Activas and Safety

[KP]

We've all seen the adverts for the activas, BUT are Activa's actually safer round corners, under braking in corners.... than other normal sprung cars and other normal Xantias/C5's?

Not on about crash tests but more about the grip and the control of the car under these circumstances...

[Citroenmad]

Id certainly say they should be, as their body roll is controlled. Make a dramatic lane change at motorway speeds in a normal car and it will probably lose control, an Activa id expect to be better and remain stable.

[Sl4yer]

Yes, I reckon they should be, with a couple of provisos:

1. All hydraulic systems are working correctly;
2. The tyres are good quality and condition, and correctly inflated.

All the trick suspension in the world will do you no good if the bits that contact the road aren't up to it.

James

[xmexclusive]

There is no way that Activas or any Citroen with hydraulic suspension will be safer than other cars round bends unless you have a crap car with normal suspension in front to slow you down. Better comfort and more controlled grip transfer just allows faster curving for the same level of safety.

John

[Xaccers]

There's a video on youtube that shows cars slaloming through cones and basically spinning off after losing control as the resonance builds and they swing wilder and wilder.
Then they show, I believe an XM, with hydractive suspension and it's able to do the slalom at higher speed without trouble.

Here it is:


And who could forget:

[addo]

I honestly believe that at the margin of control, hydraulic Citroëns are slightly more predictable and manageable than a steel sprung car. There's less tyre "chatter" - for want of a better word, and more skidding with better contact. You can do it all wrong; go hard into a corner and hit the anchors ferociously mid-steer. It just slows down until directional control returns.

On a dry, near-flat corner, I reckon the Activa would be slightly faster than a non-active suspended citroën.

[citrov6]

i would think the activa being more stable with its weight transfer would be more predictable and manageable in those conditions. any other car would just alert you sooner with under steer, which many car manufacturers see as 'safer' in those conditions because the driver is alerted to the situation. where as a professional driver would read the situation before this happens. so in the context of ordinary drivers like us the context of safe would be something like that to begin with.

i agree with addo hydraulics are far much more predictable than steel springs, steel just doesn't react as fast or linearly, in a salalom situation i would think steel would become unstable faster

[xmexclusive]

Hi All

The salalom is a special case which acentuates the feature that steel springs repeatedly loaded/unloaded fast enough can reach a critical resonant frequency where motion is amplified instead of damped. The result is a tangential slide if the grip fails or a roll if the grip holds.
As I understand it if you fit an XM with a very large orifice sphere on one side at the front it will fail the salalom in exactly the same way as the steel sprung car does.
The reason that hydaulically suspended cars can curve at higher speeds is simply that they adjust weight loading faster and better than conventional cars. The hydraulic system working properly makes sure that the contact patch size and position remains better distributed between the four wheels.

John

[andmcit]

A revolutionary driving experience
When it comes to taking bends, even the best high performance saloons come
nowhere near the new Xantia Activa. For a safer and more comfortable ride,
it has no equal

Citroën's view on safety!


Andrew