Contrary to popular belief, your brakes do not stop your car. The brakes on your car stop the wheels turning; the wheels are attached to your tires and the tire friction with the road is the factor that stops your car. All of your car's motion or lack of motion is really dependent upon the tires and their contact with the road. And the tire's contact with the road is an area about the size of the palm of your hand. Imagine, those four palm prints are all that starts, stops and turns your car.
So by extension if the tires stop your car then sticky tires stop your car better than not-so-sticky tires. But stickiness in a tire comes at the expense of long tire wear so sticky tires do not last very long. The average car owner wants his tires to stick reasonably well but to last for a reasonably long time. Just like any other factor in a road car the manufacturers have to make a compromise between a bunch of factors and so the tires you can buy for your car are reasonably sticky so that they are also reasonably long lasting.
But this post is about brakes so to get back to where we started from let's do the old “the road is connected to the tires, the tires are connected to the wheels and the wheels are connected to the brakes� shuffle.
Most cars come with disk brakes these days but there are plenty of cars with drum brakes at the rear wheels. Only really old cars (thirty years or older) still have front drum brakes. A discussion of the relative merits of drum versus disk brakes will come in a later installment. But regardless of the type of brakes your car has, they use a friction materiel to rub against either a brake drum or a brake disk.
Friction materiel are the important words for this discussion. Just like your tires need friction to get traction against the road, your brakes pads or shoes (for disks or drums) need friction. And just like tires that get really good friction but do not last for a long time, pads and shoes that get good friction do not last a long time. The average consumer wants inexpensive parts that will last a reasonably long time, so most commercially available replacement brake pads and shoes are a compromise of lasting a long time and stopping well.
If you are a law abiding driving who observes the speed limit and does not "push the limits" of your car's performance, then standard tires and brakes are fine for your use. Even if you are a "spirited" driver (somewhat short of a speed demon) your stock tires and brakes are adequate. If you are exceeding your tires and brakes capacity on the highway, you are a major menace to public safety and need to rethink your use of automobiles.
And if you want to test you and your car's abilities in a safe and controlled environment on a closed track you will need to upgrade your brake and tire friction materiel to more expensive, shorter lasting pieces. Check tomorrow's posting for more on this discussion.