The video correctly explains that ABS isn’t about shortest braking distance but more about a predictable trajectory and ability to avoid obstacles where possible.
It also takes a lot of guesswork from braking as you can simply instinctively slam the brakes and get good enough results.
Especially on a motorcycle slamming the brakes in panic without abs ends up in a crash.
Two experiences of mine: Braking on snowy/icy streets.
First, in a car without ABS, I put on the brakes (I was probably going a little too fast) to avoid hitting the car stopped ahead of me. I started to slow down, but also to slip to the right towards the curb; it was scary, and I barely slowed down in time to avoid either collision.
Second, in a car with ABS, I slowed down to turn into a parking lot, and the ABS kicked in; the car went absolutely straight (without slowing down enough to make the turn), but I wasn't sliding at all, so I didn't have to worry about sliding into the curb. Big win.
My worst close-calls were a result of ABS engaging at very low speed. In all cases, I reduced the speed to 2-3 MPH approaching a snowy intersection, but the car refused to let the wheels lock and "sink" in the snow.
Instead, it's all too happy to drift into oncoming traffic at a glacial pace. It could be specific to the various Toyotas I have owned...
Technology is defined as that thing which almost works correctly.
Sorry to hear you had that experience! I've lived places where the "sink into the snow" was the right thing, but where I live now, there's very likely ice under the snow, so it's not clear if that would help.
I did a anti-slip course where we learned dosed breaking to reduce break distance. And once a circuit racing course where the instructor just told me to break with all force available.
The latter stuck. This instructor logic was, only if you are a pro driver you actually can outperform ABS. In emergency situations I break with full force without hesitation. This has lead to multiple avoided crashes and TBH two back collisions. Once I pushed so hard the break light sensor had to be replaced. In that case I saw a SUV struggling to stop in my rear view mirror. I had enough control to move to the right and have that SUV crash into the vehicle in front of me.
In this line of thought, it can be life saving to be overweight. I was about 120 kg back then and therefor had quite strong legs.
I got really good at pumping the brakes (is that "dosed braking"? new term to me) in the days before ABS.
You can definitely get close to the performance of ABS with practice. Used to practice in the snow, in empty parking lots. (ABS or no ABS, everybody should safely practice recovering from spins and slides in empty parking lots! It's also really fun...)
The idea that a pro could outperform ABS is surprising to hear. I guess one area where a pro could outperform ABS is if you are trying to slow, not stop. All the ABS systems I've used seem to assume you're trying for a full stop.
I believe the term "pumping the brakes" refers to applying and releasing pressure on the brakes. With ABS off, a tire that's locked up (not spinning) will stop in a significantly longer distance than one that's at the limit of grip (slipping with a slight under-rotation).
Assuming you have exceeded the limit of grip of the tires with the initial brake bite and the tires have started to lock up, by releasing and reapplying pressure you allow the tire to spin up again to regain grip and then apply more brake to help stop the car. I assume this was to kinda emulate what ABS is meant to do (albeit much slower?) but I never knew this was a thing until recently.
You do not need to pump the brakes if you can threshold brake, though I understand the fact that the vast majority of drivers on the road cannot do this and ABS is a life-saving fallback.
Also to add to your comment about everyone taking some time to practice. I would also 100% recommend a good racing simulator if you or a friend you know has one. Specifically a setup that has a load cell braking pedal. Most entry-level sim pedals are potentiometers which measure the distance your foot travels as opposed to a load cell which measures the force applied on the pedal. This is how my younger self learned to threshold brake (among other things) and I was surprised at how it all transferred to the real world when I finally hit the track later in life.
Amusingly, a loadcell is in fact a very precise measurement of how far something has travelled in response to a load. More specifically, a resistor changes value very slightly as it is compressed or expanded. If you laminate a resistor to a strip of metal, you can use that change in resistance to measure the deflection, and then derive the force that drove that deflection. In principal you can get the same information with a lever attached to the same strip connected to a potentiometer; indeed, lever scales based on amplifying the deflection like that used to be universally used.
Source: I was a loadcell technician in a previous life.
Prior to commonplace ABS in cars, pumping the brakes when traction was bad was a commonplace braking technique taught across Canada for winter driving. An added benefit was that the sudden, irregular flashes of brake lights ahead hopefully gave a good amount of warning to following drivers to let off their own gas pedal and do the same kind of brake pumping.
I found a lot of humor in your anecdote that the light sensor had to be replaced.
In a similar vein, a family member had a hardware issue in their laptop where some keys would not register some of the time (moisture). Their understanding was that they did not press hard enough for the device to register the press. This confusion between the boundaries of electronic and mechanical problems led to some mocking.
If your anecdote can be taken at face value - they could find some respite in the fact that by pressing the keys too hard they could damage some peripheral electronic parts.
I can dig deeper behind my face. It was a Volvo 850. After the incident the brake lights kept on. I had to repair the car twice. The first responding mechanic had a single sensor that sort of fitted. A few days later I had my regular mechanic replace it with the stock double sensor. IIRC this model has one sensor for the brake lights and one for the cruise control.
In a modern (<10 year old) car I question the "pro driver" result. I've been looking for data on this, and haven't seen anything that says this is true, but have seen the opposite.
In the past, this was likely true when ABS systems weren't able to control individual wheels. They can do that today, can check for wheel lock-ups and react dozens of times a second, and can therefore compensate for changing grip at different parts of the road during the entire stopping process.
In formula 1, where ABS has been banned, drivers have the capability to manually adjust brake balance (front/back and left/right) which they can do for each corner - so in this scenario it is true but only because they are given an advanced control, practice it over and over for the specific corner, and aren't allowed to use ABS to begin with.
This video is about motorcycles, not cars. Also, the data on this is in the linked video - the author demonstrates you can do a controlled stoppie to decelerate faster without ABS, because that's its main feature - preventing you from flying off the bike.
I've seen the video, but the comment I'm replying to seems to be referring to a car driving course.
I'm a little surprised there's no "pro ABS" for motorcycles which allows you to do a stoppie if you enable an option, and/or are keeping the bike perfectly straight.
> In a modern (<10 year old) car I question the "pro driver" result. I've been looking for data on this, and haven't seen anything that says this is true, but have seen the opposite.
There is an old SAE paper published by Chrysler that I can't find at the moment. IIRC, it was published in 1968 or 1969, and evaluated their new all-wheel[1] ABS system (later to be sold on the 1969-1973 Imperial).
The gist of it is that on most surfaces relevant passenger cars, ABS gives somewhat ~shorter~ [Edit: longer ] stopping distances but the difference is minimal compared to a trained professional driver, and both are significantly shorter than locking the wheels (what a non-pro is likely to do in a panic situation)
On ice, locking the wheels produces stopping distances that are several times greater than threshold braking. Wet pavement (especially asphalt) is better for ABS, too, though not as extreme as ICE. Importantly, threshold braking also enables the driver to maintain directional control on all surfaces, especially when the left and right wheels have different amounts of traction. ABS enables the driver to concentrate on steering while the computer adjusts the brakes.
However, on dry concrete, as well as gravel or snow, locking the wheels does produce somewhat shorter stopping distances. (Concrete tends to be aggressively textured, almost like sandpaper; gravel and snow can build up a "ramp" ahead of a locked wheel)
The only problem with locking for emergency stops is that 1) you wear the tires down to the cords after about 10 such emergency stops from 60 mph on dry concrete; and 2) the vehicle tends to spin. If the driver should happen to back off the brake pressure while partially spun, the vehicle will depart the road before they can react... so if you're going to lock the wheels, you have to really commit to it.
