6 People Hit by 458 Scud This Morning in Battersea
Discussion
Bradley1500 said:
Thankfully I haven’t done that yet and don’t plan to either!
Absolutely colossal difference in behaviour between early 90s ESP systems like the one in your Supra and modern state of the art systems like you'd find in a 458 (or a Mondeo). Traction control / stability control systems don't just kill power and leave you to await your death when you try and pull too briskly out of a wet junction any more, thank god. You can still overcome them of course, but you really do have to be driving like a complete bell end.
dme123 said:
Bradley1500 said:
Thankfully I haven’t done that yet and don’t plan to either!
Absolutely colossal difference in behaviour between early 90s ESP systems like the one in your Supra and modern state of the art systems like you'd find in a 458 (or a Mondeo). Traction control / stability control systems don't just kill power and leave you to await your death when you try and pull too briskly out of a wet junction any more, thank god. You can still overcome them of course, but you really do have to be driving like a complete bell end.
I tried my Saabs ESP out on a massive, empty snowy car park, very difficult to catch it out but that was lowish speed, as speeds rise it has less opportunity to work its magic.
I hear supercars being thrashed through the town centre here, it is awash with them, a good tip is that people, even if they havent shown it, have already noticed a noisy, brightly coloured, low slung, expensive car, so no need to go fast or rev the nuts off it, the only people it may impress are 17 year old anoraks, everyone else tends to think "what a penis". It ruins the image really, burble through cities, towns and villages, depends whether you want to be the next court case or viral video, or just people to think you are just another excitable wedding guest in a rented supercar.
I hear supercars being thrashed through the town centre here, it is awash with them, a good tip is that people, even if they havent shown it, have already noticed a noisy, brightly coloured, low slung, expensive car, so no need to go fast or rev the nuts off it, the only people it may impress are 17 year old anoraks, everyone else tends to think "what a penis". It ruins the image really, burble through cities, towns and villages, depends whether you want to be the next court case or viral video, or just people to think you are just another excitable wedding guest in a rented supercar.
jamieduff1981 said:
Your Saab is also front wheel drive, so any loss of traction due to power does not induce encourage a yaw moment. All the Saab's traction control has to worry about is whether the front wheels are turning faster than the back wheels or not.
That is indeed true, good point, more a "yawn moment", A FWD 250 Saab is very different from a mid engined rear Drive Ferrari with 600 ish BHPI did use the handbrake to introduce some Yaw action though, it coped really well but it I guess giving the ESP a much bigger problem to sort out, much quicker than a Saab could ever generate.
Modern stability systems (not just t/c) are very very good. My BMW 5 (yes, not a sports car 
) is all but impossible to spin. Even provoking it by going far to fast into a slippery island, aggressively turning in and either stamping or coming off the throttle produces nothing but a tightening of the line.
However regardless of this, unless the car had a failure he was driving far to fast or aggressively for the conditions.
) is all but impossible to spin. Even provoking it by going far to fast into a slippery island, aggressively turning in and either stamping or coming off the throttle produces nothing but a tightening of the line. However regardless of this, unless the car had a failure he was driving far to fast or aggressively for the conditions.
WestyCarl said:
Modern stability systems (not just t/c) are very very good. My BMW 5 (yes, not a sports car ) is all but impossible to spin. Even provoking it by going far to fast into a slippery island, aggressively turning in and either stamping or coming off the throttle produces nothing but a tightening of the line.
However regardless of this, unless the car had a failure he was driving far to fast or aggressively for the conditions.
Jaguar's doesn't. It won't let you spin, but it will let you slide a lot. Certainly it would be possible enough to yaw far enough to depart a relatively narrow road lane before recovery.) is all but impossible to spin. Even provoking it by going far to fast into a slippery island, aggressively turning in and either stamping or coming off the throttle produces nothing but a tightening of the line. However regardless of this, unless the car had a failure he was driving far to fast or aggressively for the conditions.
There's a world of difference between whether electronics will allow a car to completely swap ends on a big open skid pan or frozen lake development test site and whether it allows the back end to step out. Modern BMWs do seem to be at the very safe end of ESP setups overall. Systems (like that in the XFR) will allow a big yaw angle and it without rapid steering correction the front inside wheel will be into a kerb/verge/whatever and it's game over - just like that Supra above.
The Supra video, incidently, demonstrately perfectly how viciously some powerful RWD cars with wide tyres can let go.
Even my pickup (which likewise never has its stability programmes turned off) will step out quite abruptly in some conditions (like a mid-corner bump on a wet road which upsets the life axle at the rear).
