ESP, VSA

f00lzz · Post by **f00lzz** » 12 May 2006, 08:17

Just as a thought!!..

.... How would it affect your driving if instead of an air-bag on your steering wheel, every car had a six inch spike pointing at your chest instead???

mezuk04 · Post by **mezuk04** » 12 May 2006, 08:26

No No! that's just my personal opinion! Some people agree with having electronic control in their cars. Just not me

Dont worry I know.

In that case, rather than spending £200 on an ESP system, why not spend £60 each for you and your girlfriend to have a day at a skid pan

I have to admit Ive thought about doing something like this although I do feel that alot more should be done for learner drivers, it took me a couple of dodgy moments after I had passed to realise the car doesnt always react as you like.

I think for the majority, although when fatalities is part of the topic maybe the term majority isnt the best approach, however I do feel for the majority of drivers would benefit from such a system. The learner driver who has just passed but find themselves in trouble (complete stopped traffic on a motorway) and they panic / the parent taking the child to school in busy traffic / even old old people although they do drive slower their reactions are incredibly slower.

But of course the ideal would be for driver education, its by far the best way (its obvious), however we live in a world where for some reason people seem to dictate what they can and cannot do, that BMW driver flying past all over the lanes constantly on his mobile phone still doing 100+ and if an accident occured he would still say it wasnt his fault, sadly we live in a time when we cant educate everyone by asking them to seek out the help (like anti skid places), so maybe the government should step in and make it 'LAW' that you have to have further education. (whether that be costed or free, who knows) I doubt it will ever happen though.

To me from the video its quite clear that the ESP system makes the car react differently and from what I can see it seems to be much safer and I would like the idea of knowing its there to hopefully minimise the accident and hopefully for me to walk away (in some shape or form), Air Bags generally do scare me if i were to ever be involved with one going off as I just have visions of my neck snapping or mashing my face.

If it was up to me I would have better education for learner drivers in certain accident circumstances (even how to react in a skid is a start but not currently present

) then every 5years to go back to be familiarised (sp?) with how to keep control of a car, but also the introduction of this system as standard as I feel the greater good is 'well' greater.

If you watched Top Gear on sunday, one of the presenters (the scruffy long haired one hehehe) described the ride in the Honda as choppy as you speed up - this I agree with 100%, however at least the wheels dont start to wobble like the Corrolla.

I wonder if this is possibly my longest post, theres a good chance it is and even more likely are the spelling mistakes and bad grammer.

howiedean · Post by **howiedean** » 12 May 2006, 10:08

Living and driving in Lincolnshire, I would certainly want as many safety aids as possible. I like most people don't want to buy a car with loads of extra electronics that can go wrong, but I also want to have a fighting chance when things do go wrong whilst driving!!!
Yep IMHO make it standard.

Regards

Homer · Post by **Homer** » 15 May 2006, 13:03

fastandfurryous wrote: The problem is that so many drivers on the road are either blind, stupid or completely unable to drive safely,

The fact is millions of car journeys are made every day in this country and only a small number of them result in someone driving into anything, so we are not all that bad really considering the number crammed into an ever decreasing ammount of road space as more is turned over to buslanes, cycle lanes, pedestrian zones.

There are a small minority of drivers who could benefit from extra education, we need a system which targets these drivers. The current obsession with speed doesn't.

Back on to the subject of electronics.

ABS has saved my skin a couple of times when some muppet has decided to pull out in front of me but I doubt most drivers get near invoking a lot of the newer gadgetry such as ESP or even traction control beyond setting off from the traffic lights.

PowerLee · Post by **PowerLee** » 15 May 2006, 17:33

Chassis devlopment also has something to do with the way a car handles in an emergency.

Peugeot dumbing down the chassis of the new cars hasnt helped it.

I doubt they will ever build brilliant handling cars like the 106 / 205 / 306 & 405 ever again.

A 405 is a fine handling car, Even more so in series two form.

