A Sliding Tyre Neither Stops Nor Steers

Everything in this lesson descends from one piece of physics: a locked, sliding wheel grips worse than a rolling one — and steers not at all.

Rolling rubber grips the road with static friction. A sliding tyre falls back on weaker kinetic friction, so locking the wheels typically lengthens the stop rather than shortening it — the opposite of what stamping the pedal feels like it should achieve.

The second half is worse, and less known. A front tyre that's sliding transmits no steering input whatsoever. Wheels pointed anywhere you like, the car continues straight. Which means the swerve-around-the-hazard option — often the better answer than stopping, especially when the stop clearly won't be enough — vanishes the instant the fronts lock.

So the whole art of emergency braking, on any system, reduces to one sentence: maximum brake force without sustained wheel lock. ABS automates that sentence. Non-ABS technique approximates it by hand. That's why this is one lesson with two halves rather than two separate skills — the goal is identical, only the means differ.