Edwin said:
Stability control does things faster than you can. Electrons move faster
than your brain or your hands and feet.
I was in a situation a few months back on the highway at about 65, wet road
and a very hard swerve. Fact is, my other car probably would have taken me
down the median sideways; the stability control allowed me to cut the wheel
hard left, then hard right to avoid an accident. It did not take away the
things I'd have done to (possibly) recover, it eliminated the need for them.
No matter how good a driver you are, stability control will react faster and
pulse a single wheel brake, if needed, that is not possible to do with a
normal braking system. If you truly thing you are better, push a button and
turn it off.
Problem is that all these new gadgets are dependent on imperfect sensors
and are sometimes are missing the sensors they need to really do the job
properly.
A good example of this that many people are well aware of is the ABS on
something like a 1T pickup, particularly when unloaded. What happens is
that you are doing moderate braking and hit a bump of some sort, due to
the stiff suspension, the wheel bounces up and out of contact with the
road and stops rotating until it contacts the road again. The ABS
mistakenly thinks the wheel has locked up since it lacks a sensor input
to tell it the wheel lost contact with the road (a Z axis accelerometer
would probably do the trick).
As a result the ABS freaks out and you loose a substantial amount of
braking capability for a short time. For some people this has resulted
in bumper taps in situations where the speed and distance would have
provided plenty of braking space if the ABS had not malfunctioned.
People who drive these vehicles regularly learn to scan the road surface
when braking and momentarily release the brakes when crossing any kind
of bump in order to prevent the ABS caused loss of braking.
