Anti-lock brakes stopped Alan Ledbetter's car from sliding off an icy, downhill stretch of road when the driver in front of him braked, then skidded into a pole.
"I would have slid right off the road" without slamming on the anti-lock brakes, he recalls.Ledbetter believes anti-lock brakes saved him from a serious accident. But that may be because he knew how to use them. As vice president of underwriting and policy management at auto insurer Geico Corp., a unit of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Ledbetter was educated in the proper use of anti-lock brakes.
Anti-lock braking systems, when made widely available in the late 1980s, were hailed as having the potential to reduce accidents significantly. But nearly a decade and several studies later, mixed reviews have kept the product in the clutch of controversy.
A study released last month by ABS manufacturers concluded that though ABS-equipped cars were involved in significantly fewer accidents - about 10 percent overall - cars with ABS had the same fatal crash rate as non-equipped cars.
The main problem, highway safety experts and consumer groups contend, could be that ABS manufacturers, government regulators and even car dealers haven't effectively educated people about how to use the brakes properly. Several breakthroughs in brake technology may pick up where spotty consumer education has left off. But there are 13 million vehicles equipped with ABS on the road, with many drivers still madly - and mistakenly - pumping their ABS brakes.
With ABS, a computer automatically cycles the brakes up to 18 times a second to prevent wheel lock-up. Pumping the brake pedal actually turns the ABS on and off and increases the stopping distance. Drivers need to keep their feet down on the brake pedal to let the anti-lock system do its job.
ABS has come under the scrutiny of federal, industry and consumer studies, all of which showed that antilock brakes had mixed results in reducing crashes. Although the fifth and latest study funded by the auto industry soft-pedaled earlier criticisms and cast ABS in a somewhat better light, it mostly just added to the confusion.
Lobbying groups for foreign carmakers and Detroit's Big Three hired Failure Analysis Associates Inc. of Menlo Park, Calif., for the latest study on the effects of anti-lock brakes on accidents, injuries and death rates. Failure Analysis is a unit of Failure Group.
Critics weren't surprised when Failure Group's study concluded that ABS-equipped vehicles have 9 percent to 10 percent fewer accidents overall and 17 percent to 19 percent fewer accidents on wet, snowy and icy roads. But the study also found "no measurable difference" in the number of fatal accidents involving cars equipped with ABS vs. those with conventional brakes.
Even though both sides are still arguing about whether ABS adds safety, everyone seems to agree that consumers have irrational expectations of what ABS can do.
"ABS is not a license to drive 95 miles an hour on snow and ice," said Dean Witter Reynolds auto analyst Ken Blaschke.
To remedy that education gap, four major brake manufacturers formed the ABS Education Alliance last fall. Spreading that ABS message has been the mission of Sam Memmolo, a radio talk-show host on cars and an automotive technician hired by the four manufacturers that make up the Alliance - Robert Bosch GmbH of Germany, General Motors Corp.'s Delphi Chassis Systems, the ITT Automotive division of ITT Industries Inc. and the Kelsey-Hayes division of Varity Corp.
Memmolo is targeting the automotive press and consumers, offering free educational brochures and a toll-free number for information on how anti-lock braking systems work (1-800-ABS-8958).