You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you can scare the knickers off just about everyone if you so choose.
Take, for example, the report by the Highway Loss Data Institute, a fancy title for one of the many groups founded and funded by the insurance industry.
The institute said vehicles with four-wheel anti-lock brakes are involved in as many accidents and suffer as much damage as those without the system designed to help you come to a safe stop in the event of a panic stop.
The study said ABS isn’t a silver bullet.
Horsefeathers.
Just one more “the sky is falling” warning from the insurance industry, the folks who have to fork out some of the dough we pour into their coffers whenever fenders need replacing or a hood needs straightening.
And to make matters worse, the insurance industry demands that you replace the high-quality galvanized fender or hood, which underwent years of design and development by engineers using microscopic tolerances to ensure proper fit and function, with a chunk of flimsy metal produced in a basement in Taiwan by people using naked-eye estimates to determine whether the part could, would or should fit. And if you don’t agree to “like kind” junk, the insurance company that charges you hefty premiums insists that you pay the difference between Taiwanese tin and the good stuff.
To the insurance industry the only safe car is one that is never in an accident.
The insurance industry complained that cars should have air bags. The industry complied. The insurance industry was kind enough after it got its way to offer discounts on premium payments as a show of good faith.
What bags do is prevent those involved in front-end collisions from going through the windshield and having to have a specialist rearrange their face-a cost borne by your insurance company using your premium payments. Bags save thousands of dollars in claims.
What kind of premium discount did the insurance industry offer? Don’t know what the universal discount is, but based on the discount the twin daughters get for air bag-equipped cars it comes to $7.20 a year. If the bag cost $300 to install in the car, which was added to the cost of the vehicle, the $7.20 savings means in only 41.6 years each daughter would have amortized the cost of the system through the insurance savings. Of course, by then, they may have traded the car in for a new one.
But we digress.
The insurance industry has long called for 5-mile-per-hour bumpers, which means a bumper system that can withstand a 5-m.p.h. impact-such as you’d experience in a parking lot when some oaf backs into your car-without damage. The damage, of course, has to be paid by the insurance industry, so it wants the automakers to build stronger (which means heavier) cars to avoid that damage and reduce those claims.
To needle the automakers, who are trying to build lighter cars to meet federal fuel economy laws, the insurance folks often come out with crash studies that say when a car is run into a wall at 5 m.p.h. without those bumpers, it experiences $42 million worth of damage.
Those studies, however, never include an asterick stating that cars are designed to fold up like an accordian in an impact so the vehicle, rather than the occupants, absorbs the dynamic forces of the collision. The car will have to be junked (yes, insurance pays), but the people walk away and live to spend the day shopping for a new car, which they’ll pay big premium dollars to insure.
Sorry, digressed again.
The insurance industry is also the group that comes out with a once-a-year study that says if you were to replace every part on your car individually after an accident rather than buy a new car, the cost would be perhaps a dollar or two less than the national debt. Cars, therefore, are absurdly expensive to fix, and, of course, we all know who pays for the fix using we-all-know-who’s premium dollars to do so.
What the insurance industry again fails to point out in its annual criticism of those it is entrusted to insure, is that purchasing by-the-piece typically costs more than purchasing the whole thing: buy one piece of furniture and you pay more than the three-piece setting; buy just the coat and not the pants and the outfit costs more; buy five bottles of pop rather than the six pack and you pay more; buy beer by the glass rather than a keg and the cost is significantly higher.
What’s ironic is that in its analysis of the dangers of anti-lock brakes, the study failed to explain why anti-lock brakes haven’t reduced the number or the severity of accidents. Oops.
In the years we’ve been covering the industry there’s something of an unwritten rule that a 1 percent failure rate is about as good as you are going to get without divine intervention. No one is perfect. OK, maybe Rush Limbaugh, but other than him, mistakes can and do happen.
So we accept the fact that some ABS systems don’t work.
In the years we’ve been driving and writing about cars, we’ve tested hundreds of vehicles with ABS. Thankfully, there has never been a failure, and there have been several incidents where they’ve been called on to live up to the directions on the package. We recall vividly coming to the top of a hill at speed in an ABS-equipped Cadillac on an automotive conga line through Michigan only to find, 1) a stop sign; 2) loose gravel surrounding the intersection; and 3) a car in the middle of the intersection. ABS worked, as did the bladder-an added benefit.
When the Highway Loss Data Institute study came out we happened to be driving a ’94 Olds 98 sedan during the snow/ice storm and freezing conditions that made travel hazardous for several days.
The driveway was covered with ice, the road in front of the house was covered with ice and some of our favorite stomping grounds were covered with ice. We tackled each with ABS.
Start/stop, accelerate/stop, turn/stop, switch lanes/stop. Fast stop, slow stop. Thin ice and thick ice. Hard ice and mushy ice. Slush, slop and water up to the wheel covers. We tried it all and the 98’s ABS treated each as if the pavement was clear.
No accidents, no injuries, no failures, no insurance claims.
But what we did in applying the brakes is what the automakers always have told us to do with ABS-apply the pedal firmly and keep the pedal down. Don’t tickle the pedal, don’t tap the pedal, don’t pause to say, “Pardon me pedal, I’m going to drive my sole into your soul.”
Some motorists are afraid to apply the brakes too firmly. They’ve been taught that if you apply the brakes hard you’ll lock the wheels and guarantee you’ll lose traction.
True-before anti-lock brakes came along. With ABS, applying the brakes firmly-hard if you have to-as quick as you can. That’s the accepted rule.
ABS sensors react to prevent wheel lockup to help you keep traction when braking, but only go to work when you apply the pedal.
The quicker you apply it and the more firmly you apply it and hold it down the quicker and better the system performs.
Apply light pedal pressure- such as you would in approaching the stop sign at an intersection with no traffic in sight-and the sensors aren’t given the signal to do what they were designed to do.
Also, in most ABS-equipped cars you are given evidence the system is working. You’ll hear a chattering or feel a pulsing in the brakes and/or pedal. That means ABS is doing what it was designed to do.
Some mistake the sound/ feeling to mean the system isn’t working. They hear a chatter or feel the pulsing and let off the pedal. Boom. Another insurance claim. And once again the insurance industry says Detroit turns out trash.
“The (institute) study shows (ABS brakes) aren’t going to prevent all kinds of crashes,” said Brian O’Neill, president of the Highway Loss Data Institute. “I think there’s a perception out there that anti-lock brakes are going to allow you to stop on a dime in any crash situation. That isn’t true.”
It isn’t true if you don’t know how to use ABS.
A few years ago some police departments complained that the ABS in their Chevy Caprice cop cars didn’t work. It caused panic among those consumers who had purchased cars with ABS.
What was found, however, was that by “not working” the cops meant they no longer could rely on a controlled skid to swing the rear end around and have the front end point in the direction of the car they were chasing when involved in a hot pursuit. Without ABS, cops would brake into the turn at speed to force the rear end to skid as part of the chase sequence. With ABS, they couldn’t skid.
Because ABS worked, some cops said it didn’t work. While most folks heard or read about the cops’ complaint, not as many heard or read about the reason the complaint was unfounded. To this day, some people are scared of ABS because of that.
The Highway Loss Data Institute’s report could result in a similar scare. Word will circulate that ABS doesn’t work. Some people will fear ABS. They won’t buy a car with ABS or, if they do, rather than stomp that pedal when needed, they’ll treat it like an eggshell. The report could do more harm than good.
———-
Jim Mateja appears in Transportation on Sunday, Business on Monday, and Your Money on Friday.
