Funny thing is, I had just this scenario in about 1974 in a SAAB Sonett, also front wheel drive. No ABS or DSC then, of course. I went into a left hander a bit hot on wet pavement. I was 2/3's of the way into a spin, and literally counting the white pickets of the fence I was about to hit, and decided I had nothing to lose. I hit the brakes sharp--just a hard jab--and she straightened right out. No pickets!

It's still a vivid memory.

 

The video in post #41 explains DSC rather well, and ABS cannot do what DSC can do. No driver can do what DSC can do (ie independant wheel braking and throttle control to correct a slide).
I have not ordered a Mini yet, but DSC will definetely be on my list. Although we normally do not travel 70 on a sheet of ice, a quick accident avoidance maneuver is very possible on a wet or slippery road where you are traveling fast and could potentially lose control rather quickly.

 

Sorry but you are not even close. ABS has no idea what direction you are going or what direction you want to go. DSC does both with the steering wheel and yaw sensors in the car. If your car goes into a slide, simply hitting the brakes will not suddenly give you back control.

Check out this link for a description of how the system works http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akZ9AaFB7Zc
and here is a post with another clip
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...6&postcount=42

 

ChiliXer, I won't order DSC either, but it does serve a different purpose than ABS.

ABS is used to slow and stop the car, while DSC brakes individual wheels and/or cuts engine power to adjust weight transfer so a driver can regain control.

Understanding weight transfer is the basic fundamental behind performance driving; those of us that have spent time on a racetrack don't need or want the electronics doing this for us, as it can be counterproductive for both the driver and electronics to simultaneously be using inputs to transfer weight. And generally BMW products allow for very conservative slip angles before DSC intrudes (compared to, say, Porsche's PSM) for those of us that enjoy that sort of thing. However, DSC is helpful for the average driver that doesn't have a clue about weight transfer and how to control it.

Edit: Unfortunately, DSC does allow ham-fisted drivers to get deeper into trouble before the laws of physics take over. IMO, a higher level of driver education is a better alternative to electronic nannies.

 

Alan.....did you even watch the videos in the links?

 

I didn't before, but now I have...what's your point?

 

I think the operative word his is apply. ABS does no apply brakes. It prevents application of brakes on an individual wheel basis. So, what I think you are saying is that if you apply the brakes, ABS will act like DSC. Well, not exactly.

I think we are pretty much in agreement about this. It is designed to prevent the wheels from locking up to maximize braking effect (a sliding tire has less stopping power than a tire that hasn't broken loose) and to keep the brakes from causing the loss of directional control.

I think this is backwards. If the rear is sliding out to the left (like it was turning right) the inside wheels might be stationary, but the outside wheels would be turning. Think of how a bulldozer steers. The outside track turns while the inside is stopped, or going backwards.

If the wheels on one side are stopped, you will pretty much be going sideways, and the wheels on the other side wont be moving much either. The more likely scenario is that the car still has some forward motion (in the direction of the wheels, but also has some lateral motion (sliding). With the front wheels turned in the direction of the turn (not the direction of the slide) you would have the inside wheels rotating slower than the outside. I think that is a better scenario for your ABS claim.

So, lets say ABS allows more braking on the inside wheels. Does it apply enough to rotate the car, or just prevent the brakes from changing the car's direction? I thought it was designed to do the latter.

Even if ABS does rotate the car, here are some thoughts about it.

1. It requires your application of the brakes. That means you have sense the problem and react. Human reactions are far slower than the DSC computer. DSC's sensors will probably notice the problem sooner that you do, and react much faster. This would probably give DSC a better chance of saving your butt than the ABS method. It would also require less correction.

2. ABS will allow the application of as much braking as possible to each wheel, short of locking the wheel. DSC will just apply enough braking on a specific wheel to bring the car back into control.

The DSC intervention can be quicker and would not tend to be as intrusive as the ABS method.

DSC should be helpful if you do turn into the slide -- as I was always taught to do.

It would also be useful for those drivers who aren't quick enough to react within milliseconds, and who are not constantly monitoring the rotation rate of each wheel. Whether DSC's yaw and lateral g sensors are more sensitive, than one's buttometer, is unknown to me.

Sadly some people don't really understand what DSC can do for them. I agree about the defensive driving classes.

 

How can you still believe that your driving experience is as good as DSC is in an avoidance maneuver like that in the videos?

How can you overcome the forces of physics to get a car to turn when you are in an understeer situation?

 

I think the point is that a very skilled driver found that ESP/DSC saved him in a situation he couldn't by himself. He believes it is useful for everyone. Even skilled drivers.

 

If you're referring to the Top Gear video, I stated in an earlier post in this thread that I would want DSC in icy/snowy climates. But that's not something a Mini of mine would ever face.

Understeer, which is when the front end loses traction and 'plows', is very easy to overcome...simply ease off the throttle (and add braking if necessary), which transfers more weight over the front wheels to gain traction. Or better yet...and this is where advanced training is better than DSC...avoid the understeer situation by transfering the weight prior to attempting a change in direction.

 

I think there is more to DSC than weight transfer. The individual wheel braking is used to rotate the car in a way that a driver cannot.

 

A car is rotated by weight transfer.

 

By a driver. A sliding car could also be rotated by changing the what a specific wheel is doing.

 

DSC rotates the car by transfering weight as well.

Edit: Note that in the Bosch video, the sliding wheels are not the wheels manipulated by the DSC.

