokTribesman That supports the OP. If you were in a near crash situation and spending part of your focus on downshifting, you weren't focused on the right things.
One can train, I used to have a old car that had no ABS, threshold braking was my best option. I do not miss that at all, once I experienced ABS, wow, no going back.
The biggest revelation for me was that the ideal grip percentage doesn't occur right at 0%. I always thought static friction coefficients were necessarily higher than kinetic friction coefficients (meaning that the highest friction occurs when there is no relative movement between the two surfaces) but I guess that was an oversimplification. Mind = blown! Great video!
The second biggest revelation for me was that ABS is not wildly fluctuating between near-0 and near-100. I think I must have seen some slo-motion video of ABS in action, and my brain go the impression that the wheel was fluctuating between fully-locked and near-0 braking.
The extra friction comes from shearing rubber. Up to a point (ie. before the tire starts sliding completely) you're still getting the regular amount of friction PLUS a bit extra because of the shearing.
@@Delibro that's actually incorrect. Tires produce zero traction without slip. That's actually one reason solid tires are worse then pneumatic tires. But even solid tires deform. Just not as well as pneumatic tires do.
As a Professional Automotive Engineer of 40 years AND an ex rally driver and rally car builder I 1000% agre e with this analysis. On top of that, I refer you to a study from 1989: A group of 10 rally drivers from Oxfordshire went on a rally driving course at Manby, Lincolnshire. Some of us took our own rally cars along on the day as well as using the provided Escort mk2 rally car. One of the chaps went in his road car - an Audi Quatro Coupe. Back in those early days these Audis had an ABS off switch. So we set up a course and all 11 of us (incl the instructor - a National Rally Champion) had a game of 'beat the ABS'. We all had 3 goes each - not one of us beat the ABS even one single time. For something like 2 1/2 decades now I've been arguing this on one forum or another (starting on Honest Johns Backroom forum in the 90s) using the 4ch/1ch and modulation frequency arguments. And quoting my experience from above (along with other experiences from my professional life). I always got shouted down by the bar room engineers. At least now I've got your video to back me up. The bottom line is that since the early 90s no human driver has been able to beat ABS *_except on snow or gravel_*
I have been able to beat the ABS with ease on dry tarmac in the summer on all the cars that is 10 years or older. Also in the winter you get up to 1/3 the breaking distance without ABS when it is slippery snow and ice. Unless the cars suddenly got MUCH better ABS the last 10 year I will say you are wrong... Also there is huge differences in the ABS from maker to maker, some ABS is ok and most is bad...
@Random Doesn´t even need to be different surfaces, the fact that you unload certain tires and load others more entering a corner means there is already a risk of lockup, which easily leads to flatspots on the tires.
Regarding "brake bias" - you should look up a height adjusting proportioning valve. It's a valve attached to the suspension which regulates rear brake pressure in proportion to the weight on the tires.
As your little disclaimer said on the screen, old abs systems were more of an on /off switch type of system and they were not as good as an experienced driver doing threshold braking... but they WERE better than a panicked driver slamming the brake pedal to the floor. Subaru ABS had a horrible problem on low friction surfaces to the point that panic braking was actually better than Subaru ABS on ice and snow. Modern ABS is more like electronic brake force distribution. My 2005 EVO had electronic brake force distribution and i think a separate ABS system. I assume that in modern systems these two are integrated together into one system. I hope that Subaru has fixed the ice and snow ABS problem.
No question ABS wins. One interesting observation is that during the braking exercises at an AMG Academy event I attended, which used the E63s AMG with Carbon Ceramic brakes, initially most people did not fully press the brake peddle enough to get ABS completely engaged. I've seen this at several different events. The average person doesn't want to lock the brakes. They are either afraid of locking the brakes and losing control, or they are afraid of hurting the car. Another interesting aspect of the braking exercises I've experienced at Mercedes, BMW, and Audi sports car training classes is fully engaging the ABS while in a turn. As a 60 something guy who grew up without ABS, jamming on the brakes to the max in the middle of a turn is not something that comes naturally - we learned early that this was a really bad idea. However, every modern ABS equipped car I've done these exercises with is drama free during this exercise. The car tracks through the turn allowing you to continue to steer to avoid obstacles while at the same time braking at the maximum rate. In addition to driving cars on the track and off road and in snow and ice conditions, I also used to road race motorcycles. I still ride off road and one of the bikes I have (KTM 1990 Adventure R) has anti-lock brakes. Such an amazing thing when riding on loose terrain. My KTM EXC 500 is old school as is my GasGas trials bike so I still have to have some manual braking skills to get by. But for me ABS is pretty darn cool.
At a similar Toyota/Lexus event, they were very clear, mash the break pedal as hard as you possibly can if you want to stop in the shortest possible difference.
@@iamnotunusual My 4Runner has an emergency brake feature that caught me by surprise a few times. If you go from throttle to hard braking in a very short time the brakes will go full power on their own. Looks like Toyota made sure you used all the brakes when you needed them. It stops that big SUV surprisingly quickly.
It certainly was possible to beat some older systems... Sometime in the early 80s (before most people had any experience with ABS) I took a high-performance driving course. One of the exercises they had us do was braking in a straight line with ABS, then obstacle avoidance with ABS. They then disabled the ABS by pulling the fuse and had us do the same things in the same car. In the straight-line stop, I was able to stop significantly shorter than with ABS. But in the avoidance manouver, the computer won, by quite a bit!
Yeah absolutely, I could easily outbrake my 89 Toyota Celica’s ABS, but in a sudden avoidance situation it was great for that moment before full situational awareness.
years ago I had first year Opel omega B (1994), it had ABS but only ONE brakeline for both rear calipers. And it was factory setup. I assume, that when one rear wheel locked, abs cut out both rear tyres. So thats why human won in this situation.