[1] Chrysler had 4-wheel ABS 10 years before Mercedes' "first car in the world with 4-wheel ABS", but Chrysler had computer logic to release brake pressure on both rear wheels if either one slipped (it had sensors in both rear wheels), which is how Mercedes was able to claim a "first" with their system that simply treated both rear wheels independently.
> on most surfaces relevant passenger cars, ABS gives somewhat shorter stopping distances but the difference is minimal compared to a trained professional driver*
Hm. This [edit: the "shorter", which has now been corrected] doesn't fit my experience when I took advanced driver training years ago (I was a GM employee at the time). The training vehicles could have ABS enabled or disabled by a switch on the dashboard. The instructor first disabled ABS and had me practice threshold braking, until I reached the point where I could negotiate a setup with cones where you had to swerve left, then swerve back right, all while braking enough to not overshoot. I was able to do that several times with threshold braking after some practice.
Then the instructor turned the ABS on and had me try the cones again. I overshot every time.
Of course this was some 20 years ago, and more recent ABS systems might do better. But the SAE paper you refer to was even earlier.
"In emergency situations I break with full force without hesitation. This has lead to multiple avoided crashes and TBH two back collisions. Once I pushed so hard the break light sensor had to be replaced."
I think full braking should be part of driver training. A lot of people I know are very hesitant to brake full force and I think a lot of accidents happen because people don't really brake all out when needed.
As far as driver training goers, a little training in sliding would also be very helpful so people know what to do when the car has understeering or oversteering.
For instance, a lot of drivers prefer to swerve rather than brake ... because they're afraid of getting hit from behind, because everyone is tail-gating.
For this precise reason I like to drive with tons of buffer to the car ahead. Given the fact that I am usually in a sports car, I know I can brake much faster than most people around me. Should I need to come to a complete stop, I can control the braking distance to make sure the cars behind me are not only aware that I'm coming to a full stop, which gives them the time/distance they need to brake, but it also gives me time to react to them should they fail to see me slowing down (not paying attention).
An added bonus is that most of time the impatient drivers will just go around me and I don't need to worry too much about tailgaters.
> An added bonus is that most of time the impatient drivers will just go around me and I don't need to worry too much about tailgaters.
I so wish this were more true; I've been tailgated for 10s of miles in the right lane on a freeway with light traffic that was never fewer than 3 lanes for the entirety of that distance.
When I've encountered this, I've just taken my foot off the accelerator and let the car gradually lose speed. Eventually, the person behind loses patience and passes me angrily.
Yep, it's always better to put the car behind you in a non-accelerating frame before they slowing down is required.
Honestly I would love for tailgating to have automated enforcement with each ticket doubling in fines. In a few weeks we'd weed most of the bad drivers off the road, and at least in my imagined scenario road safety would increase dramatically.
>I think full braking should be part of driver training. A lot of people I know are very hesitant to brake full force and I think a lot of accidents happen because people don't really brake all out when needed.
Couldn't agree more. It's beyond negligent that with the current state of drivers ed the first time a driver will need to emergency brake, or even feel abs activate will be in a potentially life or deal situation.
> I think full braking should be part of driver training
I thought it was. I distinctly remember my Dad telling me to slam on the brakes while teaching me to drive. I pushed them hard, but nothing crazy. He said to get up to speed and kick the pedal through the floor and hold it there.
Older car, full lockup and skid for a good distance. We did that more than once.
Now 25 years later, I do exactly the same thing every year at the first snowfall , and a few times during the winter to get the feel of everything going extremely vague.
> I distinctly remember my Dad telling me to slam on the brakes while teaching me to drive.
Same when my mother taught me to drive. She even took advantage of rainy days to take me out to a large empty parking lot and we practiced how to deal with hydroplaning.
It definitely is as part of the UK driving test, though they normally tell you it's coming up and intentionally take you to a quiet back road and make sure it's completely empty first. In my test the instructor told me to keep driving until they wacked their clipboard on the dash, then I had to STOP as quickly as possible, and you'd fail if you didn't apply heavy brakes quick enough. And as this is common in the test it was gone over a few times by my instructor to prepare.
Though they also checked the car I was using had ABS first, they might have had a slightly different process otherwise? Though in the UK it's common to have a professional driving instructor with their own car you'd use for learning and borrow for the test, so there was likely an expected minimum age and spec of car people were doing their tests in.
It used to be a mandatory part of the UK driving test. Now it's one test out of three, so you can skip preparing it and just retake your test if you get unlucky.
~10 years ago they said they "may" do one, but every one of my friends was required to. I guess it might have changed since then? Or location dependent - I know different areas have different roads, in a reasonably-sized UK city (top 20 by population) the local instructors generally knew the 4-5 routes the local DVLA normally tested around, and intentionally practiced in those areas with the specifics they entailed. And speaking to people who tool their test in different cities the things that tended to be difficult and likely to catch them out were often different.
And having done the California driving test a few years back as well, comparatively the US one was pretty trivial in comparison. And I've heard the CA test is one of the harder ones in the states.
> ~10 years ago they said they "may" do one, but every one of my friends was required to. I guess it might have changed since then? Or location dependent - I know different areas have different roads, in a reasonably-sized UK city (top 20 by population) the local instructors generally knew the 4-5 routes the local DVLA normally tested around, and intentionally practiced in those areas with the specifics they entailed.
Test instructors are told they should carry out the emergency stop on one third of tests at random, and that was the guidance at least as far back as 13 years ago ( https://www.adicpd.co.uk/dsa-dt1-standard-operating-procedur... has a copy from 10 years ago, see page 40). A FOIA response I saw showed numbers that align with that, so unless some instructors are doing the emergency stop and then falsely reporting they didn't...
But it also requires some resolve when the abs starts pushing back on the pedal. The instinct is to lift your foot instead of fighting the pedal, which is what you should do.
Right, but if the pedal suddenly starts pushing back, are you naturally expecting that? I was involved in three collisions where I failed to stop in time, and all three times the pedal pushed back. I didn't really expect it the first time. Talking about 90s and early 2000s cars, so not brake-by-wire.
>Right, but if the pedal suddenly starts pushing back, are you naturally expecting that?
Under hard braking conditions? Yeah. Especially since we have quite a lot of snow and ice here every year, you do sorta get used to the ABS feel and crunching sound.
I once had a close encounter on snow where some idiot came way too fast a downhill and slid onto my lane. Pretty sure I kept my foot planted on the brake while going as far right as there was road there.
Geography matters; there are people who came of age during the recent western drought that have driven a total of less than an hour in rain; my wife (who grew up in California) first drove in the snow in her late 20s.
With brake-by-wire, is this even necessary? I thought that ABS feeling occurred because the brake pedal was connected to the master cylinder, but isn't necessarily desired.
My bike definitely pulses the brakes in a way that you feel on the controls, but they are directly connected to the hydraulics.
No don't be sorry, I'm mainly curious if they still had the same feeling. I don't know the last time I had to brake hard enough to need ABS in the car, if they still had that feeling, or even if my car has brake-by-wire.
I don't think your car has full brake by wire. You should be able to operate the brake (to some extent) even if the car systems are not fully working.
I also learnt that teslas (at least the 3 and y) don't do steer by wire so when you play the games using your steering wheel you so turn the wheels a little bit.
Have you tried slamming the brakes to avoid a collision? It's not something that happens in normal braking situations. Also, not sure if it's a thing on most modern cars.
