[ianc]

Downshifting won't do a thing for you, and it's probably the last thing you want to be splitting your attention trying to carry off properly in a panic stop situation.

What will dictate your stopping distance is the amount of friction between your tires and the road. The brakes will easily be able to exceed this if you just stomp on them, so that is the goal in threshold braking.

I also don't agree that ABS will not shorten your stopping distance. In a perfect world, that would be so, since you would be perfectly modulating the brake pedal just as the ABS would. In our world, the ABS can sense imminent lockup much more accurately than you can, and will be able to pulse the brakes to attain this. I'm not saying that a skilled driver can't attain comparable stopping distances without ABS, but for the rest of us in a panic stop situation, ABS is a damned good bet.

ianc