@Martink9191 the rear never brakes to the fullest. A lookup at the front does not change the direction of the car. It only reduces the amount you can brake. A lookup at the rear will always spin the car. In the slipchart your ABS keeps the front close to the peak slip-grip. The rear is on the rising slip curvature and wont get higher than a certain threshold. You will gain a view cm of brakedistance under ideal conditions. Your reaction time is 10-100x times more relevant and you don't need to worry about unwanted direction changes. You even have the ability to slightly turn the car. Something that your tires can't do under maximum braking.
Also, since the late 90s a feature called "emergency brake force distribution" has been available. When the car senses a panic stop it applies the pedal *more* for you. On some cars this is internal to the booster (you can feel the pedal dip away from your foot!), on others it's internal to the ABS unit.
"Emergency brake force distribution" usually refers to the ability of the ABS system to brake individual wheels (distribution). The pedal moving away from your foot is probably the ABS system lowering the pressure of the system to prevent a lock up. The brake pads experience the same reduction of force from the system as your foot does. It won't give you uncommanded braking.
@@stormatron6184 The original commenter is actually right, on a lot of cars this is a feature coded into the ABS module. In the German cars it usually comes in, people tend to underestimate the pedal force and travel it takes to reach full braking potential. It will detect a panic stop and the ABS module will command full possible braking pressure even if the driver has not applied sufficient pedal force. I usually disable this feature in my BMWs to achieve a more linear brake pedal for track driving, but it's definitely a great safety feature if you're like most people and don't often slam the brakes hard enough to trigger antilock
@@d47000 What possible logic could the designers use to determine a "panic stop" rather than anything else? I could see an option to change brake pedal linearity like a game controller being possible. E.g. 50% pedal is 65% braking ability. But it still requires you to push the pedal to that point and it's the same every time. You still only get as much braking as you push the pedal for.
@@stormatron6184 In the more modern BMWs whose stability control logic I am pretty familiar with, the ABS module (as part of the "Hydraulic Brake Assist" program) monitors ground speed, brake pedal pressure, and rate of deceleration to understand when the car is in an emergency braking situation. At this point it increases brake pedal pressure to the point of antilock activation. Let's say if you were to very gently and smoothly press the brake pedal until it reaches ABS threshold, the brake assist program would not kick in. German cars tend to use pretty advanced software algorithms for this type of thing.
@@stormatron6184 In my car (2010 Lexus IS 250 RWD) the emergency condition that boosts the brakes is detected by using a forward facing radar. It's only supposed to activate if there is an imminent collision.
Keep up the excellent job. Love how you "break" down the science to a simple explanation. Also, even though you are producing less often...I'm enjoying them more. Maybe just me but the quality is going up and seeing more of the passion of the engineering again in you in the videos...may also be the reason why I'm enjoying them more or think the quality is better. As an engineer, your passion for engineering shows. Whatever changes you made in your life between producing videos, keep it up...it shows positively.
That video makes me appreciate F1 drivers another 150% more than a few minutes before, this is insane and wonderful insight into human vs machine for greater good.
I'm glad you touched on the snow and gravel topic, important to know there are certain scenarios like that. Also glad you touched on the fact that older systems can be not as effective. My old 90s junk is kinda terrible and I feel like it always gets in the way. Never really had the pleasure to experience modern systems though...
I completely agree about the age. Anything with drum brakes on the back like a 94 S10 or 92 Escort I had were pretty worthless. The 2000 Frontier and 03 Cherokee felt about the same as what I could do myself, so they were probably better, but not noticeably. Our 2013 Leaf and 2011 Pilot aren't just better but they even feel significantly better than anything I could do. Traction control is a separate issue, though and I feel like it's about a decade behind ABS, at least on everyday cars.
I can't say whether newer cars have fixed it, but old 90s cars' ABS is a legitimate hazard today. Over time, rust accumulates between the sensor and wheel hub, pushing the sensor further away. With the increased distance, the sensor has a harder time detecting the wheel speed, and thus assumes total lockup. This means you have no brakes. Always test an older car's brakes at a variety of speeds before relying on them.
I think my 2017 Chevy Volt might be one of the few modern vehicles you could plausibly beat. It has two electric motors with regen, three clutches, a gasoline engine, and disk brakes. The hand-off between those systems under braking input is not always predictable and feels very far from optimal. I'd be really interested to know more about how ABS is implemented in systems with friction brakes and regen.
@@AlexanderGee That would be an interesting test. I would bet a small but not insignificant amount that the engineers were quite thorough, though. The "feel" of many things can be deceptive.
My 2007 focus has trash ABS. Rear only and only in tandem. Definitely *felt* like I could do better than it. However in panic brake scenarios it will still beat me. My 2009 Corolla on the other hand, has 4 wheel individual ABS. 100% can beat me any day. It’s stellar. And that’s from a 14 year old econobox. I can’t imagine what the new hotness is like.
When I was doing my (optional, but I highly recommend) advanced driving on slippery surfaces class a few years back, my instructor went "Remember all that talk about managing your braking and not letting your wheels lock up? Yeah. Forget everything you heard. Unless you're driving a 30 y/o beater w/o ABS, just slam the ducking brake as hard as you humanly can and let the ABS do the work. It'll be better than anything you can do, especially when in panic mode." And then he went on in to explain in detail how modern ABS and ESC systems work, very much in the way you do in this video, just with 100% less whiteboard. And man you can _feel_ the ABS do its work when doing the moose avoidance maneuver on a near-ice like surface.
Had that conversation with my other half. I try to brake gently (regenerative braking on an EV), and almost never get into ABS. But in the circumstances when I need ABS, I'm glad I have it - it's much better than me. The circumstances where threshold braking enters into the conversation, you're usually thinking about other things such as not steering the car into an obstacle.
