Does this technology actually work (on motor cars)

Sambostar

Can you drift something with ESC though?  The newer Transits have it.  Doesn't sound like a lot of fun to be honest.

Sporky

Sambostar said:

Can you drift something with ESC though? 

My Yetis would drift on snow. Especially roundabouts. Go in sensibly slow (probably 5mph or so), then give the accelerator a gentle squeeze and the four wheel drive system shunts all the power to the back wheels when the front ones spin, so then the back steps out a bit, then the ESC kicks in and straightens everything out.

The result is that you look like a rally champ.

Or a complete tit.

Hard to be sure from inside the car.

Serious answer - the ESC system generally allows a certain amount of drift. I think it's normally 10 degrees on normal cars.

Sporky

ThePrettyDamned said:

That's incredible. 

He was quite impressed as I recall. That was the same year that one of the sales people slid hers into a river, and I bought my first set of winter tyres, which made snow much less interesting/exciting/dodgy to drive on.

MattBanshee

My car has auto braking. It is really horrible; I often have to negotiate a sharp left hand turn on a single lane one-way road near me, and it has one of those huge bell-shaped metal bollards on the very corner of the kerb, to stop the buses from clipping pedestrians. Every time I go round that corner at more than about 5mph, the car freaks out and tries to brake. Really annoying. It also tends to do it if I'm trying to accelerate from stopped whilst facing downhill.

Sambostar

I don't really have that problem, but I'm wary about a MK7 because they do have ESC.

speshul91

Out of interest i wonder how many people are driving cars with no driver aids at all these days, my car is a 51 plate with non not even abs. 

Sambostar

I mean, when you see how rotten the ABS cogs and sensor mounts get on a Mk5 Salisbury Axle (One congealed mass of rust) and when you drive the thing regularly through quarry slurry that is a foot deep and shitty tracks down to the commercial landfill and regularly get bogged to the axles and need a Landie to pull you out and wash the thing once every two years, you really wonder how long it's going to last.  Fine for an inner city and motorway courier van, but not really sustainable for a motorized wheelbarrow eh.

stickyfiddle

I wonder if my Golf does that emergency stop handbrake thing. I'll have to read the manual!

digitalscream

I'm very glad that this discussion came up...I'm planning to get a Puma as my first car (in keeping with the whole "learning to drive to stave off a mid-life crisis" thing), and it turns out that the 1.4 version didn't come with ABS as standard. Think I might give that a miss, or at least keep a look out for one which does have it.

Sambostar

speshul91 said:

Out of interest i wonder how many people are driving cars with no driver aids at all these days, my car is a 51 plate with non not even abs. 

1996 Transit Tipper.  I thought the Granada Cosworth was complicated when it came out.  Now I look at a modern 3.5T commercial and whince.

Rocker

CabbageCat said:

Rocker said:

Has anyone here ever benefited from this technology that is installed in our cars these days.

What I meant was were you ever driving, lost concentration for a fraction of a second, and the car stopped itself as you drove too close to the car in front.

My car, a Honda, has this technology fitted but I don't feel any inclination to test it out for myself.

stickyfiddle

My Dad still rallies Vauxhall Novas. They don't even have power steering, never mind ABS or anything else..

Garthy

ICBM said:

HAL9000 said:

I sometimes drive a Mercedes that does the braking if it reckons you're too close to the car in front. It's ok but will sometimes brake when you don't want it too. Usually if there's something big like a lorry in front but in a different lane. Im guessing big vehicles have a big radar signature or something.

That's at best extremely annoying and at worst dangerous for someone following you. Yes, I know they shouldn't be driving so close that they can't stop from the speed they're doing, but we all know full well that when you're in a line of fast traffic overtaking something, once one car brakes then there is a cascade back down the line which can lead to someone at the back having to brake *very* hard.

I always assumed that a Merc braking for no good reason in the outside lane was just being driven by a twat, but I will have to revise that opinion now.

It certainly explains a lot- I was following a Merc E class a few weeks ago and he kept breaking in L4 despite nothing in front of him to the horizon, I actually thought it was road rage at first, then perhaps he was a fuckwit then decided it must be an issue with with the switch on the brake pedal itself.

The tech is great but it should be a safety net, not a crutch and in my opinion it's a race to the bottom as people rely on this stuff to keep them on the straight and narrow.

The other thing is how would this affect your insurance status if you had an accident regardless of fault or cause and it was proven that you had DSC/TCS/DCS and god knows what else disabled?

FX_Munkee

stickyfiddle said:

My Dad still rallies Vauxhall Novas. They don't even have power steering, never mind ABS or anything else..

I used to love driving my Nova in the snow. It had just the right weight distribution (slightly nose heavy) for FWD and slippy conditions. You just needed to keep the momentum up.
I learned to drive in muddy fields in a rear wheel drive car, sliding about doesn't bother me much
Still struggle with the Venom GT in Driveclub mind...

SteveRobinson

57Deluxe said:

there was nothing wrong in just applying 'cadence breaking' manually!

I did that once, pulled up good metre from the car in front in lashing rain, only to have the (uninsured) driver behind run into the back of me. Wrote off my Dolly Sprint.

snakemanStoo

Rocker said:

My car, a Honda, has this technology fitted but I don't feel any inclination to test it out for myself.

On a similar note, my car has airbags fitted and I have no inclination to test them.  I also don't worry about them, but instead I worry about what's happening outside the car.  And that I've got some good toonz to listen to at an appropriate volume.

strtdv

Sambostar said:

Can you drift something with ESC though?  The newer Transits have it.  Doesn't sound like a lot of fun to be honest.

Yes.

My BMW 125d had ESC, you could put it in "sport+" mode where it would let you get very sideways but stop you completely spinning.

Most cars will let you turn ESC off (although it also turns off various other driver aids in the process such as collision avoidance.



Older ABS systems were terrible in ice and snow though, they used to just freak out and you got no braking at all.
Newer ones are much better.

My Golf has that clever "virtual LSD" where it brakes the inside wheels to drag you round a corner. It really works, I'm very impressed with it.

As well as the independent wheel braking if you're going to spin feature and the collision avoidance/adaptive cruise control, the VW will close all the windows if it detects an unavoidable collision to keep the occupants safer.

strtdv

stickyfiddle said:

I wonder if my Golf does that emergency stop handbrake thing. I'll have to read the manual!

If it's a mk 7 I think it does.

Sporky

Garthy said:

The tech is great but it should be a safety net, not a crutch and in my opinion it's a race to the bottom as people rely on this stuff to keep them on the straight and narrow.

To be fair, that's what people said about seatbelts and radial tyres and crumple zones and airbags and ABS and ESP and DRLs and all the other things that have contributed to the death rate on the roads dropping and dropping, even as more people drive more miles.

WezV

CabbageCat said:

Rocker said:

Has anyone here ever benefited from this technology that is installed in our cars these days.

Probably, though they might not have noticed it.

I saw this vid the other day