Why is engine braking safer than normal braking on slippery roads?
In: Engineering
Modern braking systems provide ABS, as well as additional stability/Vector controls to ensure you are safely slowing down. For these reasons, prioritize your regular brakes for almost every situation… except long downhill grades or if your brakes start failing.
Engine braking bypasses normal braking design, and forces the wheels to push through the additional engine resistance provided.
Additionally, being in a lower gear means the provided power when applied will likely cause a loss of traction compared to using a higher gear that would provide less wheel power and gradually change its speed.
[Wiki: Engine Braking ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_braking#Applications)
>Improper engine braking technique can cause the wheels to skid (also called shift-locking), especially on slippery surfaces, as a result of too much deceleration. As in a skid caused by overbraking, the vehicle will not regain traction until the wheels are allowed to turn more quickly. If the driver reduces engine braking by shifting back up, or disengaging the clutch on a manual transmission, traction can be regained.
Engine braking is LESS safe on slippery roads, at least in cars that don’t have permanent all-wheel drive or four-wheel drive.
If you use engine braking in a RWD or FWD car, it’s only the two driven wheels that have to do all the braking while the other two are doing nothing. That means you’re not using all of the available traction, leading to worse braking performance, and it’s potentially dangerous because the drive wheels will have less grip available to transmit cornerning forces. With FWD that means added understeer, and with RWD that means a higher tendency to oversteer.
The safest way to slow down when a road is very slippery is to use the brakes (carefully), because you’re not just using two wheels to slow down, you’re making use of the grip of all four wheels. Not only will the car stop much better, it will also be easier to control.
Because engine braking is often smoother and more consistent than manually applying brake pressure. In slippery conditions, to much of a throttle, steering our brake input can break traction and cause a slide.
That’s not too say that you can’t brake in slippery conditions, just that you need to be very careful with the application of the brakes and be very smooth.
it’s less forceful than friction brakes.
the concern with conventional brakes is that they can easily stop the wheels entirely, causing the vehicle to slide.
Uh….where did you get this idea? Engine braking on a rear wheel drive car on slippery roads avoids flipping the car around braking front wheels…a risk made worse if the brakes are uneven. Other than that…I’ve never heard it is more safe.
Cuz it doesn’t allow the car to accelerate as much but keep a normal speed that other cars can calculate distances etc as well as you. In the other hand, constantly braking and lifting the brake (stops/slows and starts while rolling) makes you and everyone have to think and decide if they have to brake to avoid collusion.
Tldr; everyone rolls in a small speed smoothly instead of everyone braking all the time unexpectedly.
I hate this argument. And it has come up often in my 37 years of driving. I have done more driving in snow and ice than the normal person. Putting that oit there so I can say if people disagree with my opion I will kindly ask don’t bother trying to change my mind. Here it goes.
Engine braking is basically the engine fighting with drive wheels on how fast each wants to turn. So the engine is tryimg to get the wheels to turn slower than they want to if they were free. Like if you were in nuetral. It is the resistance to roll that slows the car. That resistance is aplied from wheel to pavement. Kind of like the opposite of acceleration. And in like acceration if the surface of the road is slick you will break traction. Break traction in a front wheel drive and you have lost your ability to steer. You also have made it harder to break. And for those that argue it is ok to engine break in a RWD. First is my arguement that you have already compromised your breaking ability. Also think about this how many times has a RWD car all of a suden just broke traction and started fishtailing when the person was not breaking. So why would you want to purposely engine break and risk breaking traction. Third sometimes in a rear wheel drive car if you need to accelerate ro regain control of a car. Hard to do if you have already broke traction with engine breaking.
It doesn’t. In any halfway recent car there will be ABS in place, which rides the line between sliding and not, providing the most friction possible for pretty much any surface. I don’t know what’s up with so many of the other top level comments that apparently don’t know about ABS, but there’s literally no better way to get more friction out of the road than with properly working ABS.
I would like to clarify, I wasn’t sure if this was the case. It was just what I’ve been told living in northern US
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