I think threshold braking was never really discussed for safety/daily driving, unless you're on ice/snow where ABS performs very poorly. on dry road, it's for for the track and you're no supposed to get anywhere close to lock you brakes on a regular colmute
@@techno1561 yes in emergency situation in your daily driving abs should perform better because you don't know the exact grip, your tires are most probably not up to optimal temperature, and there's also a high chance that you have slightly different grip on every tire/patch of road, and also that your brake front/rear bias is not perfectly calibrated for the current conditions, so abs will extract the most braking power from each tire. on a track threshold braking makes more sense than on the road because you are doing laps around the same track, you get to test the grip before every corner, the grip is more consistent than on the road, you know exactly were you are going to brake and you can push the limits further and further on every lap, and of course because you are trying to improve your skills in a controlled environment for emergency braking I'd rather rely on abs giving consistent results, than trying to improving the braking distance marginally in the best case, but risking a longer distance because you didn't get it perfectly right. you don't get the chance to do another lap and try again
I think the most important thing to clear-up is that ABS's main purpose is NOT shorter breaking distance, but not losing steering control while braking. As your number showed, saving a dozen feet of braking distance might make some people say "meh", but your wheels locking in a sharp curve - that's it - game over. Second, the engagement of ABS is almost "binary" - when it activates, it releases the brakes almost completely so that the wheel can start rotating as fast as possible, then it starts braking again with the exact force needed not to overshoot in the slip region again. On measurement it looks like a sawtooth chart. Third, to reiterate your point that it's ridiculous even to think about beating it :D The slip sensors on the wheels even on old ABS systems make several hundred datapoints per second, so before you even think that you should be careful on the brakes, ABS already has calculated the recovery patterns to apply if the threshold is reached. Not only you can't beat it in braking, it already beat you before you even thought about the brakes.
sometimes you want your wheels to lock up. with ABS you can't do that. but then again in those scenarios you wouldn't run a setup with ABS to begin with
Well, I dunno bout all that but I do know back in the day I could jump on the brakes and the wife would hit her head on the windshield, the kids would hit the back of the seats and everything on the rear window shelf would go flyin past year head. Caint do that with ABS so which is better, you tell me. Dint have seashells neither so There was that. 🍺
@@blairleighton3343 Allow me to introduce you to this fabulous newfangled invention, called "the seatbelt". You will be shocked to find that your car might already have them installed.
Funny enough, when ABS first came out, they found that single vehicle crashes (trees, ditches, etc.) went up compared to non-ABS versions of the same car. Turns out that drivers were "steering into the skid" that never happened, and were just running off the road. Hopefully, now that everyone is used to it, it has gotten better now.
I do believe that the reason single vehicle crashes went up was because people relied on ABS to stop their car better, but ABS doesn't increase braking power, it just prevents a loss of control due to wheels locking up. You can still drive too fast for a turn and skid off the road, unrelated to how you brake.
The more you swap control of the vehicle from mechanical used input to electronic computer decision-making, the worse drivers en masse will become. Seems awful to me, but w/e 🤷🏿♀️
@@malapertfourohfour2112 I had a civil (transportation) engineer once tell me that each person has their own "threshold of safety," and if you raise safety in one area, they'll lower it in others. For example, a driver going from a small car to a big one will "feel safer," and likely drive more aggressively or drop seat belt usage to lower the safety again. It probably comes up in other areas.
@@leoshahbazian6830 the whole point of the video is that ABS does indeed improve stopping distances, not because the maximum potential braking power of the car changes with an ABS system, but instead because the system gets much closer to that potential in almost all conditions.
I 100% agree for new abs systems, but for some 90's system i have found out that any bumps in the road, or patches of road with different grip levels completely freak out the abs taking all brake pressure away from you, to the point where i have been soo close to having an accident in dry weather at shamelessly low speeds. New systems(2010 and up) i have driven do not have this problem tough.
I am always astonished at the difference between your early videos and now. Such an insane improvement in your presentation and delivery. Is it just practice making perfect or did you have a coach/classes.
It's hubris to discount racing experience with theory alone. In real racing, ABS settings are a complicated topic with no one easy setting for best consistency and speed. Threshold braking can produce faster laptimes, but at the cost of consistency. Higher and lower levels of abs and various abs setups and brake bias and suspension settings also factor into this. So it's not as easy as ABS = always better. If it was, people wouldn't be talking about threshold braking
The fact that this channel has so many subscribers and is purely educational seems to highlight a flaw in our education systems. Education can be fun and interesting, but often falls short. I would love to get Jason's thoughts on this!
However you shouldn’t forget that part of its popularity might be because the viewer can decide when to watch what topic for however long they choose. In school you are forced to do X for Y hours in a predefined timeframe
No engineer is learning anything real from youtube besides supplementary stuff. No doctor, or physicist, or chemist, or biologist, etc. Would you cross a bridge built by a engineer that learned off youtube purely? Would you choose a doctor that learned off YouTUbe? F*CK NO The structure of a university system is vastly superior for learning, as learning at your own pace is extremely slow for most people, because they are lazy. This fact is why they think youtube learning is better; because they can do it whenever they want, and they don't solve any problems, which is where the real learning happens, they just watch. SO no, this doesn't highlight any flaws; this is entertainment and literally takes no effort to do
@@pyropulseIXXI I see you misunderstood my comment. All I'm saying is that learning can be fun and interesting, not that RU-vid is a better medium than traditional college. The only thing I'm trying to imply is that maybe education should change to help enforce interest and engagement, something like project based learning could help with (and probably shouldn't be done online). And I completely agree that you have to be very disciplined to learn and retain information in a self-paced online format.
My general notion before watching the video is you can't beat ABS because ABS does threshold braking on each individual wheel, whereas manually you have to watch for every wheel, and you have to lift off your braking input when the first, least grippy wheel starts to spin.
Indeed abs controls each wheel individually, but, it doesn't threshold brake, it locks and completely let go of the brake many many times in a fraction of the time. That almost "on off" also breaks a bit the suspension load and reduces grip compared to constantly be on limit by threshold braking
@@qwesx i have some experience in racing simulator for example, and you clearly feel the opposite, obviously the abs reacts much faster than an human, but that don't necessarily mean better braking. And in the sim you can program the abs to be "perfect" instead of "realistic" cause that will further get them apart
Here in Germany a study showed that ABS did not lower the numbers of accidents. ESP did. Physics are constant, but the human factor is the Problem.😌 If you brake too late even ABS will not help.
