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Originally Posted by Martian
When I personally drive a car, I prefer not to have ABS for the simple reason that on the road it's not really all that useful. The car companies have done an excellent job of convincing the public in general that lock-ups are universally bad, yet it remains the fastest way to stop a moving vehicle - if you lock the wheels, you will stop in a shorter distance.
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This is not true at all. Locking up the wheels lengthens the stopping distance considerably (~20-50%). It also destroys your tires at high speed. Disregarding directional control issues, there is an optimal brake pressure in all conditions, and almost nobody has the skill to apply it in an emergency, or on wet and icy roads (where you have no tire squeeling to help you out).
ABS automatically figures everything out for you. It does bias things so that you retain some directional control at the expense of stopping distance, but it does both better than almost any driver when they're not expecting something (although you'd probably have quite a bit of trouble getting them to admit this even to themselves...).
There are a number of other issues as well which a good 4-wheel ABS system will take care of that no driver could. In the real world, it's often true that available traction will be considerably different on each tire. ABS can individually control each of those calipers. The driver only has one brake pedal, so there's no way that he could do this.
Even on a perfectly uniform surface, you still have to worry about the different brake pressures on the front and rear axles. The optimal split depends quite a bit on the amount of traction availalbe, among other things. For the best braking, it therefore should not be set once and for all from the factory. Cars without ABS had to make do with a front-rear brake bias designed so that the rear wheels would never lock up before the fronts (for safety). (Good) ABS systems effectively remove this compromise.
While there are bad systems out there, the good ones are very useful. And for those saying that it's too expensive because it's rarely useful, realize that it more than pays for itself even if you only need it once.