A 406 on the other hand is good, But after getting out of a 405 is a total let down handling wise, The back end is lose.

A 407 has ESP as standard, Havent driven one yet & I dont wont to, Ive sat in one & it felt cheap & nasty.

The 407 is ment to be better then the 406 though but I doubt it would trouble a 405 down a twisty back road.

Ford on the other hand has made each car better.

Escort = crap handling

Focus 1 was a massive step forward

Focus 2 is even better & feels more like a grown up 405 in the way it handles.

Its the same story with the Sierra / Mondeo.

Sierra was awful

1st Mondeo was good

2nd Mondeo even better

Current Mondeo brilliant.

A car needs a good chassis to start with before safety systems like ESP are added on for that emergency moment.

Ive been in a mk 1 Mondeo thats had to make a sudden direction change at speed to avoid a flying truck tyre casing on the motorway, No ESP on it & the chassis looked after the driver perfectly.

Im all for ESP to be fitted as standard but the car manufacturers should make the car handle perfectly first instead of letting the ESP sort out a crap chassis design.

ACTIVE8 · Post by **ACTIVE8** » 16 May 2006, 10:28

f00lzz wrote:Just as a thought!!.. .... How would it affect your driving if instead of an air-bag on your steering wheel, every car had a six inch spike pointing at your chest instead???

Well in the past the steering wheels were dangerous, they did not have spikes poking out of them, but they were not exactly much better than that, and not something that you would want to come in contact with.

Here's an old steering wheel.

[img]http://fototime.com/{1CE80A17-2A87-40D8 ... icture.JPG[/img]

It is from a 1947 vehicle, and there's no padding etc so contact would have resulted in injury.

Maybe with something solid like this infront of the driver, and what with the lack of seat belts, a driver would think more about their own mortality, and drive more carefully than drivers do today.

mezuk04 · Post by **mezuk04** » 16 May 2006, 10:34

Maybe we should also suggest that another 'driver' is not the only other danger on the roads today.

You have wildlife, debris and motorway traffic jams.

It was a few weeks ago driving along the A1(M) at Pontefract that the entire carriageway (3 running lanes and 2 slip lanes) were covered with wood with some rather scary large chunks.

And a few weeks prior to this a large chunk of wood was on the 3rd lane of the M62 a few miles off the A1(M) which resulted in a couple of cars braking fairly hard with sudden sharp turning movements, makes me wonder if these sharp sudden movements to avoid the wood but still ending up clipping the wood may have resulted in loss of control which at that point I wouldnt mind having some system to help me out.

fastandfurryous · Post by **fastandfurryous** » 16 May 2006, 11:44

PowerLee wrote:A car needs a good chassis to start with before safety systems like ESP are added on for that emergency moment.

Thing is... if you were to fit ESP to a 405 do you think it would improve the handling on the edge? I don't think so. Having had a couple of adrenalin-inducing moments in 405's (including a rather vicious swerve to avoid a numpty who pulled out on me on a dual carriadgeway) I personally don't think ESP could better it.

If ESP is used to make a bad-handling car work properly (like the Honda shown at the beginning of this thread) The danger will be in 7 years' time when the system looses a sensor, shuts off, and leaves the driver with a car that handles like a wayward shopping trolley

PowerLee · Post by **PowerLee** » 16 May 2006, 17:54

fastandfurryous wrote:
PowerLee wrote:A car needs a good chassis to start with before safety systems like ESP are added on for that emergency moment.
Thing is... if you were to fit ESP to a 405 do you think it would improve the handling on the edge? I don't think so. Having had a couple of adrenalin-inducing moments in 405's (including a rather vicious swerve to avoid a numpty who pulled out on me on a dual carriadgeway) I personally don't think ESP could better it.

If ESP is used to make a bad-handling car work properly (like the Honda shown at the beginning of this thread) The danger will be in 7 years' time when the system looses a sensor, shuts off, and leaves the driver with a car that handles like a wayward shopping trolley

The 405 chassis is spot on, You aint gonna make it any better.