I drove it an obstacle course at high speeds with puddles and a switch to turn off the ABS, trust me the ABS is 1000% better than regular breaking. The trick is with ABS you need to keep your foot on the break and steer through it and it works awesome
@@youraveragegamer8832 thats probably why abs has never been introduced into f1 even with tcs and stability control systems being in the cars at certain points
There is one condition where ABS is ALWAYS worse than no ABS: Low speed braking over tarmac that has about half an inch of dense wet snow on it, with weather near 0c. This is because the snow packs down under the wheel, and when you brake, the snow initially forms an ice/snow sled under the tire and causes the wheels to lock up and slide. The only way to stop on this sort of surface is to lock up your wheels, scrape through that bit of snow, and down to tarmac, which will almost instantly bring you to a stop because you're already traveling at a slow speed. With ABS, all that will happen is you'll get the system pulsing constantly, making it near impossible to stop, because the slightest bit of braking will cause temporary slip. If you drive in Canada in the early winter, you know this situation well.
Got my first new car 2 years ago. Went from 98 dodge 2500 w/o ABS to a 21 RAV4 and the safety features it has are crazy. It’s mostly my wife’s car and has been a huge comfort with its terrain management and ABS.
I only have one vehicle with ABS, my new Jeep. Kinda wish my motorcycle had it, but I put so few miles on it that the statistical chance of needing it is pretty slim. It's been a while, but I used to practice threshold braking at high speeds (motorcycle). It is an eye opener to try riding at 90 mph, use maximum braking force, and then look back to see how much ground you covered. It is literally what made me change my riding and driving habits on public roads.
I used to drive a Fiat Punto 55, no driver aids, not even power steering, no electric windows, no temperature gauge, no abs, it had a 1.1 liter engine (55Hp). In the rain, braking on a red light in a stone paved road (common in Portugal) was equivalent to just not press the gas pedal while in gear. Keep doing great explanatory videos. Than'ks for your work...
Great analysis. Had no idea ABS had changed that much over the years. Figured my 1994 pickup truck with ABS was as good, or close to it, as modern ABS. But maybe not...
Some of the older systems were pretty bad. GM used the Delco-Moraine ABS VI system on many vehicles in the 90s, which was a 3 channel system with the rear wheels controlled together, and also used a motor/piston setup which was much slower than the more typical pump/solenoid systems. It was basically designed to be cheap and to be able to say they had ABS.
@engineering_explained, I love when people tell me they don't trust abs because it makes the stopping distance worse. This is a potentially easy argument: have you flown? in airplanes, they set the auto brakes (which employs ABS) then they mash the pedals. If it's good enough to stop a widebody aircraft, it's good enough for your honda civic.
12 years ago I worked for a truck air brake manufacturer after working there for 25 years. I was involved with production of big truck anti-lock air brake valves. ABS is superior to manual braking. Jason is correct. On big trucks short stopping distance is secondary, vehicle stability is primary. It is meant to keep a trailer from jackknifing over the fifth wheel hitch. I believe the range centered for that manufacturer was about 8% slip. Over the road truck trailers modulate either axle by axle or side by side. All the data told there was better performance with more wheel speed sensors. The reason why I don't work there anymore is the manufacturing plant was closed and all equipment was sent to a new facility in Mexico.
@@RonJohn63 Price increases are inevitable thanks to the inflation scam. The company I work for is outsouring to dominican republic but now they want to fire them all and outsource to mexicans because their get paid less. Eventually they are going to use robots for the job and not bother pay for employees at all.
@@RonJohn63 If employees don't get a raise, they actually make less money due to inflation. Do you see supermarkets keep their price the same when inflation rises? No, but they sure do keep the employee wages the same, effectively paying the employees less. That is why the pandemic was such a boost for supermarkets because they indirectly lowered their employees wages.
ABS is only recently becoming common in motorcycling, and it's hilarious to watch the old guys with tons of experience but no real skill tell themselves they're definitely better off without it.
A lot of the bad rap for ABS does come from when it was being introduced: it tended to be a pretty blunt instrument mostly made for panic stops but sometimes getting in your way when maneuvering, and definitely getting in the way of any ingrained instincts to hammer the brake pedal quick as possible *in* panic stops. In the 80's I had pretty remarkable reflexes and practice and it was all I could do not to plunge my Plymouth into the back of some yupster in his Audi suddenly leaning on full ABS. This was the morning I blew off a dentist appointment to go get my car off my last ever bias plies. :) Anyway, very early ABS was basically just taking over the 'hammer the pedal' function and it kind of blew, but it actually improved very quickly, and became pretty unobtrusive and helpful, ...especially if they'd put it on like the rear axle of a pickup that'd tend to get light under braking.
The ABS in my work truck, a 2000 astrovan, is so frighteningly bad. God forbid I’m even slightly braking when I go over a pothole or even largeish crack. It WILL engage. Then immediately disengage. Then as weight shifts again it will engage again. Rinse and repeat a few times as weight keeps shifting around in the garbage vehicle and I have legitimately almost rear ended people during what would be otherwise very calm and slow stops. Talking about going from 35 to stopped in like 150 feet. And this little ABS dance it does takes ALL of those 150 feet. It’s honestly scary. My personal vehicle though, a 2009 Corolla, is completely seamless and confidence inspiring.
