A Test Track Performance Evaluation of Current Production Light Vehicle Antilock Brake Systems was conducted to compare the braking performance of vehicles equipped with present-day antilock brake systems (ABS) with the performance of the same vehicle without ABS (simulated conventional brakes) over a large range of driving conditions. The motivation for this work was to attempt to find situations and/or conditions in which ABS-equipped vehicles did not perform as well as their non-ABS counterpartsn, ot to compare vehicles or antilock brake systems to one another.

The braking performance of nine high production passengevre hiclesw as evaluatedin seventeens topping situations. These situations were comprised of various road surfaces, driver steering actions, and vehicle speeds.T estingw asp erformedw ith lightly andh eavily laden vehicles, with the ABS active and disabled, and used two brake pedal application techniques. The selectedv ehicles includeda t leasto neA BS from eight current ABS manufacturers.

This study found that for most stopping maneuvers on most surfaces, ABS-assisted full pedal brake application stops were shorter than those made with the ABS disabled. Additionally, vehicular stability during these maneuvers was almost always superior with the assistance of ABS. The one systematic exception was on loose gravel where stopping distances increased by an average of 27.2 percent overall.