Re: MR2's are dangerous!

Spot on.

Unless your conventional system has four pedals, one for each wheel, and the driver has four legs to control them, then there's no way you can apply maximum possible stopping force to each individual wheel.

Which is why I advocate the compulsory installation of specially trained "Stopping" Dogs fitted in all cars with 4 break pedals. A special hatch allows, at the owners discresion, the optional mauling of the reason for the emergency stop. Great for lone females in road rage incidents and deterring albino african pygmy children from running between parked cars on their way to the ice cream van.

Hurrah!

I may rip the ABS system from my own car and install 4 break pedals and a Stopping Dog.

Douglas

Ah well, I'm nothing if not consistent, I did of course mean "brake" pedals and not "break" pedals.

Douglas

"Nom" wrote

My Rover 825 was quite sideways when lifting off

in news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net, "Douglas Payne" slurred :

Me like :-)

Seconded !

Do it !

Ditto on a track, you can get more braking effort per lap / dissipate more heat by locking the wheels some of the time.

It's a different game to driving on public roads, much like engine power output on a track means you drive about on the red line all the time, rather than using the torque at lower revs.

[...]

Athol Highlanders.

A

[...]

The last front-driver I drove enough to know properly was a Saab 900i whose attitude remained throttle adjustable in all gears - not enough to bite you if expected, but there.

Admittedly a very "fronty" car; 4-6 sets of front tyres for each set of rears

[...]

I can see that as I read more :)

[...]

Nothing saves you if you exceed the available grip but ABS will divert more grip to steering and increase the *effectively* available grip.

Reducing braking effort for long enough to unload the front suspension will better exploit rear wheel grip than ABS - cascade braking - but it

*is* still nice to have ABS backing you up...

More usable grip, especially on inconsistently grippy surfaces, but when the grip is all gone, it's all gone!

A

[...woof...]

:)

A

Provided you adjust for the change in balance, it will. Just lifting off on its own has some, normally small, end swapping potential.

[...]

Yes, but my reading of the OP's post was that he expected a magical gift of grip.

It can, yes. I've not yet been bailed out by it though, even on a B-road blast ;)

You are, of course, correct :)

I think I had formed a mental image of the situation in the OP involving Teflon like levels of grip =8/

I'm old and ugly enough to instinctively cascade brake before the ABS gets a chance - I should learn to trust it more...

...not that I've ever run out of brakes on the road.

Indeedly!

Rear brake pressure limiters work remarkably well too ;)

A

I guess that's just an automatic reaction - I don't think about doing it.

It must happen on a subconscious level though, otherwise there'd be badness as you say :)

Ah, but they don't work side-to-side - only front-to-back. ABS comes into it's own when the available grip changes between sides - ie, when two wheels go into the gutter, or you're turning a corner (weight-transfer-outwards) etc.

ABS is your friend - it's there to help :)

[...]

These things are either automatic or too late, mostly... =8)

Every car I've owned over the last 10 years has had ABS and I've not once used it in anger :)

A

I don't know about that, under a good road emergency the weight transfer puts almost all the work onto the front tyres which you'll be sensing the grip through, and if they aren't balanced right to left you'll have been ignoring this dangerous fault every time you brake until that point.

I reckon you can get somewhere close to perfectly balanced without ABS, unless there are special circumstances, in the wet, etc.

Agreed, whether or not the car has ABS, if it stops in that distance in the snow at that time, that's what it does. It would be a driver problem if trying to make the car stop in a shorter distance than it does.

Personally, I see this as the danger of ABS. People start assuming they can stop in shorter distances than they can, not to mention the day they rely on the ABS and it has failed safe due to a bust sensor or whatnot.

Bollocks. Nom has no sense of momentum with a heavy car. ABS on snow or ice provides next to no retardation even at slow speeds; your car continues to move at 10mph as the wheels are simply not being braked.

At the point in question the car was doing 15mph with the roundabout 45 yards in front of me. Since both my girlfriend and I have driven in considerably worse conditions than most people in this country will ever have encountered, I suspect we've had more experience of braking in snow etc - she took her test at a time of year when Canda was full of 40ft snow banks and drifts.

Canadian drivers can't predict the behaviour of slushy, wet, British snow. They drive too fast and crash. British drivers are phased by the speeds feasible on real snow. They drive slowly and fail to realise that

10ft snowdrifts are /solid/. Between us, we can deal with pretty much any conditions, and I assure you that ABS and traction control is a hindrance, and implying that speed was any factor in the fact that the ABS intervened merely proves that Nom presumably doesn't vary his driving technique according to the weather - I wouldn't assume anyone was travelling fast in that situation in the first place.

Richard (don't most of you lot come from that crappy place down south where 2 inches of snow is a national disaster, anyway?)

How heavy is heavy ? The TI weighs a smidgeon over 1300Kg.

Of course they are - the ABS should be continually applying then relaxing the pressure on each wheel. I can still slow down in snow !

Er, you nearly crashed into the back of someone, in the snow :)

I quite agree, and have never said otherwise !

For the record, I'll repeat - lack of ABS in snow, is perfectly acceptable.

Surely it's physically impossible to avoid crashing, if you don't vary your driving technique according to the weather ?

If I hadn't gone very slowly to Hull on Saturday morning, across the Yorkshire Wolds, in subzero temperatures (complete with COPIOUS amounts of frost and ice on the country lanes), then I'd never have made it !

Ice + FWD + ~200bhp would have equalled disaster :)

Not me - I'm in the middle of nowhere, North Yorkshire.

-- Peter

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