UT you are right it is a combination of problems. I had a skid school instructor who said it was all preventable by driver training. But after playing with the weight and tire placement he crashed my car into his sprinkler system. I drive a fwd and love it evan though I was brought up on rwd. It is far more stable than most rwds I have drove exept for some of the 60s boats but then you couldnt stop them on a dime like fwd. UT sequoia is 52/48
UT sequoia is 52/48
And as UT points out, the dynamic COG (center of gravity) for and aft when in motion has one affect. Just as important in a car or trucks ability to recover is the location of the COG vertically. A truck, regardless of it’s possible 50/50 for and aft distribution, will have a distinctily harder time of recovery if it’s COG is say, 1.5 feet higher than a car .
Implication is that, even with the poorer weight distribution in an Accord,it could still handle better than and the ideally weighted fore/aft distribution in an SUV.
Fore and aft distribution is just one component and vertical is another and a legitimate factor when fwd car drivers defend their performance v higher vehicles with better weight distributions. We haven’t even considered poor loading practices that vary distribution port/starboard either…another consideration. So classes of cars have to be considered and comparing vehicles of different heights is a little problematic I feel.
“Read Charles Farmers report on esc. You will see fwd with weight ratios over 64/36 actually increased fatality rates with esc. All new model car are now 63/37 or lower”
Does that imply that in cars with less than 64/36, the results are mitigated by esc ? That there is LESS measurable difference with esc below ?
The numbers show that fwd cars with 63/37 towards 50/50 benifit greatly with esc. Over 63/37 to 67/33 there is still too much traction on the front and the driver percieves a limit of safety that does not exist. Once the vehicle starts to rotate there is little that can be done to stop it. Did you see the speed of rotation in the video I posted?
“The numbers show that fwd cars with 63/37 towards 50/50 benefit greatly with esc.” That was the point of my previous post and conclusions by CR on it’s benefits. Their lane changing speeds (fwd) differ much less than better handling cars. Yes I agree that, at some point esc only do just so much. True if it’s fore aft weight distribution, poor tires/tread, vertical weight distribution, excessive speeds etc. I just feel we have to avoid comparing apples to oranges and make sure we talk about specific vehicle types, which videos are careful to to demonstrate.
So the next time you see an accident look at the tire condition front and rear and look up the weight ratio. It is not always the drivers fault. The peception that fwd suffer from understeer can be misleading. There are two kinds of understeer, one where the front is just too light to afford the tires to attain a grip. The other where the front are overloaded to the point that most the vehicle weight is on them and they “seem” not to be doing anything. If you operate a loader and have overloaded the bucket you will have a good comparison.
Sorry, you are unambiguously wrong. The tires with best traction should always be on the rear of a FWD vehicle, even in winter. Here’s the reason: when your front wheels go into a skid, you can steer into it and recover control. When your rear wheels go into a skid, your goose is cooked and you end up doing a 180 at speed. If your tires on the front are sufficiently bad that you can’t get traction, think of the many ways they could kill you if you mounted them on the rear instead.
“If you operate a loader and have overloaded the bucket you will have a good comparison.”
I have and you get no argument from me…
“If you analyze single vehicle accidents…”
Where IS this data?
CapriRacer sorry I was slow responding. here are 2 of the most comprehensive reports , http://www.aceee.org/pubs/t021full.pdf and , http://sitemaker.umich.edu/mhross/files/wenzel_ross_2005.pdf , . anyone with exel can plot the fatality rates against weight ratios. Weight ratios are available from consumer reports or accident reconstruction departments of universities
CapriRacer the info you wanted
???
CapriRacer sorry I was slow responding was on holiday to California. here are 2 of the most comprehensive reports , http://www.aceee.org/pubs/t021full.pdf and http://sit…_2005.pdf. anyone with exel can plot the fatality rates against weight ratios. Weight ratios are available from consumer reports or accident reconstruction departments of universities
Harvey,
First, the post above is the same as the one you gave on 3/26/2010 at 8:11 pm. Is that what you intended?
Second, this link doesn’t work: http://sit…_2005.pdf
Third, since you’ve already done the analysis and have the spreadsheet, why not share it? That way those of us you are merely interested, don’t have to go through the entire grind of researching data.
Got your point I am attaching 1 page of the report more later