ABS and Audi's "Antilock Off" Switch

[Cody Forbes]

I believe it's a matter of dumbing it down. Idiots would turn it off and crash then blame the manufacturer for giving them the button that they "didnt know would do that". Kinda like manual diff locks that were dumbed down to the piece of trash known as EDL. 

-Cody Forbes (mobile)

On Jan 31, 2013, at 10:13 PM, "mboucher70 hotmail.com" <mboucher70 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> In December, during a highway drive from Toronto to Montreal, weather turned quite bad.  At some point we were brought to stop-and-go traffic, perhaps between 0 and 20 km/h.  At one point when we needed to stop, it turned out that we were on black ice hidden by blowing snow.  The ABS kicked in, and it seemed as though we’d sail straight into the car in front of us!  I kept solid pressure on the pedal, and we JUST managed to stop, probably within a few inches of the car in front.  If we hadn't stopped, it wouldn't have been much more than a harsh bump.  Nonetheless, it’s a bad feeling!
> 
> I'd had similar (though not nearly as bad) experiences in the past, but still never disengaged the ABS because all of the studies I'd read had made the case that ABS could save your life if you locked up the tires at high speed.
> 
> After this near miss, I’d had it with the ABS.  I immediately put the car in park, pressed the "Antilock Off" switch, and continued the drive.  It felt so much more in control, at low speeds, even if I was locking them up at times.
> 
> Question I've been pondering is what's to be concluded from this about the "Antilock Off" feature that used to be available:
> 
> 1.) It was useful in situations such as that above, but since the overall benefits of ABS outweighed the downsides, it just became a standard safety feature and “Antilock Off" switches disappeared.
> 
> 2.) ABS has significantly improved from designs used around the 1990 vintage, to make the need to disable them obsolete.
> 
> 3.) The “Antilock Off” switch was a useful feature and would be nice to have in current-day production cars.
> 
> Other thoughts?
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