In the early days of ABS I heard* about people slamming on the brakes with ABS but being so shocked by the sound and pedal pulsating that they released the brake pedal because they thought something was wrong. *I have no idea if this is true, or one of those myths. 🤷🏽
Thank you for recalibrating my mind. I now understand that 4 channel abs can provide the most braking for each tire. It may be tuned to reduce brake pressure on some tires if you are trying to steer, or it the tail starts to come around. Now I learned threshhold braking in 1968 on a Buick with bias ply tires. These tires made noise so that it was easy to learn. My first car with ABS was a 1992? Ford SHO. This was a 2 channel system, front and rear. If the left tires were on dry pavement and the right tires in sand an slush, then the stopping distances got very long, but with no pull to the side. Next car was a SAAB 900 turbo. It had 3 channel ABS LF, RF, and rear. Stops were very short, but with a lot of steering wheel pull if one side had poor traction. About the year 200? the pulling went away. I assume this was 4 channel ABS. Also, a lot of tires are now quiet at their traction limit. ESP became standard, and then law soon after this. This should couple a steering position sensor with the ABS. Steering while breaking will result in longer stopping distances. I need to practice.
I think the "pull the ABS fuse when racing" thing I grew up with was just historically because we had older 1990s ABS systems that were not that great. So that's probably the origin of this notion that a human is better than ABS. Since then, in my 80s/90s cars, I don't use the ABS (also because they are broken anyways). But in the 2000s+ cars, I let the modern ABS do its thing, even on the track.
At the track recently overcooked a corner, spun around backwards at 85 mph, clutch and brake to the floor. Looked in the review to see where I was headed then back front and saw two beautiful rows of perfectly spaced dashed tire skid lines. Until then had never thought about the ABS working while travelling backwards.
The thing that is most difficult about threshold braking is that your weight shifts according to your braking input, which means that the relative pressure applied by you needs to change. So you need to change your braking relative to your change in braking, and that 'double feedback' system makes it very difficult. Maybe my driving position and seat are just terrible, who knows.
It's worse than that, though. Each wheel will have a different weight on it, and so the optimal brake force will be different from wheel to wheel, and there's no way you can optimally redistribute brake force between 4 wheels with only one pedal. Nor can you get around it by tuning brake balance statically. If you're on dry asphalt, you can brake harder, so the car weight shifts more onto the front wheels, meaning they need to have more brake pressure than the back. Now, if you're on ice, you can't slow down as fast, which means that the weight doesn't shift as much, and now your brakes that were perfectly balanced on dry asphalt are locking the front tires and underbreaking on the rear. Modern ABS can get around this by cheating and adjusting the brake force on each wheel independently in response to the car's motion.
My first car was a base model 1998 accord with no traction control or ABS. I was coming over an overpass with a red light on the other end of it kind of fast while it was wet and when I tried to brake it just instantly locked all the wheels every time I tried. Had only seconds to accept that I couldn’t stop and that I was going to crash somewhere. Instead of directly rear ending someone I chose to try to go over the median but ended up oversteering into a palm tree head on. So much so that it hit center more towards the passenger side. Long story short I had a gash on my left leg that just barely missed my knee. I could see the muscles and fat all cut up. And i fractured my right foot needing 2 surgeries. One with pins sticking out of my foot and the second to remove and replace with screws and plates. Thankfully I did not feel any pain because of how much adrenaline was coursing through my veins after the impact. Now I have many scars and a stiff foot over a year later to always remember the day I almost died. Thank god for seatbelts and airbags. And thank god my foot is functional and not deformed. My surgeon told me if I was an athlete this would be career ending so yeah definitely life changing and somewhat limiting. ABS is underrated as F. New cars slow down so quick even when I’m going fast in the rain and I brake hard it just saves my ass every time.
My first ABS equipped mid 90s built car had an older Bosch 2E system fitted & was lethal in the snow, I used to unplug a wheel speed sensor to disable it so the vehicle would actually stop. Next vehicle early 2000s had a Teves mk60 system & that newer ABS system worked perfectly fine on snow, it also had emergency brake assist that when triggered pulled the car up a lot quicker then you where expecting. FYI I have also found ABS systems work going backwards 😉
Where I live, we use new Mercedes Sprinters as Ambulances, and in the emergency driving course, they specifically tell you to rely on ABS because it is better than a human. Each participant in the course experiences the difference, they get you to emergency brake twice from 100km/h, once using ABS and just planting your foot into the pedal, and then again trying to threshold brake. You'd be surprised at how many people think they can beat the ABS until they see the ABS cone fly by
Not necessarily drifting, but it does need some subtle yaw angle to be fast in turns, especially small radius turns. That's why TC and esp has to be off. Abs better be on though.
@@rzb1101 Absolutely, but that kind of stuff belongs on a track and not a public road where you have a good chance of killing other people and not only yourself.
Haha No, Love ABS but do turn off STAB in the wet (on NON AWD cars), not because it is faster, just hate the way the car reacts, when I know how to let the fronts spin and keep control.
i sometimes deactivate TC in my FWD car, because it will abruptly drop power to 0 if slightly slipping (and then you don't move at all or in kangaroo style).
I was convinced before watching your excellent video. I bought a new 1986 Corvette, the first year for ABS on a Corvette. It sure worked! And added $1,000 to the price of the car -Bosch charged GM the premium.
Great video as usual. It is amazing that people think that they can modulate the brake pressure 100 times or more per second when they are facing an actively dangerous situation. But this does also remind me of an old joke I used to make. I claimed that my MTB had ABS, and when asked how, I replied "when the tires lock up, I let go of the brakes" 10 years later there are ABS systems for MTBs. I'm not sure if I want that on a bike (I'd like to try them first before judging), but for cars, it is a no brainer.
Jason, I think you should do a follow up video actually doing some testing on an icy surface. Most conventional ABS systems exaggerate the the grip level and reduce braking too much. The people talking about the Subarus with terrible braking are spot on. Mercedes had a system called Sensotronic Brake Control in the 2000s that did a way better job of getting the wheels as close to that lockup point as possible. If you drove one of those on the same icy surface as a like vehicle with a conventional ABS system, the difference was amazing. It was hard to believe how much grip was possible on an icy surface.
