How to Find a Used Car with ESC

yeah. 100% of astroturfers experienced fatalities when strung up by the gonads.

no, the sound argument against it is not allowing scum to bribe the legislature.

as opposed to intolerance of astroturfer scum...

f*ck off, astroturfer. you bribe legislators so you can sell crap we don't need and don't want. you and all your kind are scum.

you don't want to educate yourself before bothering to say something??? that's really scary.

So, I post on the risk compensation issue, and I get this reply?

The only thing I am interested in is if you can refute some of my points.

I guess that indicates that you can't refute any of it.

Surely you can do better than that.

ABS was a dud. I have seen the data before. A dud or worse, I think some studies showed an increase in wrecks.

And there are studies that show risk compensation effects from ABS.

But, ABS may have failed because 90% of drivers did not know how to brake with it. "Research conducted in 1992 at the Mercedes-Benz driving simulator in Berlin revealed that more than 90% of drivers fail to brake with enough force in emergency situations."

I don't know the reasons that Mercedes found in this study, but the reasons I have seen proposed are:

1. Drivers think they should pump their brakes. Not true for ABS. You just slam a steer.
2. Drivers let up when they feel the ABS noise or vibrations.
3. You pull about 0.4 G in a optimal stop, driver are not use to this and they let off.

So, with ABS drivers might compensating for a percieved risk change when there is no actual change in risk because they were incompetent users of ABS!

It's really shows how unintended consequences can work.

Did it even occur to you to just learn to drive your car?

This is happening, but it is taking the from of insurance companies giving you a lower premium if you let them monitor your driving with their black box:

But you have the Big Goverment part backwards. State insurance commissions in many states are *blocking* the Progress Insurance program. Insurance commissions block lots of available insurance discounts.

As of now, Big Government is preventing it from happening in some states.

I had a 96 S10 2wd 4 banger with ABS. It scared the bejesus out of me driving it in the snow. It would sense sliding, and you would hear the grinding of the ABS unit under the hood. The only issue was you were NOT hardly stopping. I tried the hard petal down with ABS on only to INCREASE stopping distance. I ended up having to pump the brakes old school once the ABS kicked on to get stopped on occasion Maybe all ABS units are not this bad, but that one sure was.

you mean preventing you from pushing your client's agenda? boo hoo shame.

It kind of flattering that you think I am a pro pretending to be a grass rootser, but it ain't so.

And, when you try to use that claim (or anything else) in an ad homenim argument, it just boltsers my position and undermines yours. You make everyone think "Jim hates Tom's arguments but he can't refute them, so he goes ad homenim". Thanks for that.

observe the victim/aggressor switch of the self-delusionist.

if you want it to work buddy. learn to spell first. better yet, use the freakin' machine you're typing on to do it for you.

"ad hominem", "bolsters" "astroturfer", etc.

idiot.

I had not banked on Gov't being... so irrational :-)

Black boxes are a good idea particularly in USA because of the type of accidents.

- T-Bone risk from large number of traffic light controlled intersections

- T-Bone & rear-ending risk from "stationary waiting to turn"

Roundabouts like UK/Europe are much touted as "more efficient traffic flow" than traffic light controlled intersections. Yes they are, but as you increase the number of traffic lanes this efficiency begins to diminish - you end up having to add traffic lights to roundabouts! The USA city block layout does not lend itself well to roundabouts, they are situation specific and require driver education. USA has space at least, something UK, parts of Europe & Japan in particular lack.

Compensation costs play a big part in insurance premiums, UK has jumped on the gravy train recently with big (30-60%) hikes in insurance premiums across the board. We got the "accident-tourists". Canada uses a different state run system which offers little (might be cheaper for the young, but government run systems tend to be unresponsive and sub-optimal).

People talk about it like it's some kind of helpful option like 4-wheel drive or snow tires. It is not. It's a device that's gets utilized during an emergency situation - it's like an airbag, not positraction.

What does this have to do with ESC? The topic under discussion is ESC.

I am a awful speller, I don't have a spell check on my newgroup reader.

But maybe the spelling is just one of my astroturfing tricks ;-)

you've just done it again!

actually, it's right there in astroturf 101. go back to your notes on "ordinary joe".

I actually used to have a BMW 535i, a Porsche 914 and 944, and too many VWs to count.

The Porsches were pretty good, but by the time the Bimmer hit 200K miles, it would have cost more to refresh the suspension than the car was worth. On a car with "conventional" suspension, I could have knocked out new rear bushings and shocks in an afternoon myself.

nate

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That last is partially true. The number I heard when actually working for an automotive supplier years ago was 0.3G. But if your car can only pull 0.4G in a panic stop on dry pavement, something sucks - a good car should be able to stop at or above 1.0G. But you are absolutely correct that most drivers will back off well before reaching that point.

Wasn't my car. Was a vehicle provided at a winter test track for a test and compare day. And I still think that the ESC on it sucked, because it prevented me from doing things that would be normal, everyday snow driving in a non-electronically-enhanced vehicle. Attempting to pull a tight U-turn on a low friction surface was literally impossible; had to be a 3-point turn.

nate

Not all of them are that bad. Some are. I had the same experience with a mid-90's Dodge van. Driven back to back with an identical but several year older van without ABS, the one *with* ABS was definitely less safe, because I could very easily stop faster by modulating the brake pedal myself than the ABS would allow me to stop. If you hit a patch of ice coming up to a stop sign it was all over, the ABS would dump all pressure to the brakes and it would take literally seconds for it to reapply - and that feels like a lifetime when you're sailing through an intersection where you meant to stop.

Good ABS actually does work quite well. Unfortunately not all ABS is good. I'd like to think that the really bad ones as described above don't exist on newer vehicles, but I don't have a lot of experience with most current vehicles.

nate

Unfortunately, some people think that it is a REPLACEMENT for things like snow tires, or tires with tread.

I have to facepalm whenever I see a 4WD truck with cords showing on the tires... happens more often than you'd think at least here in DC- land. I've seen some very expensive vehicles with tires so bald that they stand out to me when I am stopped next to them at a stoplight, e.g. I've seen at least one Mercedes SUV thing with slicks in recent memory. I guess they think that 4WD will help them defy the laws of physics when it rains?

nate

Let's face it, people do stupid things. I'm completely ignorant about driving on snow which is OK since there's little chance for snow here in the tropics. When I'm on the mainland I'll always seek the advice of non-stupid folks on driving in low traction conditions - well, I try to anyway. :-)