Incredible. It was not so long ago that Continental's announcement was not taken seriously that braking distances of 30 m out of 100 km/h would be possible. At that time 42 m was a pleasant value for good family cars. About half of the difference is already made. How was that possible?

After all, braking is a much more complex process than pushing pads with much force against a steel friction surface. As always, let's start with the tires and their contact with the road. Of course, the 30 m on wet roads will probably remain impossible for a long time, unless the brake parachute technology helps with new findings.

The contact of tires to the road is a seemingly endless topic. Responsible engineers can easily enumerate eight to ten criteria that need to be considered here. The tire without profile is best on good summery roads, of course only with new rubber. With enough profile, it is even superior to the winter tire on winter days with correspondingly high temperatures. Accordingly, a winter tire in the summer is a little disaster.

As already said, we always talk about braking, not about propulsion, as the car industry wants to call the 4WD safer. However, one thing seems certain: the larger the support surface by width but also by more diameter, the better the braking effect. In addition, even stiffer flanks come as a useful accessory.

So, that was now the pure longitudinal dynamics and the brake only as a problem solver for the fastest possible stopping. Wherein the stopping path also consists of the reaction path. This is where most of the development work seems to be flowing right now. One wants to take away the driver the steering wheel or better the brake pedal, because he/she is simply too slow or, even worse, often too inattentive.

There are two approaches to this: Once the detection of a danger from the vehicle's own sensors and then indications of the necessary braking from the outside. This can be a CarToCar or CarToX system. An example is the computer assisted driving of trucks one after another with only 15 m distance at 89 km/h. It is possible because the brake responds not to the reduction in the distance to the vehicle directly in front, but to a signal from the leading vehicle.

But the brake is not alone and only works for itself. Seem to be a useful helper for other systems, too. The suspension would like to solve fundamental problems together with it. It should prevent leaving the road in a too fast driven curve, or at least a rollover when leaving it totaly. Here comes just right the brake with individually influenced wheels.

Also, the drive system shows a certain affinity to the brake, because this can replace the limited slip differential to some extent and thus help save costs. It seems that the brake after the tire is the most important component of active safety that other systems rely on.