And who is the next person who wants to have a guess?
Jabawocky is quite correct. ABS was introduced in the hope of reducing loss of steering control during heavy braking conditions.
There are many misconceptions about ABS. One of them is that the car will always stop in a much shorter distance, every time. The only reason they became available on mass produced small vehicles is that brake technology finally caught up with the weight of most vehicles, and now we have much smaller and lighter vehicles on the road than we did 30 years ago.
The brakes are not "pulsated" on and off. Each wheel individually has the fluid pressure being supplied to it momentarily reduced to allow the wheel to regain RPM and therefore traction before the ABS solenoid then allows brake fluid under the drivers pressure control resume pressure to the caliper. This happens when the ABS control unit (via an RPM sensor on all wheels) picks up a %age of underspeed on one wheel in relation to the other wheels RPM. The control unit for the system constantly compares wheel RPM and only makes adjustments or inputs when a certain discrepancy in RPM is detected over a certain braking value. The idea is to allow steering inputs to help the driver steer themselves out of trouble without locking the inside wheel of a swerving car etc.
In actual fact most vehicles fitted with ABS will take longer to stop on anything other than slippery wet bitumen or ice than those able to hold an "almost locked-up" condition. However as 404 very correctly pointed out, this is beyond the scope of many drivers to be able to do and keep the vehicle in balance enough not to lose it while manouvring around something under max braking.
404. A "skidding" car on loose gravel pulling up in a straight line will pull-up faster than one will with ABS. The reason? The skidding front tyres (taking around 80+% of the vehicles weight under heavy braking) will form a bow wave and cut down through the gravel and get to the harder, higher friction coefficient surface below. Rotating wheels continue to let loose gravel interfere with traction. The best way to see the effect of ABS is to slip two wheels off the bitumen onto a loose gravel shoulder and hit the picks hard. You'll get the idea.
I hope that settles that, end of thread drift. The problems with tarring all LCC with that brush of generic minimum low standards is that it is the regulator(s) that set minimum standards, not the LCC. If the LCC is serious about safety, they'll come up with something that fulfils their requirements and obligations under the law and hopefully is a step above the minimum.