Tested: Can driver aids make you faster on track? | TBT

Our roads are a wasteland of construction zones, lawsuits and lackluster drivers—and that’s just what we encounter on the way to work in the morning. So while the cars of today are safer than ever before, it’s still a concrete jungle out there.

We are big proponents of active safety measures like ABS brakes and cars that can actually swerve …

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Interesting article. I would have liked to have seen the effects of DSC separated from DTC though. There have been times when I have felt the DSC system kick in on my car and been thankful for it. I am never happy about the DTC system kicking in though(damm killjoy).

On paper it seems that the DSC system could be helpful to even an experienced driver when it comes to keeping the car pointed in its intended direction.

I don't understand why so many manufactures put the DTC and the DSC system on the same switch...

Is it about time for an update? An 18 year old article on electronic driver aids is pretty badly out of date at this point.

It might be interesting to compare with a more modern car (or do a survey of the wildly differing implementations that exist by now; a chart of which ones work okay for driving quickly and which ones that don't can actually be switched off?), and also see if maybe by using a car that you get to twiddle a bit you could get the brake bias so "no ABS" doesn't mean "broken car with no rear brakes." The comparisons between the settings above are pretty much comparing apples and jackfruit with that going on...

You kind of have to read "Everything Switched On" as "DSC and DTC were so bad that a non-ABS car with no rear brakes was faster."

Agree with Jesse.  Been autocrossing for 20+ years with ABS and would not drive anything without it any more.  But would not compete with nannies on except in the rain.

I just saw this pop up and I was like "Per is back??"  And then I realized this post is 15 years old...

Seeing as I'm daily driving an Arctic metallic 06 330i 6 speed (so the test car above but with a better intake manifold) it was good to look back on this article. With winter here I find myself turning DTC/DCS off to get from my house pretty much to the highway or at least to streets that are clear of snow but turn everything back on at that point, I find with it off I can get the car moving better and have a little fun on the empty, slow side streets. I've done the winter thing in a rear wheel drive car (on really E36 M3ty tires in hindsight) and had the car step out on black ice during steady state cruise around 55 mph, having these systems gives me good piece of mind that they're always ready to jump in when I may not be quite expecting what is next.

I do like how easy it is to deactivate them though in this car and for track/autocross or even a spirited trip around an on ramp that does happen but I turn them back on after the fun is over.

Interesting reading how the car reacts to the ABS off as well. I had the magnetic strip start to fail in one of my rear wheel bearings (it would kick the system off around 130 km/h) so I replaced it pretty quickly and I'm glad I did. I'll take any ABS lights pretty seriously in this car if (who am I kidding, when) I get them again seeing how much performance is lost.

Jesse Ransom said:

Is it about time for an update? An 18 year old article on electronic driver aids is pretty badly out of date at this point.

It might be interesting to compare with a more modern car (or do a survey of the wildly differing implementations that exist by now; a chart of which ones work okay for driving quickly and which ones that don't can actually be switched off?), and also see if maybe by using a car that you get to twiddle a bit you could get the brake bias so "no ABS" doesn't mean "broken car with no rear brakes." The comparisons between the settings above are pretty much comparing apples and jackfruit with that going on...

You kind of have to read "Everything Switched On" as "DSC and DTC were so bad that a non-ABS car with no rear brakes was faster."

Agreed.  Also a comparison of OEM ABS vs Aftermarket performance ABS would be very interesting as would all variations with lap and sector times.  An EV tested would add to the modern mix since TC is so impactful in an EV without much negative power cut compared to TC off where wheel spin may be much worse.

I usually drive my Toyobaru in "full-off" mode (it really does turn everything other than the ABS off, but it will kick everything back on if you get very sideways at ~150kph+, while "pedal dance mode" prevents this) but on one wet track day on a track that was new to me, I tried driving in the intermediate "track mode" which just reduces intervention a bit vs. the default full-on mode. It might've been a decent idea to keep it on for the first few laps of learning the track, but it soon just seemed very intrusive and annoying and I went back to full-off mode.

I'm a big fan of ABS. I'm pretty good at controlling non-ABS brake systems but I only have one brake pedal to control all four wheels and keep the one with the least grip from locking up, and I can't readjust pedal pressure even 10 times per second. ABS can make per-wheel adjustments 100-200 times per second and equalize the force side-to-side to prevent unwanted yaw movement. It's great to never have to worry about getting into the positive feedback loop of fear and risk that starts when you go for minimal late braking into a corner and lock up a wheel.

However, earlier this year I learned the answer to a question I often asked myself, and I learned it the hard way: what if you're spinning or sliding out of control, and you go "two feet in" because you *want* to lock up the wheels? What will the ABS do then? Well the answer is that the ABS basically only knows how to do one thing, prevent lockup by reducing brake application, and if you're in a stable enough slide that's exactly what it will do, netting you very little braking power since it takes very little braking to lock up the wheels in a slide. At this point manufacturers would consider the problem to be one for the car's crumple zones. This action won't only reduce your deceleration but also deny you the ability to turn the curved path of the slide into a straight line. So, after a smashed front end and later seeing a couple of potentially similar crashes prevented in drift events by locking up the wheels (drifters always run with ABS disabled for this reason), I'm planning to fit the car with a big emergency stop button next to the handbrake that's wired into the ABS circuit, so I can quickly smack it when I go two-feet-in to ensure that I do get lockup when needed.