I live on a rural dirt road, ABS and dirt roads don't go. You come down the
hill to a T intersection and hit the brakes - if you are going a little too
quick and hit the brakes
hard, the car with ABS will just sail through the intersection (unless you
do a handbrake
turn like I had to do!). With a non-ABS car, you still stop reasonable well
when you lock up the wheels on dirt.
I suspect that the reason is that when you lock up on dirst, you scrub all
the loose
stuff off the top and get down to a surface with some bite. Sure, if you
could get
at this stuff while avoiding lockup, you'd stop faster, but you can't get to
it. The loose
stuff has a much lower coefficient of friction than the underlayer.
I never did say that ABS was bad on snow or ice, I said I didn't know
because here
in beautiful Melbourne, Australia were don't have the stinkin' winter
weather much of
North America is cursed with. My experience in snow is limited to the ski
resorts
where chains are compulsory.
On sealed roads, ABS is great.
Mike
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