This is interesting! One never expected that one would be able to get unqualified driving tips/advice from DC Forums.
I just imagined a scenario where a Boeing 787Dreamliner was touching down on a nice dry runway and braking, and the captain saying to the co-pilot "Ease up on the brakes there Frank, I can feel the ABS kicking in a bit too much."
I wonder if that sort of scenario would ever be likely to occur?
(ABS was originally developed for aeronautical systems.)
-IainB
There's a very real chance that it actually does kick the ABS now that I think about it. When an aircraft first contacts the ground, there isn't a lot of weight on the wheels yet because the wings are still producing a lot of lift. The wheels will skid from low traction until the airspeed drops enough to transfer the weight, and a lot of runways have black streaks on them from repeated skids of incoming aircraft.
The difference is aircraft have far more frequent maintenance intervals, and have a much higher safety factor in the design because of how heavily regulated aircraft are. Having a brake line simply burst on an aircraft I should hope is an unheard-of event because of maintenance procedures dictating replacement of such components at set time periods.
On the other hand a car often isn't in the best of shape, and people tend to not realize stuff is about to break until it actually does. In the case of a brake line, your normal stop where you have plenty of distance and shouldn't rely on the automatic systems has now become an emergency stop because the loss of braking pressure means you don't have the stopping power you are used to. ABS won't help that situation at all, the automation frequently will throw a fault condition and shut down.
Having drivers in the habit of driving without relying on the automation means that when the automation fails unexpectedly, you still can remain in control of the vehicle and bring it to a safe stop assuming that the loss of stopping power doesn't make you run out of stopping distance or you are able to avoid the hazard and give yourself additional space.
Of course if the automation is working properly, it is hard to beat- and you almost certainly won't doing it by hand. But in the case of ABS, you should stay in the habit of not relying on it. Let it do its job during the emergencies it was designed to deal with, under more relaxed conditions the person driving should be making the decisions not the vehicle they are operating.
And yes. I think most of the debate over ABS was people agreeing that in an emergency stop scenario the ABS will beat the manual control every time, but under relaxed conditions it is better from a maintenance and driving habits standpoint to back off and retain manual control to reduce component wear.
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