Are you faster with traction control on or off?

[acro]

Originally Posted by Luis_GT

I wouldn't have lost control in the first place

Edit: And in that situation, TC wouldn't have saved you

^^ this

We wouldn't have been caught out because we wouldn't have been going that fast. We would use our head. No offense Btw

[bestwheelbase]

Originally Posted by DylanFRS

The moral issue of leaving TSC on or off for regular commuting or on the street is just that, a moral issue and thus is never going to get resolved.

I am realizing now that I may have misunderstood the entire conversation.

[cfusionpm]

Originally Posted by acro

^^ this

We wouldn't have been caught out because we wouldn't have been going that fast. We would use our head. No offense Btw

Clearly accidents never happen on a stretch of road you've driven through in the same car every day for 8 years. But thanks for the words of encouragement.

[charged86]

if I leave them on, while in 3rd at full throttle my Traction control light flashes. It has also happened in 4th while changing lanes

if I roll on 2nd gear with nannies on it will close the throttle body atleast that's what it feels like

[acro]

Originally Posted by StarshipPoopers

I really don't mean to be harsh and I don't care what people personally choose to do when they drive (as long as it isn't completely idiotic or endangers others), but I don't understand your approach to defending your remarks here. You clearly said that you were to blame for your accident by failing to drive according to the conditions and that you didn't properly maintain your car (most fundamentally having bald tires).

How does any of that translate into an argument against turning TC off on the street? Your experience is essentially the same as saying "Ahh you know, the road conditions on this route have been good for the past 6 months and I usually take this long turn at 80km/h, now that there is ice on the ground I'll go a little slower but won't change my approach whatsoever".

Just because you drove recklessly in poor conditions and paid the price for it doesn't mean that a blanket statement such as "having TC off is reckless" is a valid one. Having TC off and failing to appreciate or anticipate road conditions most certainly makes one an idiot, but your driving habits shouldn't need to change depending on whether it's on or off.

The value of driving experience has never been more clear to me than when I was driving a Prius with summer tires through areas with a couple feet of snow in sub -20F weather down in Northern Arizona. People with California plates in far more winter-capable vehicles crawling at 5-10mph (some even with tire chains) completely clueless as to how to drive on anything other than a clear road.

Experience tells you when to brake, how fast to take that turn, how to switch lanes in slush, when to turn, how to recover, what to expect, etc... If I can compliment that with TC in dicey conditions then sure I'll take the help to better my odds, but otherwise it's a ridiculous argument that boils down to poor driving decisions.

To your last point, of course accidents can happen anywhere and they usually aren't foreseeable without hindsight (or else they'd never happen). I've been t-boned less than 200 feet from my driveway by a woman who ran a stop sign. What is predictable on familiar roads though is the course of the road and where you should know that dangers are likely to be waiting, perhaps dangers like large sweeping turns that angle downwards at 30 degrees with wet pavement. Maybe, just maybe, TC is completely irrelevant to this entire discussion.

I'm glad someone got the point. You said it better than I did

[cfusionpm]

Originally Posted by StarshipPoopers

I really don't mean to be harsh and I don't care what people personally choose to do when they drive (as long as it isn't completely idiotic or endangers others), but I don't understand your approach to defending your remarks here. You clearly said that you were to blame for your accident by failing to drive according to the conditions and that you didn't properly maintain your car (most fundamentally having bald tires).

How does any of that translate into an argument against turning TC off on the street? Your experience is essentially the same as saying "Ahh you know, the road conditions on this route have been good for the past 6 months and I usually take this long turn at 80km/h, now that there is ice on the ground I'll go a little slower but won't change my approach whatsoever".

Just because you drove recklessly in poor conditions and paid the price for it doesn't mean that a blanket statement such as "having TC off is reckless" is a valid one. Having TC off and failing to appreciate or anticipate road conditions most certainly makes one an idiot, but your driving habits shouldn't need to change depending on whether it's on or off.

