ABS - or is it Pure BS

At 16:02 05/04/99 -0700, many of you wrote: Yes, I think we are OT, exept if this (anyway interesting) discussion started talking about the CPU that drives the ABS systems (that's BTW older than 10 years). Anyway here my impressions: This is very true, and that's why my AUDI 90 was equipped with a switch to disable the ABS on snow. I' ve made many trials with and w./out ABS on snow and found that the switch had a real meaning. American? Was it a Bosch patent? The only page I found was on Mercedes: http://www.mercedes-benz.com/e/innovation/rd/forschung_nov96.htm Yes, in italian "ruota fonica" that in english should be a "sound wheel" or similar: it' the same used inside many needle printer to determine the movement of the carriage. I've asking myself the same thing. My thinking is that that the system start its action when it detects the wheel is stopping and it cuts the breaking pressure to this channel so the wheel starts again moving (even on ice an unbreaked wheel rolls), so, in general, it checks that "after cutting the breaking pressure to a stopped wheel, the same keep rolling or not" if yes the system wait for next locking situation, if no the system make some additional attemps on the channels then stops. I think that specially in recent versions the ABS is checking also different speed between wheels. This improvement was necessary to develop the ASR (Acceleration Skid Control) and the amazing ESP (Electronic Stability Program). I fully agree on the dangerous use of the brakes:I' ve tried to conduct narrow mountain curves with snow, finding wich solution would better work in case I found myself to enter the curve with a higher speed (at last with my front wheel drive car) So I' ve tryed different possibilities E.g. brakes, acceleration, clutch and brakes, a lower gear etc. I found that the best is "clutch and pray" In fact: brakes or clutch and brakes = front wheel skid + worse stability lower gear or acceleration = similarly to breaks you are forcing the wheels to an unnatural speed (different radius)=skid + worse stability clutch and pray = with clutch pressed every wheels automatically adapt to the speed forced by the radius with lateral grip as only job to make, (e.g. with no loose of grip caused by de- or accelerations) and the pray helps...stability :-> All the above was to be considered with ABS=off fear and >inexperience. No, it's like the usage of safety belts, it works better or worse according to different situations: personally I thank the inventor of ABS because (unfortunately) I had the chance to verify its effectiveness when (in motorway speeding at 160 km/h) I suddenly found a stopped car in the fast lane. The good driving procedures said that one should break down the speed as much as possible (no steering) and then try to avoid the obstacle by steering by its side like this -------------------------------- [=]---->--->-->->->>>\ [X] -------------------------------- -[=] -------------------------------- but at that speed it's very difficult to keep the car in a straight direction to guarantee the necessary speed/stability to make the vital last steering.The working of ABS helped me to decrease the speed with more efficacy and allowed the late steering (while breaking):the car that followed me (no ABS) could'nt do the same and crashed against the stopped car. Really it's not only question of driving skills. Riccardo Romagnoli <chemif(a)mbox.queen.it> I-47100 Forl?