We had some snow fall last night and as we're coming home from a movie, we must have hit a patch of ice going around a highway turn on and the car slid a few inches or so and the VSA kicked in and corrected the slide and all was fine. Now I have snows and I am very accustomed to winter driving; the fact that the technolgy seemed to work worries me in the sence that I should of been more aware of the situation and tried to correct it myself.

So theres the dilema turn off VSA and rely on my skills and keep them sharp or keep VSA on and let the car do the work without too much interference from me and get lazy.

BTW: I turned off VSA for the rest of the drive home, hell I'm the pilot I'll get us home. It was definetely more fun as I was e-braking every corner, power sliding and blipping the throttle and oversteering to encourage the car. Of course the wife wasn't too happy about it

 

If you're sort that does constant e-brake turns on public roads, I won't be too happy to drive near you either. I'm not sure exactly how you can throttle-steer a FWD car.

VSA is designed to prevent the exact behaviour you are inducing, so you should leave it off if you want to drive like that. For those of us who prefer our car to point in the same direction that it is travelling on publich roads, VSA generally helps.

In general, technology gives additional capability that can't be duplicated by human control inputs. i.e. braking a single wheel, providing differential power between wheels, sensing wheelspin and yaw and doing it all faster than humanly possible. The problem lies when the software wasn't designed to cope with a particular situation. It is up to the brains behind the wheel to assess and decide whether the technology is appropriately used or not.

 

I don't know about yourself, but when the snow starts flying and theres ice on the road I like playing around with the car when its new to me and try and figure out the driving dynamics of the car and what to do if and when the car would go out of control due to road conditions.

I've schooled many a driver on throttle steering a FWD car, you jam the throttle in the opposite direction of your rear slide and correct with precision steering. If you don't know what I'm talking about next time you have a chance watch a ralley race and see what FWD cars do when going into a tight turn. This isn't for everyone, but due to skills I've learned playing around on back streets its saved at least a couple accidents. For most people there only recourse is to brake and that is not the only solution.:P

I've never had a vehicle with a VSA system before and my original post was meant to ask the question if it was making good drivers lazy because they feel they have technology on their side.....aka SUV drivers who seem to be in a greater majority of winter driving accidents, especially on highways.

Oh and good post on the benefits of VSA that was right on

 

Uh, not meant as a flame but although I completely understand what you mean by "throttle-steering" a FWD car, its effectiveness still doesn't make a whole lot of sense given the road conditions you describe and the street tires you are using. Light snow, clearly slippery conditions... no matter where or how precisely you point the wheels, if the roads are slick and you "jam on the throttle" especially right after inducing the unpredictability of rear-wheel traction loss by e-braking, you have effectively lost even more traction on the front wheels of a car that already has a tendency to understeer in the first place. So how is throttle steering still possible in such unfavorable conditions you mention when it is already a difficult task to manage if the road conditions were dry and perfect? I'm a track junkie and part-time instructor for my local Audi Club, and although I'm accustomed to RWD and AWD cars, I've lapped my fair share of FWD cars under wet track conditions. The throttle-steering manuever you mention is not only unpredicatable under such conditions, but it's definitely something you'd dare only try in a closed track regardless of the level of your driving skill. To do this routinely in public roads is downright foolish.

Then again, I'm not denying that this may be another situation of the pot calling the kettle black. I guess we all do some foolish things sometimes.

 

Do you really think MS has become a lazy driver because of all the technology introduced in F1? No... he can now push the car to another limit that wasn't possible. Just ask Nikki Lauda if a chimp can really drive an F1 car... then he goes on to prove it by driving a modern day F1 car... only to spin out.

So my point is, that with VSA turned ON... you are going to recognize the limits of your car much quicker than with it OFF.

 

I do like to mess around in slippery conditions, but only in an empty parking lot.

To answer your second question, the industry did studies after ABS was introduced in mainstream cars and found that the accident rates did not decrease. They found that the people thought they had more stopping power (which they don't), or did not use the system properly (they let off the brake when the pedal shook).

I can see VSA having the same effect, but perhaps less so, because it is less intrusive and less hyped by the media. I suspect a good fraction of owners with such systems don't even realize they have it, or exactly how it works.