My driver's education in Colorado included going out on a frozen lake and practicing counter-steering into a slide, as well as a sense of how cars behave in slippery conditions. Very good skill to have for icy mountain driving.
You can also find an empty parking lot after a snow storm and do donuts for "education". Just avoid light poles ;)
“ You can also find an empty parking lot after a snow storm and do donuts for "education". Just avoid light poles ;)”
Me and my friends did this for hours after each snowfall. Great training. One of my friends hadn’t heard of your light pole advice and mangled his Golf GTI pretty good.
Same, for the "education"! In my hometown, lakes and rivers remained frozen for half the year. There were two such lakes separated by narrow dirt trails through the trees. Each winter, some kind soul went out there with their plow and created a drifting course that snaked around one lake, through the woods, wound around the other lake, and back. We'd take whatever vehicles we had access to and race there at night. I'll never forget careening around that track with the windows down, snow blowing in, music blaring, swerving around my friend's mom's minivan and trying to fend off another buddy in his rusty Toyota pickup.
I like to think we became safer winter drivers as a result.
This might be a little too far, but I sometimes say to my friends that a minor crash should actually be part of driver training. Modern cars feel extremely safe, and nearly drive themselves, so many people do not take driving as seriously as they should, and not as seriously as they do after they have their first collision.
Perhaps being required to actually use 100% braking power to pass is enough :)
In this respect, motorcycle training courses are MUCH better, and have numerous braking and swerving drills, but they have to be, because motorcycles require a higher-level of attention and are significantly more dangerous to operate than a car.
> because motorcycles require a higher-level of attention and are significantly more dangerous to operate than a car.
For the driver. Cars are more dangerous than motorcycles for everybody but the people inside/on it, which means that swerving and braking exercises are actually much more necessary for car drivers than for motorcycle riders
In this respect, motorcycle training courses are MUCH better, and have numerous braking and swerving drills, but they have to be, because motorcycles require a higher-level of attention and are significantly more dangerous to operate than a car.
Then why does almost every motorcyclist I see ride dangerously? They all follow too close. Many will spill over into the oncoming traffic lane to overtake something in their own lane, just expecting you to move to the shoulder so they can go the wrong way in your lane.
Later I see them stopped for fuel or food and it's all grey haired dudes.
Maybe those motorcycle training courses have become so strict that young people don't bother, and most of the bikers you see are those "grey haired dudes" who learnt back when standards were lower.
Shortly after buying a car, I always go a large, empty parking lot late and night, get up to about 30 mph and stop as hard as I can. I want to understand what it feels like before I get into a panic situation. I only buy a car every 10 years on average, so it's interesting to see the progress in braking. My current car (a 2014 model) stopped so quickly and so violently that it frightened me. Everything not tied down in the car was flying around. I thought I must have hit something, but I didn't. I did a few more such stops to try to get used to it. It still makes my heart race, but at least I know to expect it.
That's right. I'm hoping to get another 10+ years out of this one. It's up to 165K miles, and I hope it lasts beyond 300K. My wife and I only have the one car despite living in a rural area and it fits our use cases perfectly.
The vibration in the brake pedal can also be surprising to drivers who haven't triggered ABS before. And it can vary quite a bit depending on manufacturer and age of the vehicle.
My teacher made me do a full force brake during my training. It was more intense than I had anticipated, and my teacher forgot that he still had his sunglasses on his head, which promptly smashed into the windshield :D
> What's interesting to me is that in emergencies, apparently many people don't brake hard enough.
I did the Mini Stunt Driving Course the other week in Palm Springs. One of the first things they cover is emergency braking. Even in that situation — not an emergency; the whole point is to stop the car as fast as possible — I had trouble overcoming the urge to NOT brake as hard as I could. It took a few runs for me to get myself to stand on the brakes properly.
I’m pretty sure half the problem is that people can’t even _get_ the brake pedal to the floor.
When I get in a car and need to adjust the seat, I slide my butt to the back of the seat and push the brake pedal all the way to the floor. What I’m looking for is being able to have it on the floor slightly before my knee locks and without my foot needing to leave the floor (i.e., not lifting my foot up and pushing with the tip of my toes or something).
I know that I can apply 100% braking force. If I were much further back I could not.
I often get in the cars of people 6”+ shorter than me and… don’t need to slide the seat back. I get in cars driven by people around the same height as me and need to pull the seat forward. My wife is one example—she’s around 4” shorter than me and when I drive her car I keep the seat in the same position she does.
It’s a pet theory that the majority of people driving on the road day to day have their seat positioned so they’re actually physically incapable of braking with full strength.
>I think full braking should be part of driver training.
Also if you lose brake assist. I've read a handful of "out of control car" stories where the driver reported the brakes didn't work. Well yes, without power brakes it feels like stepping on a piece of wood. You need to apply a LOT of force to stop a modern car without power brakes, "putting both feet on the pedal and pushing with everything you've got" a lot. Bending the brake pedal is better than crossing into oncoming traffic.
Talking about "brakes didn't work" it always terrifies me when I see people just flying in heavy rain. I've done intentional hydroplanes in closed areas and even when you know it's coming it can be hard to resist the urge to panic.
I got into my one and only accident less than a year after getting my first car, when another driver ran a stop sign. I was the one who tee-boned them, because they actually accelerated quite quickly out of the stop while I was going about 50 mph with right of way on a feeder road. I still can’t shake the feeling that I under-braked, although I did see some solid tread marks before the point of impact on the road. I don’t think it was a very avoidable accident on my part, but I probably could’ve hit them with less speed if I’d put all my weight on the brake. My back would certainly have appreciated it.
Without knowing the conditions, since you seem to be asking for internet quarterbacking (please feel free to ignore if not)...
Braking harder may have also applied maximum braking sooner, or you may have been able to get tread marks on all wheels instead of only some wheels.
Also, as a more experienced driver, I definitely have fewer expectations that other vehicles will stop when they're supposed to. If you had visibility of the vehicle before it blew the stop sign, you may have been able to predict and slow down sooner or take evasive action.
Nowadays it would make sense for most people with ABS to learn "full braking" but people still need to know if they have ABS or not, because full braking is dangerous without ABS. Unfortunately, I think 99% of drivers, including those in older cars without ABS, aren't really sure what ABS is.
When driving a car with ABS, all-out braking is the best option. You'll get the quickest, safest stop.
That same strategy doesn't work as well on a motorcycle equipped with ABS as you still need to preload the front tire before applying full braking power. As the video shows, this minimizes your stopping distance. Like a car, once you're fully on the brake then stay on it - the ABS system will take care to prevent wheel lockup and skid.
> In that case I saw a SUV struggling to stop in my rear view mirror. I had enough control to move to the right and have that SUV crash into the vehicle in front of me.
As this example of yours shows, a key benefit of ABS (if you're not a professional driver) is that it allows you to steer as well as brake, by preventing the wheels from locking). IIRC studies have shown that the majority of accidents cannot be avoided by braking alone even with an optimal stopping distance; you need to be able to steer as well.
In advanced driving lessons, in both dry and snowy conditions, goodn driving instructors not only acknowledged but demonstrated, it is POSSIBLE to break better than ABS. But in an uncontrolled, unanticipated emergency (where you don't necessarily get to pick your breaking point and posture etc), ABS gives you steering control. It takes practice to utilize that ability, mostly people just focus and fixate in the obstacle ahead of them they are trying to not hit. But the miraculous, magical ability to steer with ABS is an absolute life saver.
> mostly people just focus and fixate in the obstacle ahead
Indeed! Forgot all about my takeaway #2 of the course, thanks for reminding me. People tend to focus wrong in an emergency. Look further ahead, get the bigger picture otherwise you actually steer toward the collision as a self fulfilling prophecy.
> only if you are a pro driver you actually can outperform ABS
I'd imagine even then, this only applied 20 years ago when ABS was still relatively primitive. I've had only triggered the ABS on my ~2015 car a couple of times but I don't think I could have done significantly better than it even in a non-panic situation.
>In this line of thought, it can be life saving to be overweight. I was about 120 kg back then and therefor had quite strong legs.
people that lack the ability to lock the wheels on their vehicle on-demand shouldn't be driving it without aids.
it's exclusionary, but even as a paralyzed person who is mandated to use hand controls for throttle and brake it was expected of me to demonstrate that I could leverage enough force on the brake pedal to initiate lock-up in a timely manner -- and modern cars with power-assist brakes should have little problem doing so.
Ok, this entire premise is silly. "Humans can do things that a computer can't" is fine and all, but the entire point is that most people are not practicing that style of braking and can't do it. Heck, the beginning is that most people aren't braking at all during a wreck. Thinking that "perfect braking" would be the answer feels very disingenuous.
And if you aren't covering how much speed was lost at the end of the stopping period your analysis is kind of worthless. Yes, you can stop faster with clean road and good execution of old stopping technique. Ignoring that the analysis is that that just isn't happening, but focusing on the extra 20 feet you travel with ABS ignores just how much slower you are already going for that last 20 feet. Even assuming you'd still be in a wreck, if you can reduce the brain to the panic of "slam brakes" and get a massive reduction in speed, that is still almost certainly good, no?
NB: this video is about motorcycles which have different dynamics than cars. I still think the point holds that in panic situation, it’s better to keep the reactions required simple as possible.
Tangential query - is the difference between ABS and no ABS greater or lesser than bad tires and top of the line summers?
Getting very expensive tires has quite a huge impact on stopping distance from what I’ve experienced. Having 255s up front also helps ;)
Family Member is head of training for very large fire department. For testing their truck drivers, if they ABS kicks in at all, you fail the test. They want you to go all the way up to the limit, and ease off the breaks slightly as the 60,000lb truck gets close to kicking in its ABS.
Pumping the brakes is what you do if you cannot threshold brake. You lose traction, so let off the brakes to regain grip, then apply again and repeat, hence pumping.
Is ABS a feature on their training truck that doesn't exist on the real rigs, or something?
I've read about police receiving the opposite instruction: a reminder during training that they should keep their foot on the brake when they feel the ABS coming on. Apparently too many police were crashing because they'd lift, and attempt threshold braking as they'd been trained back in the day, when they felt the ABS coming on. They were interpreting the feel of ABS as a loss in traction.
The ABS does allow better control if you break traction, but lenthens your stopping distance. They want their drivers to not break traction, and keep the stopping distance short. Big difference between a Subaru slamming into you because it couldn't stop fast enough, and a firetruck loaded with 1500 gallons of water, etc, slamming into you.
Have they done a side-by-side test? Or was that based on some information from years ago? If they don't break traction, how do they know they're braking enough?
If this is a modern ABS system I'd be shocked if they could beat it. See this short video comparing a 20 year old (at the time) vs modern semi-trailer weighing 38.5 metric tons (84,000 lbs). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo6C3HEpfsQ
I suppose my initial feeling towards the idea that a driver can consistently better the performance of their vehicle's ABS is strong skepticism, but, I wonder if it's less difficult on a really massive vehicle. Or if the ABS on one of those more massive vehicles (reliant on drum brakes) is simply not as effective as one would like.
Well an average driver probably not, but i might trust a professionally trained driver who drives everyday in high stress situations accelerating and breaking with maximum efficiency at all times.
When the 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee was released, it was an early release in mid-2013.
And, yes, it was an early release. The first month or so of models had all sorts of problems. And one of them was that the stability control system was not dialed in.
You can hunt down early video of the vehicle not doing well in the moose test. It does the swerve, but practically loses control. It’s rather horrific.
Later, they updated the systems and it performs the same test much, much better.
Most of these systems and what they do for day to day drivers is invisible. Watching the Jeep fail, and then later succeed, just shows how capable those systems really are.
I don't know if it's part pf the standard practise but when I did this they also had that one car with more worn treads than the rest, and they didn't tell us. It was a huge difference on water!
FortNine is great but the conclusion in this video is a little silly. The best result comes from threshold braking with ABS enabled. Yeah no shit.
As described in the video, motorcycles perform funny under braking. If you slam the brakes too fast, you have very little grip. ABS kicks in and you’re not stopping. If you progressively brake correctly, you transfer load to the front tyre and increase grip. ABS kicks in, but you’re stopping effectively.
Same is true in a car just way way less observable because you have more tyres, better grip, and your foot doesn’t slam the brakes as fast as your hand does. But you can play with this on gravel or on snow.
Now here’s the really fun part. Most motorcycle riders most of the time never brake with more than like 60% of theoretical threshold. Here’s a tkacs talk explaining this problem: https://youtu.be/CpaFeZ4xS8g?si=xI_29sLDY82UZziV
tldr: If you ride motorcycles, go out and practice. It may save your life.
For example, I once almost painted my pants brown braking from 80mph to 60mph because a car spooked me and the ABS kicked in in the middle of the freeway. I was nowhere near actual threshold, but the car made my lizard brain kick in and squeeze the lever too fast.
I'm confused by which part of the conclusion you thought was silly. It seems like you reached the exact same conclusion than the video did, and I don't think it's at all obvious to most people that you are still supposed to threshold brake with ABS.
The silly/unfortunate part is that most people can’t threshold brake in emergency situations.
It’s like saying “Doing the perfect thing every time is best”. Which is true but not useful.
And they teach you about progressive braking in the first hour of learning to ride. Then they keep repeating it all the time. Every rider on the road knows that they should do this. It’s the execution that is hard.
Yeah and that’s exactly what the video says as well: that people can’t consistently threshold break in emergency situations, which is why ABS is so valuable.
The average car doesn't actually have more grip than the average motorcycle.
More surface contact != More traction.
Grip in a motorcycle is only really limited by gravity. That's still far better than most cars. The average motorcycle (or bicycle, for that matter) will have little problem hitting 35 degrees lean and therefore produce lateral G forces exceeding that of a typical car.
Same is true for deceleration, the average bike is going to be able to slow down as fast or faster than the average car, even if you just let ABS takeover.
Motorcycles don't have any disadvantage in grip unless you're comparing them to the supercars that have significant downforce.
It really does come down to practice. The machine itself is more than capable. Even a cheap entry level motorcycle is eminently more capable in terms of braking and corner than many sports cars. The cool thing about have two tires, is that you don't need a super fancy suspension setup to be able to corner fast, you just need good tires.
The biggest problem for bikes when it comes to grip, in my experience, is that there is no redundancy.
You brake hard, rear grip goes to zero, and you fishtail. Then you have to reduce braking force or you crash. This doesn’t happen in a car because unloading 2 independent tires is very hard.
You touch loose gravel going through a corner, front loses grip, you crash. Hitting the same gravel patch with 2+ car tires is unlikely.
I learned in training to trust your motorcycle to keep it's footing when you encounter quick losses of traction.
They had a bike that was equipped with a roll-cage, like an exoskeleton that prevented it from actually flipping but did allow it to lay over enough such that it would. Then they sent the bike through excessive lean angles across slippery surfaces.
The riders who adjusted for the slippage wrecked, the ones who just allowed the bike to fish a little didn't.
Of course that's assuming you aren't too close to the threshold, etc.
But it was eye opening to learn to just kind of hang on and trust the machine a bit.
Yep this works great until it doesn’t. When I crashed after hitting a gravel patch it literally felt like a video game that skips a frame. My thoughts were “Gravel!” “Wait am I on the ground?” And a few moments later I stopped tumbling. There was zero time for a reaction of any kind. Happened so fast I didn’t even get an adrenaline rush out of it.
Luckily insurance paid for bike damage and new gear. I only got a bruise where my elbow missed the elbow pads. Bike stopped maybe 50ft down the road.
A car with one wheel locked up has a lot more grip than a motorcycle with one wheel locked up. That might be an obvious non-sequitur, but when we are talking about ABS, it applies.
Neither of them lock up, we're talking about braking performance with ABS.
And cars don't lock up a single wheel without ABD. When they do lock up you generally lock everything up.
The question is, do cars have more grip? No, not really. Do they have better braking performance? Not really, either. Are they easier to use? Sure. The reason you can have a harder time on a bike isn't because of any fundamental limitation, it's just poor training - the video is correct. And car drivers also don't break anywhere near the theoretical potential of their car, either.
I don't have any data for you, but my own experience owning and racing cars and motorcycles tells me this is not true. Contact patch isn't everything, but being able to load 4000lb on the front tires vs 500lb makes a big difference. A car on a track can blow right by the typical motorcycle braking point coming into a corner
I ride motorcycles on the track, and most track riders/racers disable or delete ABS on their bikes. The idea of ABS sounds great, but it’s often too primitive for high performance riding. On a hot summer day with sticky tires and a clean track, you’ll flip over the handlebars before you lock the front wheel. However, most ABS systems work by detecting the speed difference between the front and rear wheels. As you brake hard into a corner, the weight transfers forwards and the rear wheel can come completely off the ground. I’m braking as hard as possible but at this point the ABS sees the rear wheel spinning freely in the air and decides I don’t have brakes anymore. Check out this clip from WSBK for an extreme example of what I’m talking about: https://youtu.be/48lcS3hPVrE?si=UORAFvQt4Djf95Uv
I don’t claim to be able to out brake ABS on the varied conditions of the street though. I would NEVER turn off ABS outside a controlled environment. Honestly it should be a legal requirement for bikes just like cars and it’s pretty silly that manufacturers like to charge $500-1000 extra for this feature.
Is the default behavior in motorcycle land really to just use the back brakes? When I rode a bicycle in a city I learned to use both, but primarily my fronts. I definitely had some panic stops where I was modulating to prevent the rear wheel coming off the ground. But maybe the calculus changes with motorcycles' higher speed, as maintaining steerability becomes that much more important?
I'm actually kind of surprised a motorcycle ABS controller apparently doesn't include include sensors for the deceleration vector, bike rotation, the compression of the front shock, the weight on the rear wheel, etc. I'd think that a computer could reliably beat a human, given the right sensors.
It's possible that really high end bikes (either sportbikes, or fancy tourers like goldwings) do, but ABS isn't really about maximum braking performance. It is about maintaining maneuverability during emergency braking (given that tires have a limited amount of grip, this is opposed to achieving the minimum possible braking distance).
>But maybe the calculus changes with motorcycles' higher speed, as maintaining steerability becomes that much more important?
It's just a panic response. Everybody on a motorcycle (hopefully) knows that you should be using front brake to slow down as quickly as possible, unless you need to swerve of course :)
> Is the default behavior in motorcycle land really to just use the back brakes?
there are a lot of old fogeys who think if you touch the front brake you'll flip over the bars. the MSF class specifically teaches that the front is 80% of your braking and to use both brakes, but a lot of motorcyclists never get a permit/license and learn from a family member or something, so myths persist
I'm surprised he said, "people only brake with the rear"
My first day out with my bike, i was staring at my foot trying to figure out why i was in the wrong gear. I looked up and was heading for the median. grabbed fistful of front brake to massive stoppie. I got luck and didn't lay the bike now. but front brake was drilled into me by the safety course i took. i didn't even think
I love it when two different aspects of my life collide!
For the HNers who don't know much about motorcycles, in the motorcycling world there's a big argument whether ABS is a net good or not. The old-timers tend to say "learn to ride your bike, you can beat ABS." Manufacturers site statistics saying ABS saves lives. This video is good in that it shows old-timer braking + ABS gives the best of both worlds. Somewhat paradoxically, in the world of motorcycles, even with ABS, just slamming on the brakes isn't the best strategy for emergency stopping. You'll stop faster with two-phase braking. That's why it's critical motorcycle riders practice emergency braking. You have to practice it enough to make it muscle memory.
> ...just slamming on the brakes isn't the best strategy for emergency stopping
It seems like there is no technical reason why phased braking couldn't be added to a more advanced ABS system. Early car ABS systems were also much worse for stopping distance than threshold braking, but more advanced systems have made up much of the difference.
> That's why it's critical motorcycle riders practice emergency braking. You have to practice it enough to make it muscle memory.
Indeed threshold braking (which is what this is) is a very important skill to practice for a motorcycle rider.
However, that said, while folks can practice the maneuver, what is very difficult to practice is the situation. It’s one thing to practice on a dry parking lot in front of a cone or tennis ball.
It’s quite another to practice on the street in a crummy intersection with an F-150 turning left in front of you.
It’s always important to have data like this, talking about limits of systems, our role and impact as riders with such systems. This is a good video (all of Ryan’s stuff is excellent).
But I have seen others actually advocate switching ABS off, and I think that’s a bit irresponsible. Off road is a different problem, and a complicated environment for an ABS system. The track is another controlled space where folks can test limitations. Many bikes offer the ability to disable ABS systems (as a first class concept) just for these reasons.
But neither of those are the street. There are a lot of situations where straight line stopping is not necessarily the correct response. ABS is a boon in more cases than it’s not when it comes to emergency maneuvers.
The street is complex and unforgiving. Anyone who’s been in the community for any length of time knows about very skilled, even professional, riders that the street has taken from their families.
I love motorcycles and riding. I have for a very long time. And my simple rule is I don’t recommend it to anyone. It’s very dangerous. As riders, these systems are excellent, and get better every year.
Practice threshold breaking, by all means. Practice everything. But on the street, you need every edge. Leave your ABS on.
Never disable ABS when riding on the street. You never know what you're going to do in an actual emergency situation (most riders only use the rear brake in such scenarios?!) so it's good to have ABS to back up your lizard brain.
Sometime back watched a video explaining how Fernando Alonso's breaking style is similar to ABS, but with him modulating the brake force he was able to outbrake others and gain time lap over lap.
Got curious, tried at low speeds & surprised how much the brake force modulation reduces the stoping distance. It has become a habit now and when the speed drops like maybe to 40mph or less instinctively modulate the braking.
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 123 ms ] threadFirst, in a car without ABS, I put on the brakes (I was probably going a little too fast) to avoid hitting the car stopped ahead of me. I started to slow down, but also to slip to the right towards the curb; it was scary, and I barely slowed down in time to avoid either collision.
Second, in a car with ABS, I slowed down to turn into a parking lot, and the ABS kicked in; the car went absolutely straight (without slowing down enough to make the turn), but I wasn't sliding at all, so I didn't have to worry about sliding into the curb. Big win.
Instead, it's all too happy to drift into oncoming traffic at a glacial pace. It could be specific to the various Toyotas I have owned...
Sorry to hear you had that experience! I've lived places where the "sink into the snow" was the right thing, but where I live now, there's very likely ice under the snow, so it's not clear if that would help.
The latter stuck. This instructor logic was, only if you are a pro driver you actually can outperform ABS. In emergency situations I break with full force without hesitation. This has lead to multiple avoided crashes and TBH two back collisions. Once I pushed so hard the break light sensor had to be replaced. In that case I saw a SUV struggling to stop in my rear view mirror. I had enough control to move to the right and have that SUV crash into the vehicle in front of me.
In this line of thought, it can be life saving to be overweight. I was about 120 kg back then and therefor had quite strong legs.
You can definitely get close to the performance of ABS with practice. Used to practice in the snow, in empty parking lots. (ABS or no ABS, everybody should safely practice recovering from spins and slides in empty parking lots! It's also really fun...)
The idea that a pro could outperform ABS is surprising to hear. I guess one area where a pro could outperform ABS is if you are trying to slow, not stop. All the ABS systems I've used seem to assume you're trying for a full stop.
Anyway, I'm really glad we have ABS now.
Assuming you have exceeded the limit of grip of the tires with the initial brake bite and the tires have started to lock up, by releasing and reapplying pressure you allow the tire to spin up again to regain grip and then apply more brake to help stop the car. I assume this was to kinda emulate what ABS is meant to do (albeit much slower?) but I never knew this was a thing until recently.
You do not need to pump the brakes if you can threshold brake, though I understand the fact that the vast majority of drivers on the road cannot do this and ABS is a life-saving fallback.
Also to add to your comment about everyone taking some time to practice. I would also 100% recommend a good racing simulator if you or a friend you know has one. Specifically a setup that has a load cell braking pedal. Most entry-level sim pedals are potentiometers which measure the distance your foot travels as opposed to a load cell which measures the force applied on the pedal. This is how my younger self learned to threshold brake (among other things) and I was surprised at how it all transferred to the real world when I finally hit the track later in life.
Source: I was a loadcell technician in a previous life.
And yeah, pumping the brakes was essentially the "manual" version of ABS. Depressing and releasing as rapidly as possible.
I always understood the term was cadence braking; that might be UK terminology though.
In a similar vein, a family member had a hardware issue in their laptop where some keys would not register some of the time (moisture). Their understanding was that they did not press hard enough for the device to register the press. This confusion between the boundaries of electronic and mechanical problems led to some mocking.
If your anecdote can be taken at face value - they could find some respite in the fact that by pressing the keys too hard they could damage some peripheral electronic parts.
In the past, this was likely true when ABS systems weren't able to control individual wheels. They can do that today, can check for wheel lock-ups and react dozens of times a second, and can therefore compensate for changing grip at different parts of the road during the entire stopping process.
In formula 1, where ABS has been banned, drivers have the capability to manually adjust brake balance (front/back and left/right) which they can do for each corner - so in this scenario it is true but only because they are given an advanced control, practice it over and over for the specific corner, and aren't allowed to use ABS to begin with.
I'm a little surprised there's no "pro ABS" for motorcycles which allows you to do a stoppie if you enable an option, and/or are keeping the bike perfectly straight.
There is an old SAE paper published by Chrysler that I can't find at the moment. IIRC, it was published in 1968 or 1969, and evaluated their new all-wheel[1] ABS system (later to be sold on the 1969-1973 Imperial).
The gist of it is that on most surfaces relevant passenger cars, ABS gives somewhat ~shorter~ [Edit: longer ] stopping distances but the difference is minimal compared to a trained professional driver, and both are significantly shorter than locking the wheels (what a non-pro is likely to do in a panic situation)
On ice, locking the wheels produces stopping distances that are several times greater than threshold braking. Wet pavement (especially asphalt) is better for ABS, too, though not as extreme as ICE. Importantly, threshold braking also enables the driver to maintain directional control on all surfaces, especially when the left and right wheels have different amounts of traction. ABS enables the driver to concentrate on steering while the computer adjusts the brakes.
However, on dry concrete, as well as gravel or snow, locking the wheels does produce somewhat shorter stopping distances. (Concrete tends to be aggressively textured, almost like sandpaper; gravel and snow can build up a "ramp" ahead of a locked wheel)
The only problem with locking for emergency stops is that 1) you wear the tires down to the cords after about 10 such emergency stops from 60 mph on dry concrete; and 2) the vehicle tends to spin. If the driver should happen to back off the brake pressure while partially spun, the vehicle will depart the road before they can react... so if you're going to lock the wheels, you have to really commit to it.
[1] Chrysler had 4-wheel ABS 10 years before Mercedes' "first car in the world with 4-wheel ABS", but Chrysler had computer logic to release brake pressure on both rear wheels if either one slipped (it had sensors in both rear wheels), which is how Mercedes was able to claim a "first" with their system that simply treated both rear wheels independently.
Hm. This [edit: the "shorter", which has now been corrected] doesn't fit my experience when I took advanced driver training years ago (I was a GM employee at the time). The training vehicles could have ABS enabled or disabled by a switch on the dashboard. The instructor first disabled ABS and had me practice threshold braking, until I reached the point where I could negotiate a setup with cones where you had to swerve left, then swerve back right, all while braking enough to not overshoot. I was able to do that several times with threshold braking after some practice.
Then the instructor turned the ABS on and had me try the cones again. I overshot every time.
Of course this was some 20 years ago, and more recent ABS systems might do better. But the SAE paper you refer to was even earlier.
Yup, that was a typo, see edit.
I think full braking should be part of driver training. A lot of people I know are very hesitant to brake full force and I think a lot of accidents happen because people don't really brake all out when needed.
As far as driver training goers, a little training in sliding would also be very helpful so people know what to do when the car has understeering or oversteering.
For instance, a lot of drivers prefer to swerve rather than brake ... because they're afraid of getting hit from behind, because everyone is tail-gating.
An added bonus is that most of time the impatient drivers will just go around me and I don't need to worry too much about tailgaters.
I so wish this were more true; I've been tailgated for 10s of miles in the right lane on a freeway with light traffic that was never fewer than 3 lanes for the entirety of that distance.
Honestly I would love for tailgating to have automated enforcement with each ticket doubling in fines. In a few weeks we'd weed most of the bad drivers off the road, and at least in my imagined scenario road safety would increase dramatically.
It works most times I've tried it.
Couldn't agree more. It's beyond negligent that with the current state of drivers ed the first time a driver will need to emergency brake, or even feel abs activate will be in a potentially life or deal situation.
I thought it was. I distinctly remember my Dad telling me to slam on the brakes while teaching me to drive. I pushed them hard, but nothing crazy. He said to get up to speed and kick the pedal through the floor and hold it there.
Older car, full lockup and skid for a good distance. We did that more than once.
Now 25 years later, I do exactly the same thing every year at the first snowfall , and a few times during the winter to get the feel of everything going extremely vague.
Same when my mother taught me to drive. She even took advantage of rainy days to take me out to a large empty parking lot and we practiced how to deal with hydroplaning.
Though they also checked the car I was using had ABS first, they might have had a slightly different process otherwise? Though in the UK it's common to have a professional driving instructor with their own car you'd use for learning and borrow for the test, so there was likely an expected minimum age and spec of car people were doing their tests in.
And having done the California driving test a few years back as well, comparatively the US one was pretty trivial in comparison. And I've heard the CA test is one of the harder ones in the states.
Test instructors are told they should carry out the emergency stop on one third of tests at random, and that was the guidance at least as far back as 13 years ago ( https://www.adicpd.co.uk/dsa-dt1-standard-operating-procedur... has a copy from 10 years ago, see page 40). A FOIA response I saw showed numbers that align with that, so unless some instructors are doing the emergency stop and then falsely reporting they didn't...
