Am I the Only One Who Hates ABS, ESP, etc.

[parimento1]

I hate that the government is forcing all these things down our throats by mandating that they be standard on all cars in the near future. They cost a lot upfront and are VERY expensive to fix if they break, and I don't see them being a big help to motorists. If anything I think it encourages people to drive more stupidly because they believe their electronic nanny will bail them out. Personally I think ABS causes more accidents than anything. It increases stopping distances markedly in the wet, and in snowy/icy conditions. I know that I will get flack for that comment, but it is from personal experience. It is nice that the car is much harder to spin out, but if you need to stop and there is nowhere to steer out of the way to, you are screwed. Also, I drive a front wheel drive car and cannot think of a time when I actually needed a stability program to keep me from spinning out and on course. From driving front wheel drive cars, you need to do something REALLY stupid to lose control, like pull the parking brake while turning. I really do not like all these complex electronics in our cars, but I guess they are here to stay and are the way of the future. What do you guys think?

 

[bdcardinal]

im a fan of them, but there should be an easier way of disabling them for people who do not need or do not want them.

i once heard a commentary stating that the worst thing ever to happen to SUVs was effective brakes, it made them easier to drive for the masses.

 

[rpn453]

I don't mind them being there, as long as I can turn them off (and not have to turn them off again every time I start the car). I like having ABS in the summer to prevent the possibility of flatspotting my tires if I have to slam on the brakes for a deer or something, but I'd like to be able to easily turn it off in the winter for more effective braking on snow. I'd certainly never pay to fix a system that I only like half of the time. I'd probably end up permanently disabling traction control and/or stability control if I had it and couldn't easily turn it off and leave it off. I'd really hate to not be able to spin my tires in deep snow. I once drove a rental Highlander that just shut the engine down every time I tried to turn with wheelspin in deep snow, causing me to just plow forward with understeer. You could turn the TC light on and off on the dash, but it didn't change anything. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind having ESP active when I'm cruising on the highway. You never know what might happen at higher speeds.

I definitely don't agree with them being forced upon us. Same with TPMS, which I'd never pay to install on my winter wheels.

 

[parimento1]

AH I almost forgot! I am absolutely LIVID about the fact that the government is making "black boxes" mandatory in all cars very soon. This way they can see who is at fault in an accident, if one was speeding at the time of an accident, etc. This will lead to much higher insurance premiums and a lot more people facing criminal charges and lawsuits. It opens up a whole pandora's box of liability! Not to mention dealers will use this as an excuse to not cover warranty work. "Oh, sir, we see that you were doing 80mph, that is considered abuse and is what caused your engine to overheat, therefore your warranty will not be honored." I can see it now...being a service department manager will become one of the worlds most dangerous jobs.

 

[rpn453]

Originally Posted By: parimento1
AH I almost forgot! I am absolutely LIVID about the fact that the government is making "black boxes" mandatory in all cars very soon.


I don't mind it. I'd like the police to know absolutely everything about the idiot who runs into me. Of course, I don't speed, and the legal system is rarely involved in collisions here anyway.

Just like any other warranty situation, an auto dealer or manufacturer is not going to develop a good reputation if they're denying warranty on items that are clearly not the fault of the owner. Bad publicity spreads quickly these days!

 

[rpn453]

I'll also add that I actually don't even mind the idea of electronically monitoring my tire pressure, so maybe someday I will add sensors to my winter tires on a TPMS-equipped vehicle. But whether it's worth it to me will depend entirely on the cost and reliability of it.

 

[d00df00d]

FWIW, last I heard, those black boxes would only ever store a few seconds' worth of information, and only in the event of an accident. If there is no accident, there is no record of what happened... besides what modern premium car ECUs ALREADY record, such as number of WOT/redline events etc.

Regarding drivers' aids, I think the real issue is that they're considered to be necessary in the first place. As such, the fault lies in our society's attitude toward driving and cars. A typical car buyer has no car control skills and thinks a tall vehicle weighing two to three tons is perfectly sensible transportation. In other words, they know they're throwing active safety to the dogs, but are unwilling to do anything about it: rather than trying to improve their skills or find better cars, they expect the manufacturers to rewrite physics. Kind of reminds me of the morbidly obese folks who expect the rest of society to accept and adapt to them. You'll never get anywhere confronting the reasoning because... there is none. You have to confront the cause.

I agree STRONGLY with the suggestions that too many nannies will encourage reckless driving with terrible consequences, especially among SUV drivers.

 

[JeepZJ4.0]

VSA, EBD and ABS have saved me in emergency situations so I have much respect for technologies.

 

[BuickGN]

I've proven that I can get the TL around a course quicker with the VSA disabled and I can stop a couple feet shorter with the ABS fuse pulled in dry conditions in a straight line. With that said, I think stability control and especially ABS are one of the best things ever for the average American driver. People just don't know how to control a vehicle. It's pathetic the average skill level. The first thing I did the day I got my license when I was 16 was take the car out in the middle of nowhere and learn how to slide and control it yet I've seen so many very small slides get over corrected 2-3 times and eventually result in a spinout. I think ABS is great for 99% of the drivers on the road.

I have had ABS nearly cause an accident before though. Going over a washboard dirt road, it would've been better to lock the tires when I needed to stop but instead the ABS engaged and it felt like I wasn't even applying the brakes. In fact so bad that I pulled the e-brake to stop.