Don said:
My Boxster S is equipped with PSM (Porsche Stability Management). If you simply turn the wheel 90 degrees at 70mph of course you can overcome what it does.
I believe in that situation it would induce some understeer to limit the yaw and avoid a spin - there are lots of vids on youtube simulating elk tests where the steering inputs are brutal and the system copes.BarryGibb said:
jamieduff1981 said:
Modern BMWs do seem to be at the very safe end of ESP setups overall.
AgreedAnd to be clear, I have NO experience of a 458 Speciale, but if it follows the traits of a California you could easily get it very out of shape in bad conditions with all systems on. I also wasn't convinced the stability control was working on my Evora for the first few wet drives.
BarryGibb said:
jamieduff1981 said:
Modern BMWs do seem to be at the very safe end of ESP setups overall.
AgreedFurtiveFreddy said:
I don't know why everyone's debating driver aids. The Ferrari driver might have switched them all off for all we know.
Because earlier in the thread a few people stated as point of fact that the driver would have needed to switch them all off as a prerequisite for losing control of the car.FurtiveFreddy said:
I don't know why everyone's debating driver aids. The Ferrari driver might have switched them all off for all we know.
There was a discussion earlier in the thread that suggested he would have to have turned them all off and therefore had to have been driving like a prick. We are just discussing that in some cars, it could all go wrong with the systems on. This is particularly so when the systems are tuned for helping dry performance as opposed to optimised for safety in poor conditions. That doesn't mean the driver was or wasn't behaving like a dick but its relevant to some of the speculation (and I would expect interesting to most).OK fine, it's easy to lose track of arguments on here sometimes...
Anyway, I don't know if anyone else has pointed this out but in all the photos I've seen, there is a distinct lack of tyre marks anywhere and from the footage it doesn't look as though the road was wet, so although it's easy to jump to the conclusion that he lost control and was sideways at some point, it's quite possible he just drove into those poor people because he was unsighted or not looking ahead or just plain reckless.
Anyway, I don't know if anyone else has pointed this out but in all the photos I've seen, there is a distinct lack of tyre marks anywhere and from the footage it doesn't look as though the road was wet, so although it's easy to jump to the conclusion that he lost control and was sideways at some point, it's quite possible he just drove into those poor people because he was unsighted or not looking ahead or just plain reckless.
janesmith1950 said:
I would assume people here aren't trying to suggest that a person driving as expected could find themselves ploughing into a group of pedestrians, through no fault of their own?
Can't speak for everyone but your assumption is correct on my part, it's still the fault of the driver as it was when I had my previously shared excursions from pointing straight ahead.My personal motive for discussing electronics was as stated a wee bit earlier - that is to say "do not assume that electronics will save you", and depending on the particular car and its particular electronics, you don't need to be driving too aggressively to cross its limits in cold/damp conditions.
My Cerbera has never shocked me like the Jag did, because I'm always very conscious of the fact that the Cerbera offers no assistance at all. I believed (like many here still seem to) until that point that the Jag's electronics would prevent a dramatic rear-end breakaway accelerating fairly modestly in a straight line, and they didn't. Now I drive the Jag like the Cerbera and drive on the basis that the electronics don't help. I just forget they're there. I don't turn them off because I reckon the would prevent a full spin and being switched on doesn't hurt anything, but I have learned not to rely on them.
My concern is that some here still expect their electronics to catch their mistakes. Big engines and fat tyres don't like cold weather. Drivers need to remember that and remember that electronics can't make friction when big fat tyres have let go on cold damp roads.
janesmith1950 said:
I would assume people here aren't trying to suggest that a person driving as expected could find themselves ploughing into a group of pedestrians, through no fault of their own?
I don't think anyone is. Whatever the reason he hit them, it was due to poor or aggressive driving or a combination of both. What I'm saying is that with a powerful RWD car, the assumption is often that traction or grip was lost and the driver couldn't control the subsequent slide which led to a collision. That may not be the case here.
janesmith1950 said:
I would assume people here aren't trying to suggest that a person driving as expected could find themselves ploughing into a group of pedestrians, through no fault of their own?
Can only speak for myself but I'd be massively surprised if this isn't driver error / negligence. Just because a car has very loose SC/TC doesn't change the drivers responsibility or excuse anything. I do however hope that discussing it helps one or two of our members avoid a nasty shock.Taking your question to the extreme. It is possible that the car may have been interfered with by other road users - a push from the RR or something similar. In that case, the driver could be innocent. This is only hypothetical but I guess there are potential circumstances where both the pedestrians and the driver could be victims.
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