Up to the late 1970s, emergency braking was one of the most dangerous situations one could encounter in road traffic. Drivers flooring the brake pedal in an emergency only rarely remembered their driving instructor’s injunction to use repeated braking impulses to avoid losing the ability to steer the vehicle. “At the time, ABS was an immensely important invention,” says an enthusiastic Frank-Werner Mohn, formerly responsible for driver assistance systems at Mercedes-Benz, “it’s unbelievable what the system made possible for the first time. Full emergency braking became possible, you could avoid the obstacle and the braking distance was shorter.”