Okay, here it is, Monday evening, about 9:30 p.m., and bitterly cold--but no wind or new snow.
I had to drive to town to pick up a package of cigarettes, and decided to see what happens if one slams on the anti-lock brakes. Of course it's dark as midnight and all that, but there's other people out and around, in case I did something stupid.
Seriously, I'm not being silly here; I've had this car since last September and never noticed if the anti-lock brakes worked different from the old brakes. I'm not kidding when I say I use brakes only very rarely, having already anticipated what's ahead of me.....easy to do when the land ahead's wide open and nobody there.
The highway to town was snow-packed over ice, not having been ploughed yet, but traffic during the day had tamped down the snow pretty good.
I abruptly slammed on the brakes three times on my way to town.
The vehicle stopped, lurched forward several feet, and then came to a complete stop.
That was at 25 mph.
I'm now confused. How are anti-lock brakes supposed to make me safer?
It's true that even with the old-style brakes, on slick surfaces one might slide or "fan-tail," or even do a complete spin-about, but one always anticipated that, and blessed with lightning-fast reflexes, adjusted for it.
It's a good thing I did this, before I had to "learn" about that lurching forward the hard way.