It didn't until very recently on road cars - the last three or four years. And even then only on the slightly more expensive cars (i.e. those in the £15k+ market. I doubt that the cheap Tatas in the £6k region have such advanced ABS just yet.
Drive a 90s car with ABS and you'll need to use quite long rules to measure how much worse the braking distances will be in most (but not all, I grant you) situations.
Well to suggest a human can brake better than ABS I find arrogant. You can't modulate braking with all 4 wheels with just one pedal, you are just pressing the pedal as much as it allows before it locks up, and even then you can have 1 or 2 of the wheels still locking.
And old ABS systems weren't able to do that - they could reduce the pressure on one wheel, but not increase it. So you never had more braking that you asked for - and only less. Therefore a skilled driver could maintain threshold braking for longer.
Also, the Mitsubishi starion (which the XRG/XRT is based on) only had single channel anti-lock on the rear wheels.
I find it odd they would put it only on the rears, but thats what all my sources say.
I have done 4 replays with a layout I call Lock and Pop test, I did a no ABS lock and pop, an ABS steering maneuver, and straight stop with both (and crashed with both doing it).
I also set up my car like a Starion, that means moderately loose suspension and Starion ratios.
The thing is, I've never posted replays before. So I have a question, do I need to post the setup and layout files as well, or is that in the save file somehow?
Also there is one other side ABS function. ABS also helps you to maintain straight line braking when your car is on different surfaces, for egg. left side on tarmac, other on mud. In such conditions when braking wheels on more slippery surface would lock quicker than on other, so car would start to spin at that direction. ABS as you all already know has ability to apply pressure to each wheel independently so it applies less pressure on those who are on gripper surface maintaining full control of the car.
and PLEASE don't confuse the different driving aids, again:
read the first 2 pages & understand what's presented there.
ABS does nothing more than to prevent overbraking, thus preserving you traction on all 4 wheels under full brake-load so that you could still steer (and actually make it around an obstacle if there was any). And sure enough nothing less. AND YES it does it "in reverse", as well since it functions independently from any gears (although it won't cut in at walking-pace! 6 km/h minimum speed on my car, as stated in the manual)
What you Interjmt and BlueFlame are going on about is NOT 'ABS', but the more advanced stability management systems present in newer cars. They might (in their individual implementation) integrate with the ABS-function to assure best results - but they are originally designed for another purpose and thereby named seperately. I guess that's all what it was: a name-confusion of all things
ABS on most older cars was only meant to help you be able to steer (ie not lock the wheels so you could attempt to steer around obstacle) not really decrease braking distances. just my 2cents worth.
on a real car the ABS works what ever way you are going, it just senses if your car is moving but the wheel's aren't, then it releases the pressure on the brakes, so it starts to rotate again.
To my knowledge and what ive got from this thread is that.
ABS can decrease the stopping distance to avoid a crash but it also allows you steer around a crash if you cannot pull the car up in time, without the fear of locking the brakes.
Thats what ive pulled from it, please dont hurt me
It's important to have ABS both if you go forward or backwards. If you didn't have ABS there would be a great risk that the car either will understeer or spin around when you brake. A car without ABS always stop faster if it's going in a straight line but when it comes to braking and turning at the same thime, the ABS is almost a must. Otherwise it will be really hard to steer. Specialy when going backwards and you have say 75% braking on the front wheels that act as backwheels atm.
People can brake better then abs if conditions are (more or less) constant like on track, however on public road, you never know exactly how much grip there is and how exactly the brakes will perform when hit hard after hardly being used for some time. That' s why on public road having abs is much saver for most people.
Also, what you describe is a stability-control system, abs is a much simpler system. If just reduces brake-force to avoid the lockup of any tyre and it would be very dangerous to this on one side of a car at a time. Left and right-brakebalance must always be exactly 50,0-50,0 or you gonna need a:littleangin case of an emercency stop. (except if your car also has a stability-system equipped)
Those opinions about ABS having longer brake distances is out of date.
This was the case with early ABS Systems, which didn't react quick enough.
Today ABS is very fast and will get the tires to about 20-40% slip. 30% would be for the perfect stopping power and a lot better than locked wheels. If it will even get faster, it will be even closer to 30%.
This is a braking test with exactly the same kind of new car and the same new tires on perfectly easy and dry conditions.
In one car wheels are just locked and the other uses ABS.
In the wet the difference is even more significant.
The only situation where ABS is possibly braking less is on snow or a lot of dirt on the street. A locked wheel will then push it in front of the wheel and it helps stopping. So a locked wheels is better in those situation.
Today ABS Plus will be used in cars. This takes into account these situations and will lock the wheels a bit to use this also.
A usual driver will always lock the wheels a bit if braking hard without ABS and therefore have a longer brakingway.
A very good driver can try to get the wheel as close to those 30% as possible. But I bet he won't beat a modern ABS System which interacts many times per second.
So longer braking ways are of the old days where ABS was reacting slowly and only a few times per second. Today it will always be at least as good as a good driver, but most times even better. And nobody has to concentrate ... just hit the brakes hard and you can concentrate on steering and other stuff.
But one thing is right: ABS was developed mainly to preserve the possibility of steering around an obstacle while braking hard and not to have the shortest possible way, because that was at that time not the case. A good driver could do this too by just not locking the wheels ...
If I remember correctly they tried abs in DTM during the early 90's (long time ago..) and lap times where reduced - with several seconds. It got banned fairly fast..
Modern abs does not just reduce braking pressure, it tries to optimum brake each wheel individually - something that just isnt possible for a human to do with one pedal.