Cadence braking was taught to drivers to try to not let the brakes lock up in the event of having to brake hard, more often than not in an emergency situation.
Braking hard before ABS was introduced could cause all the wheels to lock up and potentially put the car into either a skid or a complete spin, but either way it meant a loss of control of the steering.
Whilst the wheels were locked up it was extremely hard to steer at the same time, and before power steering was introduced it was even worse.
When braking pre-ABS the harder you pressed the brake you would feel that any additional pressure would cause the wheels to lock up, so you could in the least bring the car to a stop without skidding or going into a complete spin.
But for some drivers, that may have not been understood, and their foot would just press as hard as they possibly could to try and bring the car to a stop in the shortest possible time.
This was dangerous and usually the end result was much worse than could have been if they had used Cadence braking.
Cadence braking was just a method of "pumping the foot brake" on and then releasing the pedal just before the wheels locked up and then pressing the pedal and repeating the process again and again until the car stopped.
It did not mean you were going to stop any quicker, and possibly to the contrary, you would possibly take longer to stop by using this method.
But what it did actually achieve, was that you could steer whilst braking heavily in between each pump.
The end result being that you did not end up losing control of the car, you did not get into a skid or spin out situation, because you had more control of the car and especially the steering. It allowed you to aim the car in a direction that either took you away from danger, or in the least, made the potential crash a lot less severe than it may have been had you locked up the wheels totally.
Then along came ABS, and what a marvelous invention it was!
It gave drivers the facility to hit the foot brake very hard, the ABS would kick in just before the wheels locked up, but you still had complete control over the steering.
The human foot could NEVER pump the foot brake quickly enough to be fully effective using Cadence braking, but the ABS system takes care of this literally applying and releasing the pressure of the pressed pedal in succession up to 100 times per second.
When the ABS kicks in, you will feel that it is working through vibrations in the foot brake pedal (this is normal).
ABS is literally to allow you to brake heavily and steer at the same time - IT DOES NOT STOP YOU ANY QUICKER
So for modern vehicles, if there is a need to brake heavily, then brake heavily, keep good contact of the steering wheel and point the car in the direction you want the car to go.
