6 Apr
1999
6 Apr
'99
8:09 a.m.
RE ABS
I love it, most racers I know love it, and IMNSHO you have it all wrong.
All it took for me was a couple passes on a wet track doing emergency lane
changes, with and without ABS in a small Audi. With ABS you stomp the
brakes and change lanes. Without ABS its a toss of the dice on your
reaction, skill, and the grip of the tires, and most people get to set up a
lot of orange cones after a spin.
As someone that has done laps on the high bak of Louden (NH national
speedway) I can say that skill helps. ABS is a big helper and as long as
the tires are turning you can steer but one they start skidding your on a
sled going the direction inertia dictates. Ask any serious racer what
happens when the tires loose grip...
Trusting a micro...
Mission critical systems exist all over the place and failure modes range
from fault tolerent to fail soft. Fail soft is the
way ABS works, if it
fails you still have conventional powerassisted brakes. A
insulin pump
has fault tolerencee where if one micro goes south there is another to:
A) prevent excess insulin administration
b) notify the user.
Aircraft fault tolerence for fly by wire:
A) notify the pilot!
b) Continue operation (multiple systems with redundancy).
c) not interfere with the backup systems (many).
Teh real difficulty is defining a fault, and what actions must be taken if
there is one.
Allison