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After VW was outed for falsifying environmental data in its cars hundreds of thousand of VW vehicles were taken off the road now sitting in storage sites. Hundreds of thousands of cars now lie in lots in the Mojave Desert, a shuttered suburban Detroit football stadium, and a former Minnesota paper mill in America alone. These vehicles are now in the open slowly breaking down with pollutants entering the environment. Is the the modern cost of corporate greed? What can we do to ensure this never happens again?
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Half a Million VW Vehicles Dumped in Graveyards
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Hey, wait a minute!! I want a divorce!! ... you're not Clint Eastwood!!
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday December 09 2018, @04:27AM (5 children)
If the wheels on the right side are locking and releasing, then without ABS they'd just lock and slide providing LESS effective braking.
It might be better if your brake system could operate with more subtlety and provide still more braking power, but your brakes are hardly "on strike" and you aren't better off without ABS.
On a late rainy night when there's no traffic around, pull the fuse on your ABS and give it a try. But be careful, you might be in for a surprise.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 09 2018, @06:58AM
> If the wheels on the right side are locking and releasing, then without ABS they'd just lock and slide providing LESS effective braking.
Probably not true. If the wheels on the right side are in deformable mud and gravel, locking them will build up a wedge of loose material in front of the tires and this will (in many cases) give more deceleration than with ABS operating.
Yes, try without the ABS. Pulling the ABS fuse is a common strategy by knowledgeable drivers in my area (Great Lakes) where slush over ice is frequent. In my case, I keep an older "winter car" that does not have ABS. I learned to pump the brakes as a kid (someone else called this "cadence braking"). On slush there is some skill in deciding when to pump vs. when to lock (for a short time) and then release if steering is needed. None of the ABS systems I've tried (many but not all) are not "smart" enough to detect a deformable surface and change strategy.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 09 2018, @07:10AM (3 children)
Without ABS (and without manual brake pumping) the loose material builds up in front of the tires. Given the bad surface, this is your best option. Pushing those piles of loose material is better than nothing; with ABS you get nothing.
ABS is OKish on normal asphalt that is perhaps a bit moist with light rain. Experienced non-ABS drivers can do as well however, by manually pumping the brakes.
We have ABS because the typical driver is a distracted or sleepy idiot, and because mildly slippery conditions are more common than loose surfaces. Under less typical conditions, such as an experienced driver on very loose gravel or sand, ABS makes things worse.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 09 2018, @08:17AM (2 children)
Perhaps it is necessary to state clearly for most people:
On dry, stable surfaces, ABS in a panic stop is frightening when an old-school driver uses it for the first time in a panic stop. I thought that I understood how it would work, only to find that my concept was pretty wildly skewed from reality. (Panic stop means I should have begun to stop many seconds, perhaps a whole minute before I did attempt to stop.) Until the first time you NEED ABS, you are accustomed to wheels locking up, but with ABS, they don't lock. No screeching, no skid marks, just brake and release, over and over. And, it's frightening, because your brain just KNOWS that you're not stopping quickly enough.
It's only after the fact that you can evaluate what has just occurred, and you can compare it with the old-timey skid.
In those conditions, yes, ABS really does work well. And, the same can be said for stable, but wet road surfaces, with no ice. In these conditions, ABS prevents skidding that can cost lives. It's difficult if not impossible to induce a skid in a car with ABS under these conditions.
All through this discussion, however, we have been discussing all those OTHER conditions that auto engineers don't, and can't, exactly plan for.
I will say that when all four wheels brake independently of each other, you probably have the best all-around setup. But, it is necessary to point out that the whole system needs to be serviced regularly to be reliable. When any component decides to quit, for whatever reason, that ABS isn't going to work as intended. And, you will not discover that fact until just exactly the wrong moment.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 09 2018, @06:58PM (1 child)
> On dry, stable surfaces, ABS in a panic stop is frightening when an old-school driver uses it for the first time in a panic stop.
What, the first time you tried your ABS was in an actual panic situation? Where is your curiosity, did you lose it in the Navy? Is your car/truck new enough that it has other "nanny" features like ESC (stability control)? If so, I strongly suggest you find a safe place to try them out, so you won't be surprised when they take away (some of) your control of the vehicle.
The first time I was in a car with ABS (early 1980s) I drove to a quiet/empty/dry/hard road and tried it for myself, first at a low speed, then working up to higher speeds. Got used to the noise and pulsation and after that I wasn't surprised when it engaged. Also, tried steering when ABS engaged, it works surprisingly well, in general it seems that the harder you turn the car the less braking you get...
Now, if I'm on a marginal surface (around here could be fresh snow), I still look for an opening in traffic and test the brakes to see how much stopping power I've got. Often this engages the ABS, no harm done and I've mentally "calibrated" the surface.
Te worst is slush stirred up around intersections, the wheels can lock so easily on slush that ABS nearly defeats all braking. That's when I really want the ABS-OFF switch.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 09 2018, @08:27PM
Uhhhhhhhhh, sorry, that's not what I said. What I said was, the first time I made a genuine panic stop, it was a frightening experience. Maybe a better way to state the case is, I didn't have faith in the brakes. Maybe I didn't play around long enough, or hard enough to learn to have faith in them. But, yes, like yourself, I've made use of empty lots in the rain, and in the snow, as well as learning how a "new" car handles. It can be surprising when a "sporty" looking car handles like an ancient station wagon, but a pickup or an SUV is almost sporty. It's always best to discover those things in an empty lot.