Ryan f9 talks about muddy conditions off road. I haven’t read the study but does it cover the same or just on road. Ryan f9 does agree that in normal conditions abs is very useful.
My great grandpa was part of the developing team of the ABS. At all costs he wanted to make sure, that this system is reliable and had minimal flaws. He ran over a child because of the nonexistence of this technology and the child died soon after. To honor this child he wanted to make sure that such a thing would at best never happen again
As some1 who lives far up north where light goes out by 4 PM and still has to drive deer infested country roads I would never ever drive a car without ABS and ESP. ESP saved my ass couple of times as well. I could literally feel each individual wheel being hard braked as car understeers and oversteers because my body was feeling these very sudden, short and sharp car movements.
6:58 this is why BAS exists on top of ABS. When the car detects that you're panic braking, but don't fully stomp the brakes, it ramps up the braking pressure to ABS levels. As it turns out, many people have no idea how hard the car can actually brake, because they never tried it and they're scared to go all the way. Modern cars can brake incredibly hard, especially hybrids and EDC or planetary gearbox automatics. They combine engine braking with dynamic braking in the case of some hybrids, and the mechanical brakes.
All that has been said is perfectly valid for traffic application, but from my own experience I can say that on the track not using disabling ABS makes you faster, by increasing your sensitivity and technique, when I disabled ABS first my time increased drastically, but after about 50 laps I managed to catch up to my previous time and currently my lap time dropped by 0.5s, my technique has improved, using things like trail braking and slip angle, and there is still room for improvement.
@@alanh2820 No, because it would be useless, maybe if I drove a front wheel drive car, but in a rear wheel drive car you want to brake as lightly as possible, if you brake hard enough for the ABS to kick in, you lose time and may even spin, as weight is transferred from the rear wheels to the front, resulting in loss of traction, and that was my biggest learning, an RWD car you make the turn using the accelerator pedal. That's why FWD cars are easier to drive, the harder you brake the more traction and control you have.
I have experience riding dirt bikes and atvs which do not have abs. When I started out, getting used to not locking up the tires when braking was interesting to say the least. I’ve seen people lock up their rears while going down hill around a curve and the backend just slides out under them. In the best case they’re going straight and manage to keep the wheels straight they just slide further than they should have. Controlling downhill speed while preventing the engine from stalling with the clutch while also going around curves was probably the most terrifying and difficult thing I’ve had to learn to control.
Thanks, I keep telling people this. One of my side projects is a machine learning approach to ABS control (with a failsafe, obviously); in simulation I'm getting a pretty big advantage on challenging terrain, excited to try it on my car.
I think one key point is also that ABS keep the car stable and controllable. When people panic and slam on the brake, the wheel looks up and you lose steering. The car will go in a straight line. In a situation where you stopping distance isn't enough, you can steer around an object with ABS, while you will slide and crash into it without ABS.
Talking about motorcycles, MCN magazine did a great test years ago on this very topic. They took the average road rider, an MCN editor (who perform max braking runs on every bike they test, so they're very used to the dynamics involved in max braking), and a skilled track day rider, and asked them to try to stop in the minimum number of times. The bikes used had a switch to turn on/off the ABS. They found that the track day pro COULD outbrake the ABS a good percentage of the time...but nobody else could. Obviously this doesn't take into account panic braking, and ABS systems have probably evolved a long way since that test (20 years ago).
I got my drivers license 8 years ago and had to do a theory and real world test. During the theory, the instructor was adamant that ABS increased the stopping distance. I was so annoyed that day, haha. He could not be pursuaded otherwise. Granted I didn't know as much today but I still think about it
I’d like to see that. I think I recall reading ABS did worse 20 years ago. But modern systems are pretty amazing. Brembo has a full traction control package you can buy now with ABS and dynamic traction control.
What test? Did you watch the video? Jason talks about how gravel and unpacked snow don't play nice with ABS, since the best braking distances can be achieved with the wheels locked-up.
I 100% believe him about the whole concept of piling gravel in front of your tires…I dont think gravel is a particularly hard situation to model…I think packed snow is where my trucks ABS seems to lack some
@@ARentz07 thats what i wanted to highlight. He and you are right with your statement lock up on gravel is better. I meant to show or do a video test that shows the comparisson with snd without ABS
I hear what you are saying and generally agree with you, however I have had several experiences where at low speeds, on very icy surfaces, the abs was estimating a lower friction coefficient than what was actually available so it activated the system and kept me from stopping. In these cases I knew from 40 years of driving experience there was actually a bit more grip than the abs system thought. This doesn't happen often, and in 99.9 percent of situations abs is better but there are a few random times where it shouldn't have intervened. I think it has to do with the delay in how quickly the system can calculate slip, especially in patchy ice where one millisecond a wheel is on ice, and one foot later there is good grip, etc.
I think one thing you're forgetting to consider is abs only is going off of wheel speed difference between each wheel. In snow and ice conditions you mash the brakes all 4 wheels slow down way to much and the computer does do its thing but at that point it's not so good at its job. In winter conditions it works best to just get the abs to run a little then yes it works well but it's not perfect.
A good modern system is computer controlled, and even though it might only have wheel speed sensors and fluid pressure sensors as inputs, it can tell that something isn't right if it sees 60-mph to 0-mph in an unrealistically short time.
Great and convincing argument. I totally agree with you. I have a 2003 BMW Z4 with incredible abs braking capability that I could never match autocrossing or on the street. My anecdote, I believe falls into the older crappier systems. I was caught unaware when a wet road became glare ice. 2002 vw golf, I believe a continental teves system that was not 4 channel. When I slammed the brake pedal to the floor hoping for some abs I was already pivoted close to 90 degrees from where the car was headed, and I think the abs saw all the wheels at 0mph and just let me lock them all up.
Flawless video. I love that Jason addressed different / older types of ABS systems and different road conditions. I still suspect Rally is the one motorsport where ABS would not help even if it were allowed (precisely because of the need to lock up the wheels on gravel). I would like to see a comparison of ABS system types across make / model / year. 4-channel ABS was definitely not the norm when it was first introduced. There are a lot of 1999 Honda Civics out there and not all of us can pick up a Koenigsegg or McLaren like Mr Jason here.