The value of driving experience has never been more clear to me than when I was driving a Prius with summer tires through areas with a couple feet of snow in sub -20F weather down in Northern Arizona. People with California plates in far more winter-capable vehicles crawling at 5-10mph (some even with tire chains) completely clueless as to how to drive on anything other than a clear road.

Experience tells you when to brake, how fast to take that turn, how to switch lanes in slush, when to turn, how to recover, what to expect, etc... If I can compliment that with TC in dicey conditions then sure I'll take the help to better my odds, but otherwise it's a ridiculous argument that boils down to poor driving decisions.

To your last point, of course accidents can happen anywhere and they usually aren't foreseeable without hindsight (or else they'd never happen). I've been t-boned less than 200 feet from my driveway by a woman who ran a stop sign. What is predictable on familiar roads though is the course of the road and where you should know that dangers are likely to be waiting, perhaps dangers like large sweeping turns that angle downwards at 30 degrees with wet pavement. Maybe, just maybe, TC is completely irrelevant to this entire discussion.

There was a thread about this months ago when I first joined that went on for several pages; don't really need more from the peanut gallery. You're welcome to go through it yourself.

Long story short, I've also driven that road every time it rained for more than a decade in 3 different cars. That day, under those circumstances, with those tires, it was too fast. Lesson learned.

Now let's get back to how macho men only drive with TC off?

[bestwheelbase]

Originally Posted by cfusionpm

Now let's get back to how macho men only drive with TC off?

Just to be clear, this does not accurately summarize any of what I said and I apologize if my remarks characterized it as such. Clearly we have differing opinions on the matter, but it should not impact our ability to carry-on a healthy discussion. You and @DylanFRS have both offered great perspective on the subject; ideas which give me a better understanding of how others view and use these systems. Same with @thill who pointed out that during normal boring daily driving its probably rare that a person would encounter a situation that might warrant TC interceding.

I am glad nobody was hurt when you rolled your previous car. Thanks for a great dialogue and let's keep it productive please.

[thill]

For the track, or when I take my car out to empty backroads, I get disabling TC. I still don't get why you feel the need to do this for the majority of daily commuting, around town, in neighborhoods, etc. If someone was hooning around my neighborhood with kids around there would be issues.....

[Luis_GT]

Originally Posted by thill

For the track, or when I take my car out to empty backroads, I get disabling TC. I still don't get why you feel the need to do this for the majority of daily commuting, around town, in neighborhoods, etc. If someone was hooning around my neighborhood with kids around there would be issues.....

Give me a valid reason why I can't, there is no harm in keeping it off.

[Noob4Life]

Originally Posted by Luis_GT

Give me a valid reason why I can't, there is no harm in keeping it off.

Its a free country you can do what you want. It also means alot of people can openly call you an idiot for doing so.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using Tapatalk 4

[DylanFRS]

Originally Posted by Luis_GT

Give me a valid reason why I can't, there is no harm in keeping it off.

Car blows a tire in front of you on the highway and goes sideways. You are doing 70 but have to yank the wheel to avoid hitting them. Usually you can handle this maneuver fine but because you are not God this one time there is an odd bump or something causing you to lose grip in the rear at 70 mph, which can easily escalate very quickly. Fortunately, the VSC system that can immediately sense too high of a yaw rate in the car sends pressure to the correct brakes to reduce the yaw rate (something you cannot do, at a reaction time that humans do not have) keeping you going straight instead of also spinning out and getting hit on the side at 70mph by the car that was slightly behind you one lane over that isn't as good of a driver as you are and thus doesn't even remotely react before slamming into you.

But I forgot, you are God and thus never ever have a misstep on the road even when completely unforeseen things occur right in front of you. Or... maybe you are a Jedi Knight and knew the tire was going to blow! Cool!

