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.....one of my children, who've never driven a car without ABS, happens upon a situation where it's suddenly not working?
.....or if I happen along on one of those notorious black ice patches covered with 3/4 of an inch of slush that NH's 11-mile unplowed stretch of I-95 is famous for, when I have to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting the SUV spinning a couple 360's in front of me...and the ABS system chooses that instant to fail? So the light comes on...do I really have enough time to make the adjustment? (This is not an unlikely scenario...last year it happened twice exactly as I described it except, of course, the ABS functioned as expected; and I credit the ABS with a straight, true, and remarkably short stop - a stop I would not have been able to make with conventional brakes. And for sure, neither my wife nor my three driving children would have avoided such a situation even with advance knowledge the ABS was off.
To say the warning light restores an adequate measure of safety in today's world is a form of denial. And to say some cars don't have ABS is a ridiculous excuse (actually, it's time every car had it as standard equipment). We expect better from our Volvos. I urge every Volvo owner who's had this problem to report it to the NHTSA and let them decide what to do with the information. They may decide the dash light is enough and do nothing....but we won't know unless we try.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to call the NHTSA hotline and follow up on my report.
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(98 S70 T5SE misc mods - mostly lighting - and red calipers) (92 940GLE)
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