Cedarhill wrote: There is a problem with GDetrailer's logic. Vehicles do not stop instantly, regardless of the brake controller used. It might take 10 seconds to bring a big rig to a dead standstill from 65mph. Suppose his controller reacts 10 milliseconds faster than a Tekonsha under identical conditions. That means one vehicle would stop 0.1% faster than than the other one. You would experience more variation than that just based on brake pad temperature or differing reaction times. I would speculate that 0.1% difference in stopping time would affect the outcome of a typical emergency stop hardly at all. Would it really make a difference whether he hit that deer at 35 mph or 34.95 mph for example?
I gotta bring this up and I'm not picking on Cedarhill it's just the last post mentioning milliseconds and stopping.
You do realize that unless my math is wrong a vehicle travels 88 feet per second at 60 mph. This equates to approximately 1 inch per millisecond. So 10 milliseconds is 10 inches and 100 milliseconds is 100 inches or 8.3 feet.
So yes having a 100ms advantage could make all the difference in making the stop or having the accident.
Think of it this way. Hauling that big rig from 65 mph to 0 mph is going to take 500 feet or so. Ask yourself what are the chances that the collision will happen in that last 8 out of 500 feet. As I mentioned above, if the collision happens somewhere within the 500 feet, does 0.1 or 0.3 mph really make any difference as to how much damage you sustain? If the collision is within that last 8 feet, you would only be going 3 or 5 mph.