Rally cars lock wheels because they use a hydraulic seperate handbrake system,, very often way too much.But ABS driving fast on slippery surfaces. Would lose so much time that they may as well stay home
I appreciate it is very hard to figure this out. Getting the data for these videos is very difficult. Good job. I am taking racing classes from Porsche and they definitely teach you to stay off the abs. They teach you to use abs as the limit you should not go over, as you suggest- bring it right up to the abs then back off. They have braking sessions in every class. I’ll bring this up, and try it next class. (Yes I’m also an engineer and a geek!)
ABS saved me from a bad collision on a wet road, at night in heavy interstate traffic. It allowed me to brake and escape, avoiding a rear-end collision. This was with a heavy Toyota SUV, thank you engineers!
I opened this video just to check whether it has anything to do with Lada from the preview, but found it only in your comment) Yeah, there are some issues with importing or producing ABSes in Russia, but somehow ABS-equipped Ladas are still available in dealer centers. Dunno how they still manage to do it
Interesting point about braking on gravel. It is a known fact that a rally car slows quicker when sliding sideways into a corner. In the days before four wheel drive, most of us rallied rear wheel drive, which is a lot of fun. We generally had our brake bias to the rear which, when approaching a corner, a short pump of the brake peddle at turn in would help the rear of the car to step out. Drift cars do some thing similar but mostly with the hand brake. We would would also use that trick for acute corners. Tarmac rallying was quite different; more bias to the front and the brakes would get a real hiding!
even the analog 3-sensor abs system in my 1986 mercedes did quite a good job at stopping without locking the wheels. In winter with snow/ice you have 10000% more relaxed driving because of the system. And I have also driven many cars without ABS and know how to brake without it :)
I wish my dad could understand what you're saying in this video. He's hardcore against electronics in vehicles and doesn't trust them, even though they've proven time and time again that they're so much better than humans are at preventing crashes and rollovers.
Great video. Jason probably knows this but I want to point out that in racing machines, brake bias adjustments are also made to change how much rotation there is on corner turn-in. Greater rear bias will make the car tend to rotate more. I assume "understeer while braking" would be a great example of a problem with (non-modern/non-racing) ABS although definitely not a problem with all ABS. I'd be super interested in a video on how racing ABS handles things like rotation on turn in, maybe there's a good one out there already.
"(non-modern/non-racing) ABS" That's really the crux of it. Imagine how good ABS systems would be if they were allowed in F1? These systems are only as good as they need to be and ABS saves lives daily. It doesn't need to be better at rotating my car for that really tight hairpin. It just needs to stop grandma from killing my dog just because she doesn't know how to threshold brake in a panic situation.
I finished driving school this year and it's funny how in the materials it was officially stated that "most" people can't be better than ABS, but some very good drivers will outperform it. I thought it was weird and after watching this, it seems outrageous!
Good that you brought up the difference between old systems and new systems. There will always be those people that do not understand that tech advances for the best while some tech doesn’t advance for the best.
Thank you. Long time subscriber. I am in agreement with your analysis. The most compelling argument for ABS is, IMO, that the natural reaction of any driver is to stand hard on the brake pedal during an emergency and there is no negative consequence from this reaction. In fact, this is totally fine for an ABS controlled stop. My question lies with an assumption in your introduction… How is the vehicle speed accurately determined? With all four wheels potentially losing grip we can’t rely on the wheel speed sensors to accurately determine the vehicle speed. It seems this problem has been solved as these systems work very well but I don’t fully appreciate how this is achieved without an independent method of determining vehicle speed. Please straighten me out.
The easiest method would just be to compare the observed rate of change to some programmed maximum rate of change. If all four wheels go from 60-mph to 0-mph in a tenth of a second, then the computer knows you locked them up. Of course you can bring other sensors into the mix. Brake fluid pressure sensors can tell the system what the driver is trying to do, which can be compared to what is actually happening. If the driver only pushes slightly on the pedal, but the speed sensors jump to zero, it knows you locked them up. Accelerometers could be quite useful, and many modern cars have them anyway. Heck, you could implement a radar speed sensor to compare with the wheel speed sensors, and although I don't think that's currently common practice, the more "self driving" we become, the more cars are going to have such equipment on board anyway.
@@xtnuser5338 Thanks for your suggestions. I can see accelerometers helping, although not that useful on very slippery surfaces. Radar not so much, as I am not sure that a reliable target could be found for reference. I don’t really feel like I understand how this works yet.
I used to be one of those guys, until one day I was driving a Chevy S-10 on wet roads with about a half-ton of steel barricades in the bed, and someone blew a stop sign in front of me. I tried to push the brake pedal through the floor and the truck just... stopped. In that moment I realized that during a panic stop you are *by definition* panicking and not trying to threshold brake until it's far too late.
Just like autopilot in aircraft. When used as designed it will outperform any pilot. Pilots will never be replaced, only workloads will be lessened as needed while safety increases. Love your explanation style Engineering Explained. Wish we'd had someone like you as a science teacher 50-some years ago!!! Keep doing what you're doing. Much appreciated.
Aircraft autopilots are super useful, but nowhere near replacing or outperforming pilots. Flying is much more than raw control, it's also about anticipation, situational awareness and hazard prevention, which autopilots don't even bother doing. Let me give you a nice little example: You're landing your Cessna 172 at a small airport. You see a helicopter hovering above the taxiway off to the side, having crossed across the start of the runway you're landing on. Your fancy pants imaginary magical autopilot will fly blithely into this situation, lose control despite all it's sophistication from the massive upset to the air caused by the helicopter, and kill you. A good pilot will anticipate the danger and go around (even though the helicopter is not in the way, they will know about helicopter downdrafts and the danger they pose) preventing a crash. This kind of thing applies to many many other situations in aviation - weather, large aircraft air disturbance, turbulence, problems with the aircraft, etc. Autopilots are not built to replace pilots
@@Tom--Ace Guess, I should not have used the word 'outperform'. As an 11,000-hour pilot, I agree with your example 100 percent. What I was thinking about is a single pilot flying that C172 in IMC weather overloaded trying to talk to ATC, and copy a complicated amended clearance while holding a heading, altitude, and tracking a waypoint, AP will do it better hands down. Thank you Tom for the chance to clarify. As John and Martha would say, "keep risks to a minimum" vs fly safe. Cheers.