[Luis_GT]

Originally Posted by DylanFRS

Car blows a tire in front of you on the highway and goes sideways. You are doing 70 but have to yank the wheel to avoid hitting them. Usually you can handle this maneuver fine but because you are not God this one time there is an odd bump or something causing you to lose grip in the rear at 70 mph, which can easily escalate very quickly. Fortunately, the VSC system that can immediately sense too high of a yaw rate in the car sends pressure to the correct brakes to reduce the yaw rate (something you cannot do, at a reaction time that humans do not have) keeping you going straight instead of also spinning out and getting hit on the side at 70mph by the car that was slightly behind you one lane over that isn't as good of a driver as you are and thus doesn't even remotely react before slamming into you.

But I forgot, you are God and thus never ever have a misstep on the road even when completely unforeseen things occur right in front of you. Or... maybe you are a Jedi Knight and knew the tire was going to blow! Cool!

So, all you can do is come up with a hypothetical scenario that may never happen, and have no clue as to how I will react or how I drive, then proceed to say I have a god send skills, which, again, you don't know how I drive, and you don't know what experiences I've had in my life while driving.

You can live with your false sense of security, by all means, I've never had TC, and never had an accident, and if I eventually have an accident... well, bad luck.

[DJCarbine]

Originally Posted by DylanFRS

Car blows a tire in front of you on the highway and goes sideways. You are doing 70 but have to yank the wheel to avoid hitting them. Usually you can handle this maneuver fine but because you are not God this one time there is an odd bump or something causing you to lose grip in the rear at 70 mph, which can easily escalate very quickly. Fortunately, the VSC system that can immediately sense too high of a yaw rate in the car sends pressure to the correct brakes to reduce the yaw rate (something you cannot do, at a reaction time that humans do not have) keeping you going straight instead of also spinning out and getting hit on the side at 70mph by the car that was slightly behind you one lane over that isn't as good of a driver as you are and thus doesn't even remotely react before slamming into you.

But I forgot, you are God and thus never ever have a misstep on the road even when completely unforeseen things occur right in front of you. Or... maybe you are a Jedi Knight and knew the tire was going to blow! Cool!

A similar situation happened to me. I am in the far left lane, and a taxicab in front of me has some sort of failure (not sure what happened, or if it was mechanical/driver error) but he went into a spin @ ~65mph in light snow with me right behind him.

I pretty much just slowed down and kept myself pointing straight. Jerking your wheel on the highway to avoid someone who you should have been following at a safe distance anyways is a poor move as you are just potentially creating more of a hazard by sideswiping someone in another lane and/or losing control of your car.

I ended up slightly correcting my steering as he slid into the breakdown lane on the left because someone IN THE RIGHT LANE had a panic and swerved into my lane for some reason.

A co-worker of mine from a while back had an accident because he swerved to avoid a drunk/bad/chicago driver that started to merge into his lane and ended up hitting a telephone pole. Totaled his car, had to pay for the telephone pole, and was deemed 100% at fault because obviously the other guy didn't stick around.

Swerving can be dangerous, braking is the safest thing you can do in most situations. There is a truck going 70 HEAD ON in your lane though, please feel free to swerve. I think the risks outweigh the certain death that you will face in that situation

Just my opinion on a very touchy subject.

[DylanFRS]

Originally Posted by Luis_GT

So, all you can do is come up with a hypothetical scenario that may never happen, and have no clue as to how I will react or how I drive, then proceed to say I have a god send skills, which, again, you don't know how I drive, and you don't know what experiences I've had in my life while driving.

You can live with your false sense of security, by all means, I've never had TC, and never had an accident, and if I eventually have an accident... well, bad luck.

I am just curious, do you wear your seatbelt? I don't think anyone should rely on it. I think it is a nice extra back-up for a situation that may or may not come up. I wear my seat belt every day despite the fact that I plan to never have an accident.

And I don't know your driving experience. But shit happens, to the best and worst drivers in the world.

It is your choice to drive every day with the VSC off. Just like it is the choice of the car owner that drives around on 12 year old bald tires that are ticking time bombs at 70mph. But, it is still your choice. And we can argue all day about what choice I think you should make, but I am still glad it is your choice.