Why You Should Trust Your ABS In Snowy Conditions

As Michigan drivers, there are many things we have to learn early on about how to keep ourselves protected when driving in the snow in Winter.

One of the main things that we are taught is to pump the brakes if our car starts sliding to give us a better chance of avoiding an accident. But for those of us with antilock brake systems in our car, pumping the brakes is not only meaningless, but it’s actually a bad decision, as the ABS is designed to give you the best chance at avoiding a crash.

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In fact, it’s so smart, it’s best we let it do the job for us. Learning with lyrics recently made a video about how ABS works, and I never thought I would learn so much from one song, but here’s what they describe.

The secret of ABS is letting your wheels almost lock up then rapidly releasing them before they fully lose traction over and over many times per second. A valve in the brake line flips open and closed, modulating the pressure hundred times per second. You feel that as a buzzing or pulsing pedal, that’s not something breaking, that is the system doing the “pump the brakes” trick faster and more precisely than any human ever could.

 

So basically, it keeps your wheels from locking up and plowing forward, which gives us a second chance to steer away from a potential incoming crash.

Pumping the brakes made sense before ABS was a standard on vehicles, but now that most vehicles have them, it's best we let ABS do the pumping for us.