Under hard braking conditions? Yeah. Especially since we have quite a lot of snow and ice here every year, you do sorta get used to the ABS feel and crunching sound.
I once had a close encounter on snow where some idiot came way too fast a downhill and slid onto my lane. Pretty sure I kept my foot planted on the brake while going as far right as there was road there.
My bike definitely pulses the brakes in a way that you feel on the controls, but they are directly connected to the hydraulics.
I also learnt that teslas (at least the 3 and y) don't do steer by wire so when you play the games using your steering wheel you so turn the wheels a little bit.
You can also find an empty parking lot after a snow storm and do donuts for "education". Just avoid light poles ;)
Me and my friends did this for hours after each snowfall. Great training. One of my friends hadn’t heard of your light pole advice and mangled his Golf GTI pretty good.
I like to think we became safer winter drivers as a result.
Perhaps being required to actually use 100% braking power to pass is enough :)
In this respect, motorcycle training courses are MUCH better, and have numerous braking and swerving drills, but they have to be, because motorcycles require a higher-level of attention and are significantly more dangerous to operate than a car.
For the driver. Cars are more dangerous than motorcycles for everybody but the people inside/on it, which means that swerving and braking exercises are actually much more necessary for car drivers than for motorcycle riders
This said, I prefer my mode of transportation to have a hard crunchy outside to protect my soft gooey insides.
Then why does almost every motorcyclist I see ride dangerously? They all follow too close. Many will spill over into the oncoming traffic lane to overtake something in their own lane, just expecting you to move to the shoulder so they can go the wrong way in your lane.
Later I see them stopped for fuel or food and it's all grey haired dudes.
Agreed on the lowering of consumerism.
Doesn't need to be anything serious but it can bring oil/etc to the surface and it's good habit to be feeling what you're driving.
So now they've created brake-assist options that try to determine when such a case is occurring, and slam on the brakes as hard as the car is able.
As incredulous as that sounds, it's apparently improved overall safety.
From what I've read the tech has been around since the 90's but has become much more standard.
I figured the amount of pressure required to lock the wheels was fairly minimal.
I did the Mini Stunt Driving Course the other week in Palm Springs. One of the first things they cover is emergency braking. Even in that situation — not an emergency; the whole point is to stop the car as fast as possible — I had trouble overcoming the urge to NOT brake as hard as I could. It took a few runs for me to get myself to stand on the brakes properly.
When I get in a car and need to adjust the seat, I slide my butt to the back of the seat and push the brake pedal all the way to the floor. What I’m looking for is being able to have it on the floor slightly before my knee locks and without my foot needing to leave the floor (i.e., not lifting my foot up and pushing with the tip of my toes or something).
I know that I can apply 100% braking force. If I were much further back I could not.
I often get in the cars of people 6”+ shorter than me and… don’t need to slide the seat back. I get in cars driven by people around the same height as me and need to pull the seat forward. My wife is one example—she’s around 4” shorter than me and when I drive her car I keep the seat in the same position she does.
It’s a pet theory that the majority of people driving on the road day to day have their seat positioned so they’re actually physically incapable of braking with full strength.
Also if you lose brake assist. I've read a handful of "out of control car" stories where the driver reported the brakes didn't work. Well yes, without power brakes it feels like stepping on a piece of wood. You need to apply a LOT of force to stop a modern car without power brakes, "putting both feet on the pedal and pushing with everything you've got" a lot. Bending the brake pedal is better than crossing into oncoming traffic.
Braking harder may have also applied maximum braking sooner, or you may have been able to get tread marks on all wheels instead of only some wheels.
Also, as a more experienced driver, I definitely have fewer expectations that other vehicles will stop when they're supposed to. If you had visibility of the vehicle before it blew the stop sign, you may have been able to predict and slow down sooner or take evasive action.
That same strategy doesn't work as well on a motorcycle equipped with ABS as you still need to preload the front tire before applying full braking power. As the video shows, this minimizes your stopping distance. Like a car, once you're fully on the brake then stay on it - the ABS system will take care to prevent wheel lockup and skid.
As this example of yours shows, a key benefit of ABS (if you're not a professional driver) is that it allows you to steer as well as brake, by preventing the wheels from locking). IIRC studies have shown that the majority of accidents cannot be avoided by braking alone even with an optimal stopping distance; you need to be able to steer as well.
In advanced driving lessons, in both dry and snowy conditions, goodn driving instructors not only acknowledged but demonstrated, it is POSSIBLE to break better than ABS. But in an uncontrolled, unanticipated emergency (where you don't necessarily get to pick your breaking point and posture etc), ABS gives you steering control. It takes practice to utilize that ability, mostly people just focus and fixate in the obstacle ahead of them they are trying to not hit. But the miraculous, magical ability to steer with ABS is an absolute life saver.
Indeed! Forgot all about my takeaway #2 of the course, thanks for reminding me. People tend to focus wrong in an emergency. Look further ahead, get the bigger picture otherwise you actually steer toward the collision as a self fulfilling prophecy.
I'd imagine even then, this only applied 20 years ago when ABS was still relatively primitive. I've had only triggered the ABS on my ~2015 car a couple of times but I don't think I could have done significantly better than it even in a non-panic situation.
people that lack the ability to lock the wheels on their vehicle on-demand shouldn't be driving it without aids.
it's exclusionary, but even as a paralyzed person who is mandated to use hand controls for throttle and brake it was expected of me to demonstrate that I could leverage enough force on the brake pedal to initiate lock-up in a timely manner -- and modern cars with power-assist brakes should have little problem doing so.
And if you aren't covering how much speed was lost at the end of the stopping period your analysis is kind of worthless. Yes, you can stop faster with clean road and good execution of old stopping technique. Ignoring that the analysis is that that just isn't happening, but focusing on the extra 20 feet you travel with ABS ignores just how much slower you are already going for that last 20 feet. Even assuming you'd still be in a wreck, if you can reduce the brain to the panic of "slam brakes" and get a massive reduction in speed, that is still almost certainly good, no?
Tangential query - is the difference between ABS and no ABS greater or lesser than bad tires and top of the line summers?
Getting very expensive tires has quite a huge impact on stopping distance from what I’ve experienced. Having 255s up front also helps ;)
I've read about police receiving the opposite instruction: a reminder during training that they should keep their foot on the brake when they feel the ABS coming on. Apparently too many police were crashing because they'd lift, and attempt threshold braking as they'd been trained back in the day, when they felt the ABS coming on. They were interpreting the feel of ABS as a loss in traction.
The ABS does allow better control if you break traction, but lenthens your stopping distance. They want their drivers to not break traction, and keep the stopping distance short. Big difference between a Subaru slamming into you because it couldn't stop fast enough, and a firetruck loaded with 1500 gallons of water, etc, slamming into you.
If this is a modern ABS system I'd be shocked if they could beat it. See this short video comparing a 20 year old (at the time) vs modern semi-trailer weighing 38.5 metric tons (84,000 lbs). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo6C3HEpfsQ
Interesting stuff.
Not much of a myth, there.
Spoiler: without ABS, you'll just spin into the moose. With ABS you maybe wont stop, but the main thing is not being crushed by the moose.
Not joking about the moose. They put up cones and say this is the moose. Without ABS everyone spins like a carnival ride, and hits the moose.
When the 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee was released, it was an early release in mid-2013.
And, yes, it was an early release. The first month or so of models had all sorts of problems. And one of them was that the stability control system was not dialed in.
You can hunt down early video of the vehicle not doing well in the moose test. It does the swerve, but practically loses control. It’s rather horrific.
Later, they updated the systems and it performs the same test much, much better.
Most of these systems and what they do for day to day drivers is invisible. Watching the Jeep fail, and then later succeed, just shows how capable those systems really are.
Mythbusters vs. Moose (rubber)
It's sobering.
As described in the video, motorcycles perform funny under braking. If you slam the brakes too fast, you have very little grip. ABS kicks in and you’re not stopping. If you progressively brake correctly, you transfer load to the front tyre and increase grip. ABS kicks in, but you’re stopping effectively.
Same is true in a car just way way less observable because you have more tyres, better grip, and your foot doesn’t slam the brakes as fast as your hand does. But you can play with this on gravel or on snow.
Now here’s the really fun part. Most motorcycle riders most of the time never brake with more than like 60% of theoretical threshold. Here’s a tkacs talk explaining this problem: https://youtu.be/CpaFeZ4xS8g?si=xI_29sLDY82UZziV
tldr: If you ride motorcycles, go out and practice. It may save your life.
For example, I once almost painted my pants brown braking from 80mph to 60mph because a car spooked me and the ABS kicked in in the middle of the freeway. I was nowhere near actual threshold, but the car made my lizard brain kick in and squeeze the lever too fast.
It’s like saying “Doing the perfect thing every time is best”. Which is true but not useful.
And they teach you about progressive braking in the first hour of learning to ride. Then they keep repeating it all the time. Every rider on the road knows that they should do this. It’s the execution that is hard.
More surface contact != More traction.
Grip in a motorcycle is only really limited by gravity. That's still far better than most cars. The average motorcycle (or bicycle, for that matter) will have little problem hitting 35 degrees lean and therefore produce lateral G forces exceeding that of a typical car.
Same is true for deceleration, the average bike is going to be able to slow down as fast or faster than the average car, even if you just let ABS takeover.
Motorcycles don't have any disadvantage in grip unless you're comparing them to the supercars that have significant downforce.
It really does come down to practice. The machine itself is more than capable. Even a cheap entry level motorcycle is eminently more capable in terms of braking and corner than many sports cars. The cool thing about have two tires, is that you don't need a super fancy suspension setup to be able to corner fast, you just need good tires.
You brake hard, rear grip goes to zero, and you fishtail. Then you have to reduce braking force or you crash. This doesn’t happen in a car because unloading 2 independent tires is very hard.
You touch loose gravel going through a corner, front loses grip, you crash. Hitting the same gravel patch with 2+ car tires is unlikely.
They had a bike that was equipped with a roll-cage, like an exoskeleton that prevented it from actually flipping but did allow it to lay over enough such that it would. Then they sent the bike through excessive lean angles across slippery surfaces.
The riders who adjusted for the slippage wrecked, the ones who just allowed the bike to fish a little didn't.
Of course that's assuming you aren't too close to the threshold, etc.
But it was eye opening to learn to just kind of hang on and trust the machine a bit.
Luckily insurance paid for bike damage and new gear. I only got a bruise where my elbow missed the elbow pads. Bike stopped maybe 50ft down the road.
And cars don't lock up a single wheel without ABD. When they do lock up you generally lock everything up.
The question is, do cars have more grip? No, not really. Do they have better braking performance? Not really, either. Are they easier to use? Sure. The reason you can have a harder time on a bike isn't because of any fundamental limitation, it's just poor training - the video is correct. And car drivers also don't break anywhere near the theoretical potential of their car, either.
I don’t claim to be able to out brake ABS on the varied conditions of the street though. I would NEVER turn off ABS outside a controlled environment. Honestly it should be a legal requirement for bikes just like cars and it’s pretty silly that manufacturers like to charge $500-1000 extra for this feature.
The only other place I'd turn off ABS is driving offroad, tho I hear that has improved a lot over the years as well.
I'm actually kind of surprised a motorcycle ABS controller apparently doesn't include include sensors for the deceleration vector, bike rotation, the compression of the front shock, the weight on the rear wheel, etc. I'd think that a computer could reliably beat a human, given the right sensors.
>But maybe the calculus changes with motorcycles' higher speed, as maintaining steerability becomes that much more important?
It's just a panic response. Everybody on a motorcycle (hopefully) knows that you should be using front brake to slow down as quickly as possible, unless you need to swerve of course :)
there are a lot of old fogeys who think if you touch the front brake you'll flip over the bars. the MSF class specifically teaches that the front is 80% of your braking and to use both brakes, but a lot of motorcyclists never get a permit/license and learn from a family member or something, so myths persist
My first day out with my bike, i was staring at my foot trying to figure out why i was in the wrong gear. I looked up and was heading for the median. grabbed fistful of front brake to massive stoppie. I got luck and didn't lay the bike now. but front brake was drilled into me by the safety course i took. i didn't even think
I love it when two different aspects of my life collide!
For the HNers who don't know much about motorcycles, in the motorcycling world there's a big argument whether ABS is a net good or not. The old-timers tend to say "learn to ride your bike, you can beat ABS." Manufacturers site statistics saying ABS saves lives. This video is good in that it shows old-timer braking + ABS gives the best of both worlds. Somewhat paradoxically, in the world of motorcycles, even with ABS, just slamming on the brakes isn't the best strategy for emergency stopping. You'll stop faster with two-phase braking. That's why it's critical motorcycle riders practice emergency braking. You have to practice it enough to make it muscle memory.
It seems like there is no technical reason why phased braking couldn't be added to a more advanced ABS system. Early car ABS systems were also much worse for stopping distance than threshold braking, but more advanced systems have made up much of the difference.
It seems to me that both of these things can be true at the same time.
Indeed threshold braking (which is what this is) is a very important skill to practice for a motorcycle rider.
However, that said, while folks can practice the maneuver, what is very difficult to practice is the situation. It’s one thing to practice on a dry parking lot in front of a cone or tennis ball.
It’s quite another to practice on the street in a crummy intersection with an F-150 turning left in front of you.
It’s always important to have data like this, talking about limits of systems, our role and impact as riders with such systems. This is a good video (all of Ryan’s stuff is excellent).
But I have seen others actually advocate switching ABS off, and I think that’s a bit irresponsible. Off road is a different problem, and a complicated environment for an ABS system. The track is another controlled space where folks can test limitations. Many bikes offer the ability to disable ABS systems (as a first class concept) just for these reasons.
But neither of those are the street. There are a lot of situations where straight line stopping is not necessarily the correct response. ABS is a boon in more cases than it’s not when it comes to emergency maneuvers.
The street is complex and unforgiving. Anyone who’s been in the community for any length of time knows about very skilled, even professional, riders that the street has taken from their families.
I love motorcycles and riding. I have for a very long time. And my simple rule is I don’t recommend it to anyone. It’s very dangerous. As riders, these systems are excellent, and get better every year.
Practice threshold breaking, by all means. Practice everything. But on the street, you need every edge. Leave your ABS on.
Never disable ABS when riding on the street. You never know what you're going to do in an actual emergency situation (most riders only use the rear brake in such scenarios?!) so it's good to have ABS to back up your lizard brain.
"not even the soap operas from F1 could outbrake the ABS system, but on a motorcycle ..."
So this video starts with a lie to justify its clickbait title.
Got curious, tried at low speeds & surprised how much the brake force modulation reduces the stoping distance. It has become a habit now and when the speed drops like maybe to 40mph or less instinctively modulate the braking.