 

Wish the 1998 BMW M3 I'm borrowing while my mini cooper is getting fixed had DSC. Driving home in sleet conditions, I accelerated a little to quickly leaving the toll booth area while changing lanes. As my car headed toward a concrete barrier, I tried turning into it and braking. The car stopped inches away from a collision.

I definitely need to take a performance/safety driving course. The BMW M3 rear wheel drive and engine handles unlike my base mini cooper. DSC would have helped an inexperienced driver like me, especially in wet conditions.

 

Look at the video in this post:
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...7&postcount=41

It is braking one rear wheel to rotate the car around that wheel be increasing the drag that wheel delivers to the gound. The rear wheel becomes a pivot point.

 

http://www.popularmechanics.com/auto...s/4201979.html

 

I've played with it a bit on the ice and snow. I can see where it will help keep the car under control in an unexpected skid but it will not overcome the laws of physics. Like ABS, it won't save you in every situation but it increases your odds of coming out of an unexpected situation unscathed. Like ABS or any other system I recommend trying it out in a controlled environment so you know what it will do.

 

What can we learn from this article? Here is what I see:

1. Debbi Dixon says stability control allowed her to miss a deer on an icy road.

2. "A 2004 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) study showed that ESC reduced all single-vehicle crashes by 34 percent and single-vehicle SUV crashes by 59 percent. A 2006 University of Michigan study found that ESC could reduce the odds of fatal rollovers in SUVs by 73 percent and in cars by 40 percent." Looks like ESC might have imporved between 2004 and 2006. It was good three years ago, and it might be getting better.

3. Jay Leno would rather be driving a 1906 steam car that is on fire and has no brakes.

4. Mercedes Benz is very concerned that ESP not interfere with the pleasure of driving and only come into play when it is certain that the driver needs help.

5. At least some Popular Mechanic writers are very much afraid that cars will cease to be fun to drive. IMO, Detroit iron (with a few exceptions) has never been fun to drive. I've always had to go to Europe and Japan to find fun cars, and if the Honda Accord -- I'm stuck with while my MINI is in the shop -- is any indication, Japan has gone Detroit. If the Altima in the test is like the Accord, PM chose three rather un-fun cars to test.

6. Office assistant Dalla Anaya can drive an Altima through an emergency lane change in the dry faster than Mike Allen, PM's senior auto editor and primary test track driver. Mike does better in the slalom.

The PM test results do not match the NHTSA, MU, or Top Gear results. I would say this article falls into what Steven Colbert would describe as "Thread Down" journalism. Writing an article that scares people will sell more copies than one that reassures them. So, take a reassuring subject about cars getting safer and spin it to make people fearful. Did Popular Mechanics become part of Fox news?

 

Most modern fighter aircraft are built to be inherently unstable and thus highly maneuverable. That also makes them difficult, if not impossible, to fly safely. To allow pilots to safely fly them they are actually flown by computers that take pilot control inputs and translate them into signals that are sent to the control surfaces and power plants to actually fly the aircraft. No pilot is skilled enough to fly those aircraft anywhere near the limits of their performance without the computer.

Cars are not built to be unstable, but we as drivers sometimes get into situations where the number and complexity of control inputs required for an optimum outcome is simply beyond even the most skilled driver. The old rule of pumping your brakes in a skid is obsolete when you have a modern ABS system that can do the same thing many times faster and with much more precision. The same with traction control. Easing onto the throttle in slick conditions is no match for a system that can measure and adjust the power to the drive wheels dozens or hundreds of times per second. Likewise for DSC. There is simply no way even the most skilled driver in the world can recognize and react to an incipient skid as fast as the DSC and even if he could, the ability to precisely hit and release individual brakes in such small fractions of a second is simply not built into the manual controls of automobiles.

While I’m not comparing the complexity of driving an R56S to that of flying an F-18 or an F-22, I think that having systems that similarly take our control inputs and translate them into signals to our control surfaces that allow them to operate more safely and efficiently is a great improvement to safe driving. Certainly there may be times we want to operate outside the normal envelope, such as drifting or bootlegger turns, but 99.9% of the time the ABS, traction control, LSD and DSC will help us get our desired results better than even the most skilled driver can achieve.

 

You're wrong on a couple levels. First of all, it is very unlikely that "the most skilled driver" will be in a situation where there is a loss of control. Secondly, stability control systems are not all the same. Some, like Porsche's PSM, allow for extreme slip angles before intervention, so there is plenty of time for a driver to react to an incipient skid.
For people like you and Robin, that's great if you think so. It's also great for the average, poorly educated American driver with a latte in one hand and text message being formed in the other. And as I said in my first post in this thread, it's great for icy/snowy weather. But I've put over 125,000 dry weather miles on six cars having stability control systems in the last eight years, and I've found them to be nothing but intrusive. Especially DSC on BMW products. So I will not get it on my Mini. I may be in the miniority here, but for where and how I drive, it "helps get my desired results" 0% of the time.

 

Apparently what you didn't see is that some people don't like, don't need, and don't want stability control systems in their vehicles.

 

Thank you big brother.

I think the world would be a lot safer if driver training was more than how to parallel park. Vehicle dynamics & accident avoidance should be taught. Driver training in our fine country is a sad joke.

 

I'm with you 100%.

 

You mean like Jay Leno? I think his comment summed up the anti-DSC attitude quite colorfully. My paraphrasing: