This short but excellent video explains the elements of Dynamic Stability Control (DSC) better than anything we’ve seen.
This clever little video, courtesy of Mazda Australia, opens with a simple and brilliant explanation of understeer and oversteer, complete with succinct animation. That segment alone makes this video a winner in our books, so the valuable tutorial on Dynamic Stability Control that follows is almost like the icing on the cake. As we always say, the clearest technical features are the best technical features.
Dynamic Stability Control (DSC) has flown under many names in the auto industry, including Electronic Stability Program (ESP; in German, Elektronisches Stabilitätsprogramm), Active Skid and Traction Control (ASTC), and StabiliTrak, a snazzy trade name coined by General Motors. At Ferrari, it’s Controllo Stabilità (CST). These systems have been standard equipment, as mandated by law, on all new cars in the USA since 2012, in Canada and Australia since 2011. and in the EU since 2014.
U.S Government studies estimate that DSC may prevent 5,300 to 9,600 road fatalities per year in the USA, and the systems can also serve as the basis for even more advanced safety features including Roll Stability Control. Still, many car enthusiasts, especially those of us in the old school category, may not fully appreciate how they operate. Hence this video—please enjoy.
Called “Old School?”,… I am no fan of all this “Confuser Powered” automobile handling controls. Little (if any) actual connection between a driver and the various controls as a part of motor vehicles exists today. Sensors, position switches and servos apparently rule over us, and actually seem to have the ability to determine whether we live, or die while travelling anymore! Where ABS is actually a fine feature for us, I see it a welcome advance as even if it should fail, the vehicle braking system still works! Did we give up on training drivers in public schools so the “private sector-for profiteers” could go into business resulting in such poor driver performance we need such innovations to make up for it? Must our lives all be hung upon the “dangling digetal thread” of an onboard computer forever?!! Mother! I’d rather do it myself!!!
Problem is the ‘control’ is taken from the driver.
And it has no idea when a trailer or caravan starts to sway, in fact it does the dead opposite to what is required.
And oversteer is safer than understeer, correcting it makes under steer.
The electronic nannys are generally more dangerous for an experienced driver.
ABS can be handy when hard braking on bad surfaces,,whereas will make less overall braking on a good surface.
If you can drive as well as the DSC system, it will never engage. It will be like it was never there.