Detroit Bureau: Is Toyota’s Image About to Crumble ?

All of this reminds me of when ABS came out, and cops everywhere swore they hated it and that it was useless and that it caused them problems and even crashes.

That people are ignorant and can't figure out what's happening and/or compensate for it, is a damn shame.

What is even more of a damn shame is that you have to learn to compensate for a 'safety feature'. Yes, you can compensate for the behavior of an ABS but you shouldn't have to. It should operate unobtrusively and it should not be fooled by bumps, potholes or ripples. Compensating for unexpected behavior only slows down your reaction speed and while it may not directly cause an accident, it can be a large contributing factor toward the cause.

The only compensation a driver need do is not freak-out at the sound or pedal sensation which hardly negatively affects transient response time.

Fact: cops couldn't get past the idea that they should NOT pump the brakes, that the computer was doing it much faster and more reliably, that all they had to do was stand on it and ask the computer to do it.

It's not "compensating;" it's a different thing entirely, because the machine got better.

That's because many of the early implementations were piss poor. The ABS on my 93 Corsica was a joke, the car would have been better off without it, it's cycle time was WAY too slow. Some of the early ABS's were a disaster in the snow. And yes, sometimes it was just unfamiliarity. Current ones tend to be quite good. It's possible that in the case of the prius there may be some interaction going on between the regen braking and real braking and the system is suddenly just turning off the regen braking.

There is no need to compensate for the new systems. Just plant your foot if your goal is to stop and ignore the pulsations.