@@Scharpy1 oh in that case I agree. I hadn't realised you were referring only to pure flight surface control. Nothing beats the precision of automatic sensor based systems. A human pilot in IMC is shite (they'll manage on guages, but can't beat autopilot there). But so far, human intelligence is still imperative in the actual flight decisions Btw nice! What do you fly? I'm guessing a big jet of some sort? I'm just light GA myself
@@Tom--Ace Nah. Retired FI and tour pilot. Check out my playlist 'Personal' on my channel if you want to see why I retired a few years early🙄. Take care brother.
A partial solution to decrease the snow/gravel braking distance in an ABS-equipped car my driving instructor taught me is using an e-brake to lock up the rear wheels and make them plow while still maintaining the rotation and steering on the front wheels. That proved to be a useful skill not to participate in those "Bodywork service weather day" events. One example: I was crawling at around 25 MPH on a snowy/slushy road and saw some driver blindly rolling the front half of the car out from a secondary road onto the one-lane one-way street I was riding. I slammed the brakes and the only obvious effect was the ABS clicking. Then I lifted the E-brake while keeping the brake pedal down and maintained the direction by steering (BTW, my car isn't equipped with ESP) and braking force increased allowing me to stop just short of hitting that car. Obviously, this method has a number of limitations: it's hazardous at higher speeds, it may not work on cars with a "smarter than just a button and an actuator" electically actuated E-brake and it's definitely unsafe on the cars with a pedal-operated E-brake like Mercedes-Benz. It's also important to mention that it's crucial to keep the e-brake unlocking button pressed at all times during this maneuver.
Fun fact: The control system uses wheel deceleration thresholds to estimate the slip at any given time. Remember, there is no road surface speed available (no such sensor) that could be compared with the wheel speed.
yeh that is one thing which is used. Another fun fact that the system has an internal estimated reference velocity and compers to this the wheel speeds.
Yes, it's absolutely true that static friction exceeds dynamic friction. The reason that locking up the brakes works on gravel, sand and unpacked snow is that the tire pushes a pile in front of it, effectively increasing the contact patch. The coefficient of friction is still lower than if the wheel was rotating, but the larger contact patch more than makes up for the lower coefficient of frriction.
It's funny because I just recently watched a video where Scott Mansell (racing driver on Driver61 and Driven Media) tried to beat ABS and couldn't even get close. That certainly put an end to around 20 years of believing it was possible.
I'm not sure which video I should ask this in, so here goes. I currently drive a 2016 RAV4 with AWD, but a few times coming up to a stop sign, it was more slippery in the winter than I thought, so I started slipping into the intersection. One time, I just relied on the brakes, fully depressed, and I was halfway or nearly fully into the intersection by the time I stopped (thankfully, it isn't a busy one). I was straight, but stopped int he middle of the intersection. Since I used to gear down when I had a manual transmission car to help me with control in the winters, I tried the same in this vehicle. And it makes a huge difference! I watched your other video about coasting in neutral and I think that gearing down was addressed a bit here too, but I'm not quite sure if gearing down causes as much wear on the hard to reach part as driving in neutral does (I can't remember the name of the part, but it's thin and apparently wears down faster when coasting in neutral). All that to say - because of the extra control, I've made it a habit to gear down when needing to slow down, even in summer now. Should I stop gearing down except for when needed for winter driving when I need more control? Thank you for all your helpful information.
there are times where the system fails where normal brakes would have stopped some one at the intersection but the abs system [for example early 90's gm] causes the driver to be half way out in front of traffic. Randy Pobst had an experience on a race track in an rx-7 where the brakes wouldn't work something to do with the abs system "sensing" he was on ice
I've always thought that the purpose of the threshold breaking was to maintain relative control of the car's vector. With ABS your only option is to go forward (along the original vector), no matter the position of the car.
EE : speaking about beating (or not) the ABS Me : slamming that middle pedal like a mofo just to check the theory My ABS : *RrrRRrrRrrRrrRrrRrrrrrRRRrrRrRRRrrrrrrr* 😂
There is one exception - a superbike. The ABS systems in modern superbikes are way too intrusive because they're calibrated for sub optimal grip conditions, so you get to the braking zone on track and head straight into the gravel trap if you forgot to disable ABS
Good thing you mentioned that on gravel and snow, ABS has its quite severe limitations. For urban people living in hotter climates, thats just a theretical exception to the general rule, that ABS is better. But lets remember that a quite significant number of cars has to deal with gravel and snow regularly. Simply making an ABS system that is not a pain to turn off, could negate this. But most modern cars is now there that turning the ABS off is a teedious procedure, and on others not even possible at all. And speaking of snow and gravel, other solutions that should be possible to override with ease, is the necessity to press the brake pedal before changing between D and R for automatic and electric vehicles. Obviously those who came up with that is not very experienced with winter driving. And for those of you that isn't experienced with winter driving: Getting your stuck vehicle into a pendulum motion is the go-to-way of trying to unstuck your vehicle. Obviously not possible when you have to stop all motion, to be able to access reverse gear.
I have been telling other automotive instructors this for awhile. They insisted that ABS takes longer to stop. So I asked them to see how many times they could pump the brake pedal in one second. One instructor managed three pumps. It is not possible for a human to stop quicker without ABS in an emergency situation. One lost millisecond is one too many.
