Reply to post: Re: Pedantic

Uber breaks self-driving car record: First robo-ride to kill a pedestrian

Adam 1

Re: Pedantic

> Is that necessarily true ? Why do supercars have huge actively cooled carbon fibre discs?

Ah, the thing your are missing is the second corner. Even regular stock brakes can do an emergency stop from any speed your car can travel. The issue is when you want to do the same thing again 30 seconds later at the next corner. And again. And again. You cannot do that with stock brakes

Your braking limit is the maximum deceleration at each tyre before it loses traction. That depends primarily on the road surface and the contact patch of the tyre. That is why wide profile tyres and racing slicks improve stopping times (in the dry). You do also need to take into account that under heavy braking, your car's centre of gravity will move forward (blame Newton), so you have higher traction on the front tyres but lower on the rear. Modern ABS braking systems continuously monitor each wheel speed (plus steering angle) to make sure this each brake is doing the most that it can possibly do beneath this limit to wash off the speed. There is some serious boffinary in these systems.

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