tifosiv122

Details in the report:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...icle_control_3

Go MB!

Erik

SpeedLimits?

Theres a shocker German cars are safer than any other cars in the world. Tell that to my friend whos sister just got killed in a F**KING Hyundai Accent

vraa

Ugh.

What's the deal with tires then?!

pokerFACE

..it says, brake outside front tire when the car swerves to prevent fishtail??

is that right?

sorlo

Cool, we all have that in our cars!

moomeh

i think i understand the whole outside front braking thing.

you are swerving left, so your entire back is going to move up or fishtail forward. a force must counteract this and the front outside or right front brake will be applied. i think the back brakes are also involved too but just not mentioned. i know that when i have esp on, both the brakes on the right side are applied (or at least felt to be). that is when i realize that i need to turn off esp to spin around....weeeeeeee. IMHO.

tifosiv122

My GFs Best friend was killed in an '03 Monte Carlo this past weekend...of course not wearing the seatbelt did not help when she flew through the windshield.

Erik

dswildfire

yes, it's right, the braking wheel acts as a pivot point. as moomeh pointed out, both outside, in this case right, brakes will be applied, although the front more than the rear. if the inside wheels were to brake, with more emphasis on the rear, the car would spin around faster.

and on a side note, while ESP is a nice thing to have, and helps most of the time, i find the car easier to control on mulholland (twisty, with some spots of bad paving) with esp off. yeah, sometimes it starts sliding when you go from a quick right to left curve, but i find it easier and less jarring to correct that myself than let esp do it. it's mostly bad paving that throws it off and makes the car think you are in a worse spot than you really are.

pokerFACE

but if it brakes the outside front tire and less (or none) on the outside rear tire, wouldnt it spin out because the rear would then be moving faster than the front?

dswildfire

this is all assuming that the driver does what they're supposed to and steer into the skid, if not, the esp can't help much. but if they are steering into the skid, the rear tires would push the car foward, but since the front right tire is braking, the car has to rotate around it, and into the direction it is being steered. if you were to turn the wheel the other way, yes u would spin out.

6.3

I tested ESP once when coming out of a Queens carwash and the whole stretch of road is wet and slippery because of all of the armorall tyre treatment. So I went into a 90 degree turn slow but as I was coming out I applied more throttle, the ESP kicked in on an instant and put the car back on track. It was reasurring that it worked that well. Otherwise without ESP and at a higher speed the car would fishtail and hit a wall for sure. Now I know some of you prefer to have "control" all the time but this was a spot where you would not expect the car to fishtail at all. Mercedes is driven by many people with varying skills and ESP does a great job keeping them safe.