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Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

All older cars the brakes work 100% of the time, whether or not you have gas or electrical.

How old are we talking about here? If you have power brakes then when the engine shuts off the brakes don't work at 100%. At that point you're needing to push the hydraulic fluid without assistance and you'll find it's really not easy to stop. Also no power steering. A windy mountain road is not a good place to be...

At that point, engine brake with the clutch.

Unless you're driving an automatic.

I'm pretty sure my old car's owner's manual specifically said that engine braking effect can be increased by downshifting the automatic gearbox to a lower gear in the manual mode. Current car's owner's manual says to release the accelerator when approaching red lights to "take advantage of engine braking" and since it's a hybrid, it also does regen.

There's also quite a few different ways to make an automatic gearbox, such as double-clutch gearboxes.

That's what my car's manual said, too. But the "lower gear" in Drive mode was electronic. It didn't have a dedicated "low" or "2" or whatever position. On my dad's Toyota it's even worse, the "gearshift" is fully electronic.

There's always the handbrake.

Let’s face it though

Without ABS the ability for a layperson to brake is greatly diminished

People aren’t going to remember to pump the brakes in an emergency, heck most people don’t even know rhythmically pumping the brakes is a thing

You should never pump your brakes, even if you have no ABS. What you should instead be doing is "threshold braking", so you should have as much brake pressure as you can without locking up the tires, and if you lock up, you release as much as you need until you're not locked up anymore. If you just pump the brakes in rhythm, you'll have longer a stopping distance as you're just alternating between no braking and too much braking.

Thankfully most cars on the road at this point are going to have ABS, which just allows you to stand on the brake pedal in an emergency.

> Without ABS the ability for a layperson to brake is greatly diminished

> People aren’t going to remember to pump the brakes in an emergency, heck most people don’t even know rhythmically pumping the brakes is a thing

I don't think looking at the extremes is the right approach here.

I've brought my car to a stop thousands of times, yet I've never once required the assistance of the ABS, in fact, I have no empirical evidence that it actually works at all.

Needing to brake and stop isn't an emergency situation, it's a very typical situation, and it would only become an emergency if you _can't_ stop.

If you happen to be having an emergency at the same time you lose electrical braking, you're shit out of luck.

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