The newer generations are incredibly soft and girly. Over on acurazine.com, one guy's ABS light was on and the ABS was non-functional and everyone warned him how it was too dangerous to drive without ABS and he should park it.

Still, I will never get rid of the old Buick, I love having to handle it spinning the tires from a 50mph roll and to think I've never had an accident with (gasp) no ABS or stability control.

 

[wcbcruzer]

I think all cars should come with ABS these days. Not everyone knows how to drive. Put a 100 lb asian woman behind the wheel of a Land Rover and you better hope she doesn't come up behind you. Thank God for ABS!

Speaking of which, I need to get my ABS fixed.

Buick, do you know anyone with a DRBII scanner? Dealers wants freakin' $100 just to take 30 seconds and pull some codes. My truck doesn't have OBD-II. THUS, I can relate to the OP's frustration with all these new money making gadgets. Autozone doesn't loan out OBD-II scanners for free anymore. New law or something.

 

[sprintman]

My May 2001 BMW has a button on the dash that disables Automatic Stability Control (ASC) and Traction Control. Great aids imo.

 

[tropic]

Originally Posted By: BuickGN
...I think stability control and especially ABS are one of the best things ever for the average American driver.

I actually hate ABS on my car. I absolutely love ABS on other people's cars. I'm plain selfish. I don't want my own braking performance hampered, but I like knowing that other people who hit me have a lesser chance of killing me because they have ABS on their vehicles.

 

[ms21043]

I'm a fan of ABS, it helps lower my insurance rates. I also admit that I'm not better than ABS in a panic situation, found that out first hand. I'd just as soon buy a car without seat belts as I would without ABS.

To all you guys who are better than ABS congrats, you guys are in the same class as professional race car drivers.

 

[ikeepmychevytoo]

I don't have problem with the quality systems. Problem with ABS is that it messes up the natural stability and distribution of the braking system. Also it hampers the braking capacity because it just blocks the pressure, not adjusts it from one side to the other. So it does have to come with a stability distrubution supervising as well. But in the pink world of marketing intelligence they suddenly become two separate technologies. Kinematics have to work in all integration, but for the sum of it, oftenly the marketable alphabet soups are just falsifications.

I wouldn't prefer suspension, brake capacity, brake balance that designed inferior due to these add on patches, which are likely with the cheaper cars.

As always, there are decent engineerings and poor concoctions. With numeric control or inertia sensitive floats or hydraulics.

 

[moribundman]

Originally Posted By: ikeepmychevytoo
oftenly


That's a great unword!

 

[brianl703]

Originally Posted By: tropic
I like knowing that other people who hit me have a lesser chance of killing me because they have ABS on their vehicles.


The whole idea of ABS is that you can still steer while braking hard(since the wheels aren't locked up) so hopefully they could steer around you instead of hitting you. It doesn't seem like that actually happens much in the real world....they just slam on the brakes and don't even think about trying to steer around the vehicle they're about to hit.

 

[Driz]

ABS is kind of handy here in the snow country. Yes its a band aid for idiots but unfortunately every one makes mistakes and gets themselves neck deep is [censored] sometimes . They can make the difference in those cases. Now on the other hand since we drive all old cars if it dies thats it, no fixing or replacing expensive black boxes. A piece of tape works very well over the idiot light. The big secret in all this traction stuff is to learn to leave a little earlier and slow the [censored] down when it is [censored] out. It is amazing how that calms you down.
You really want to get me going on useless [censored] try rear disk brakes. I always wanted them until I had them got them. Worst idea I ever saw. Lousy performance on Grand Cherokee's eat pads for breakfast and by dinner its the cheesey flimsy disks and none of it is particularly easy to change out. With drums 3 sets of pads lasted the entire 200000 mile life of the car. Give me good old drums any day.

 

[brianl703]

The 1996 Contour I used to have still has the original rear disks at 150k and the rear pads had been changed once. I think changing rear pads might be easier if only for the fact that there isn't a self-adjuster to freeze up and go bad and a bunch of springs.

 

[01rangerxl]

Originally Posted By: brianl703
Originally Posted By: tropic
I like knowing that other people who hit me have a lesser chance of killing me because they have ABS on their vehicles.


The whole idea of ABS is that you can still steer while braking hard(since the wheels aren't locked up) so hopefully they could steer around you instead of hitting you. It doesn't seem like that actually happens much in the real world....they just slam on the brakes and don't even think about trying to steer around the vehicle they're about to hit.

Yep.

One day while driving my 2001 Ranger, I was going down a main road approaching an intersection with a stop sign for cross traffic (not for me). A woman in a Grand Am blows through the stop sign and pulls right out in front of me. I guess a bright red truck going 45 MPH is hard to see on a clear day? I slammed on the brakes, ABS kicked in, and I was able to drive around the front of the Grand Am with no loss of control. My friend was screaming in the passenger seat, but there was no wreck. That incident made me a fan of ABS.

 

[1sttruck]

When I was looking at stopping distance tests on pickup reviews the non-ABS trucks were the worst because of the brake lockups, and this was with people who do lots of testing. From what I've seen the long ABS stopping distances are because of crummy tires for the conditions, and typically because most people use automatics and don't have much in the way of engine braking or know how to use it. I have 4 wheel discs with ABS on a 3/4 ton pickup, I live on a hill, we get what appears to be pretty bad winter weather, and I don't have problems braking. I have a manual transmission though, run studded tires in the winter, still carry chains, and even my 'summer tires' are severe snow rated.