Big Brakes

[Larry C Leung]

The concept of Brake Assist is that many drivers DO NOT do full stomp on
their brakes (too used to lock up on older non-ABS systems perhaps), so
it's more of a psychological, rather than mechanical tool. It puts the
system into full ABS pulse (basically, for all intents and purposes,
maximum stopping force due to tractive limits) IF it senses a rapid
enough release of the gas and stomp RATE on the brakes, steering, etc,
such as the system believes there is an emergency situation ahead. What I
find interesting is that, the way people around here (suburban big city,
in this case, NYC) do NOT leave anywhere NEAR enough following distance,
I wonder how many rear enders Brake Assist will cause, i.e. un-attentive
driver rear ends Mercedes, Lexus, whatever when said luxo car driver over
reacts or panics. Not that it won't save lives, but.....

LL - NY

On Thu, 30 Aug 2001 20:57:26 -0700 (PDT) Ti Kan <ti at amb.org> writes:
>Larry C Leung writes:
>> Yeah, BUT, you still need to make the tires grip the road. As long 
>as the
>> brake is capable of locking a wheel, the average strength of the 
>brake is
>> essentially the same.
>
>Which brings me to a question about the "Brake Assist" feature that 
>is
>now appearing on new Mercedes, Lexus and some other cars.  What is 
>it?
>If it just stomps on the brakes harder for you, all it's going to do 
>is
>to make the ABS go into full pulse (or wheel lockup on cars sans 
>ABS)...
>More brake force isn't going to help things if you go beyond 
>tire/road
>traction limits.
>
>As it stands, on all my Audis it's easy enough to do that without any
>assist from the car, unless the car companies think that most drivers
>are so weak-footed that warrants such a "feature"?  Hmm.
>
>-Ti
>01 S4 2.7 biturbo quattro
>84 5000S 2.1 turbo
>80 4000 2.0
>-- 
>    ///  Ti Kan                Vorsprung durch Technik
>   ///   AMB Research Laboratories, Sunnyvale, CA. USA
>  ///    ti at amb.org
> //////  http://www.amb.org/ti/
>///
>