Now try the same accident avoidance manoeuvre in a 406 & it WILL spin, The 406 chassis is p**s poor.

The way round the failure of a ABS / ESP sensor is to limit the revs & speed so it cant go fast enough to have an accident but can be driven to a garage for diagnostic & repair.

Just think that there are forklift trucks out there that have been for years running much more high tech advanced CAN - BUS multiplex systems then anything PSA Peugeot Citroen have ever fitted to a car yet & they work just fine day in & day out.

Kowalski · Post by **Kowalski** » 16 May 2006, 20:29

Even a car that has very good handling can be improved by ESP, in the dry with a skilled / experience driver it won't make all that big a difference. Its an extra safety for when you end up with one wheel on mud, gravel, snow, ice, wet leaves etc thats the sort of time when even the best handling cars find themselves coming unstuck.

The way that ESP will be proved is via the accident statistics that come from the insurance companies, there isn't a car made that can't be crashed, ESP won't change that but it may have some impact on the statistics.

fastandfurryous · Post by **fastandfurryous** » 16 May 2006, 21:18

PowerLee wrote:Just think that there are forklift trucks out there that have been for years running much more high tech advanced CAN - BUS multiplex systems then anything PSA Peugeot Citroen have ever fitted to a car yet & they work just fine day in & day out.

This is a bit off-topic, but still relevant:

You've made the point as to why they are still working though. They're more advanced, and undoubtedly better built/designed. The PSA multiplex system appears to be badly designed and cheaply manufactured, hence will be unreliable. After all... car manufacturers build their cars as cheaply as possible. A few pence saved here and there makes all the difference.

And Kowalski.... No electronics are going to improve the handling of a 405.. it's so unbelievably well balanced. PSA could do with going back 20 years and remembering what they used to produce.

I guarantee if you put a 405, 406 and 407 together, the 405 will outhandle the 406 and 407.

pugxpert · Post by **pugxpert** » 16 May 2006, 22:01

just seen this post god does it go on!! i think manufacturers are competing against each other for what there new model has fitted as standard so the average joe public say ooh thats got more on than that i will buy it! with regards to handling of 405 compared to 407 i think car design is now geared around safety and how well it is in a shunt so the old 405 days are gone,i would rather have a shunt in a 407 than a 405 .most psa cars are the same underneath now anyway,407 is a c5 platform c4 is a 307 and 207 is derived from a c3.

Kowalski · Post by **Kowalski** » 16 May 2006, 22:23

fastandfurryous wrote: I guarantee if you put a 405, 406 and 407 together, the 405 will outhandle the 406 and 407.

The 405 doesn't have a particularly sophisticated suspension setup, you're not trying to say the macpherson struts and trailing arms can outperform dual wishbone suspension are you?

More seriously, the 406 and the 407 have been well received in terms of handling by the motoring press. Whether this means they handle well or that the journos have been stuck writing about bad handling Korean and Malaysian cars or not remains to be seen.

bxbodger · Post by **bxbodger** » 16 May 2006, 23:22

Its the all round package that counts-my BX has Mcphersons and is still pretty predictable, my Triumph has double wishbones and coil-overs on the front, but mix that with a swing axle at the back and a flexible chassis, push it a bit and you damn soon find out what scarey handling is!!

In real terms, all modern cars handle pretty well, whatever set-up they have, all the electronics do is add that extra margin, and to be honest the Korean and Malaysian cars are just as good as the Western ones- no doubt Proton took full advantage of acquiring Lotus.

In fact, I'd say to anyone quibbling over the relative merits of a 405 versus a 407, Go drive a Marina- the whole argument will then take on a different perspective........!!!!

ACTIVE8 · Post by **ACTIVE8** » 17 May 2006, 08:36

The Marina is technically a Morris Minor in disguise, as it has leaf springs at the rear, lever arm dampers on the front, and the same king pin set up.