Stopping distance in a car with ABS from 60mph

Ugur Dinch

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..is discussed at 3min of the video.
Very interesting results I think.

[video=youtube;Fsgu8AJZakQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsgu8AJZakQ[/video]
 
Whats interesting about the results?
 
it wasn't about ABS...it was about how he braked. Hammer it down and let the tech do the work...instead of gradually applying the brakes to the ABS point.
 
it wasn't about ABS...it was about how he braked. Hammer it down and let the tech do the work...instead of gradually applying the brakes to the ABS point.

Actually, it was exactly the opposite of what you said lol

When he slammed the brake pedal, the ABS kicked in. The car came to stopp 15meters farther away compared to feathering the pedal and keeping it at the "right-before-ABS".
 
The purpose of ABS has never been to decrease stopping distances, it's to allow panicked drivers to decelerate in controlled manner instead of sideways.

That said, the quality of ABS implementation varies greatly from car to car (and motorcycle to motorcycle)... manufacturers can do much better than a 15m difference.
 
I think those results were "TV'd up" as well though.
You notice the first stop didn't have the ABS hop as it would if he actually stomped down on the pedal.
Regardless, it just showed what common sense already taught us, ABS is a safety feature to help control a paniced driver, not to make you stop faster.
Also, did you really expect his stopping to get worse as he does the exact same stop over and over again?
 
Actually, it was exactly the opposite of what you said lol

When he slammed the brake pedal, the ABS kicked in. The car came to stopp 15meters farther away compared to feathering the pedal and keeping it at the "right-before-ABS".
No, that's not what happened. On the first try almost casually moved his foot to the brake (he actually hit the clutch faster) and then gradually applied more pressure until he could feel the ABS start to kick in.

The subsequent runs he went fast and hard on the brake pedal up to about the same point where the ABS was about to trigger. He could do this because he had a better feel for the threshold of tire grip with each previous run and could get to that point faster without going over.

So of course, his first try took much longer to come to a stop. The ABS thing isn't really relevant, other than to describe the feedback he got when he neared or crossed the threshold of grip.

It would have been useful to try just hammering the brake pedal without any regard for lockup and see how well the ABS performed, but they didn't (probably because the driver wouldn't improve if that's all he did)
 
My bad.. I didnt even pay attention to that first time around since I guess I was at work working lol

Now the test is so incomplete tho, what was the distance if the brake was slammed to max ??

I will conduct my own tests and come back with results.
 
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