Nearly all of these vehicles had locked tires, though. It isn’t impossible to lock them up. You just need the right conditions, such as here. Relatively low speed slides. ABS doesn’t function below ~5 MPH.

Lol true. But I’ve also ice raced my car with studless winter tires on frozen lakes that I could barely stand upright on without spontaneously falling over :P

Lol, I share that exact video on Facebook about 100 times every winter. In fact, I even shared it in another reply in this article somewhere.

ABS doesn’t function below ~5 MPH.

Sounds about the same as my test. I think my test lasted less than 3 minutes, and involved making a right turn, reversing in a straight line, and parallel parking, and... that’s about it.

On many vehicles, ABS doesn’t function below 5-6 MPH. For example, watch the brake test in this TireRack video (skip to 1:30).

Think about it, if ABS functioned across ALL speeds, then it would essentially operate indefinitely. There needs to be a cutoff where the brakes actually remain applied. On most vehicles that…

FYI, ABS doesn’t function below ~5 MPH, which is why most of these ABS-equipped vehicles had their wheels locked.

The bus with the wheel at full left-hand lock couldn’t influence its direction of travel because the brakes were locked. If your wheel isn’t spinning, it doesn’t matter where you point it.

If you are sliding downhill with your tires locked, you have zero control. If you allow the tires to spin, you do have SOME…

You don’t understand how ABS works. ABS doesn’t function below ~5 MPH. If you watch the video, you see that all of these vehicles tires are locked, meaning that ABS was not active, and meaning that they had absolutely zero control over the path the vehicle took.

I don’t understand your question. Yes, they were sliding downhill. If they had released the brakes, they would have had a much better chance of steering away from the pile of mangled metal at the bottom of it. With tires locked, you will slide whichever way gravity dictates. With the tires rolling, you do have a tiny…

Meh. It definitely isn’t a super grippy surface, but ALL of the vehicles in this clip had all four wheels locked. That was the biggest mistake. If these people had let go of the brake pedal, they might have fared much better.

Winter tires actually can provide a lot more ice grip than people think. I ice race on studless winter tires. However, as with any tire, they don’t work when you’ve got your brakes locked. If these people had simply let go of the goddamned brake pedal, they would have been able to avoid this pileup.

I haven’t gone back and looked at the previous episodes again, but it was prominently displayed in the third episode, and considering they said they made a “bespoke” version of that clip for the next few years, I’m assuming they are slowly going to get more and more ridiculous. Just a guess.

OMG, on my way home from work yesterday, I went through four 4-way stop intersections within 60 seconds (short blocks) during rush hour. At the FIRST THREE, nobody knew how the fuck to proceed in an orderly fashion and I wound up sitting there like an idiot waiting for the people who were supposed to go to actually…

Haha, I refuse to street park my car. My apartment has underground parking (technically, I live in Evanston.)

I live in Chicago now, but so far I’ve avoided any tickets!

Stance makes her dance...
...over every road imperfection.

That’s specifically why I chose purple. They use it to identify a funeral procession, which is exactly that - a bunch of cars trying to follow each other and not be separated!

Canada must be different. I’ve NEVER seen a green flashing light on a vehicle that I can think of. I know all my volunteer firefighter friends…

The point of my post wasn’t the cost of the ticket... it was the absurdity of the parking situation at the medical center.

This. I think a lot of people are stuck on the “autonomous DRIVING” part of autonomous cars... which I agree would be useful. But if we could enhance our current emergency braking and avoidance safety features with a “neural network” using that technology, the benefits would be enormous, and this would also better…