Automotive Concepts 4 - Manual Stability Control
out of control driver AIDS are one of the biggest issues of our time... and while this isn't the cure, it is the spiritual polar opposite
[ THE SHORT ]
One day before Christmas I was walking along, lost in car-related thought, when suddenly something new occurred to me. Something I've never seen before, not even as a theoretical concept.
Imagine, if you will, a manually operated stability control system, where you can – through a simple set of triggers – brake individual wheels on demand. Just to be clear, we're not talking about a regular street car that you'd drive every day, but rather about an outright track car or a very advanced sports car intended also for track use.
This would require a steering yoke, which only tilts from side to side, in place of a traditional steering wheel in order to work properly, so picture that in your mind. On each side there are two individual pressure-sensitive finger triggers, or perhaps mini paddles similar to those used to shift gears. When squeezed, the upper trigger brakes the front wheel on that side, while the lower brakes the rear one. In this way, you have a full, real-time control over the system, and – in turn – a very high degree of dynamic control over the vehicle.
[ THE LONG ]
For normal everyday driving traditional stability control can be very useful – if the system is designed well and functioning properly - but if you're driving near the limits of the car, the computer is more likely to get in your way than to help you. It can't tell the difference between a minor controlled slide that is helping you be faster, and a genuinely dangerous situation. It's relying on very basic data – chiefly individual wheel speeds and steering angle – and that's all it has to work with. If it senses a discrepancy, it intervenes. That's more or less the entirety of it.
Which is, in fact, the reason why modern sports car tend to have a "track mode" or a "race mode" that you can switch on, which fully disables the system. Because with it enabled, you simply cannot drive on the limit or anywhere near it – the computer will keep constantly correcting you. That is its purpose. To keep you away from the limits of the vehicle and thus safe.
And while, granted, it could perhaps be tuned differently and made more sophisticated for track cars and race cars, it would also defeat the entire point of the exercise in the process. If the car is keeping itself on the track and fixing your mistakes for you, then what are the stakes and what are you trying to prove to yourself and to the world? What do lap times even mean at that point and how is it any fun at all going around the track like that? There's a reason why series like F1 or GT3 don't use any sort of automated stability control.
However, it occurred to me that a highly skilled driver equipped with the ability to fully control this system with his own hands, could potentially make a great deal of use out of it in certain situations. And that goes beyond the stability control function itself, and spills over into a more general brake use. Normal race cars, like virtually all other cars, only have a single brake pedal – the main difference is that there's also a brake bias dial of some sort. The driver can adjust whether the brakes are more biased towards the front or the rear and to what degree.
But this system would be a few steps above that. The driver could at any point brake only one axle, or one side of the car, or brake both at wildly different rates that can be adjusted in real time. Indeed, he could easily brake only three of the wheels, if that was somehow advantageous to him.
It would offer an immense degree of dynamic control. And there's no reason it couldn't coexist with a regular brake pedal – if anything, it could work with it in way, where pedal input inverts the trigger input. If the foot is off the pedal, the triggers apply braking force to individual wheels. If the foot is on the pedal and applying brake force, the triggers instead release individual wheels. Thus, at any point in time, no matter what the driver is doing, he has full control over each wheel.
[ THE REALITY ]
As an actual engineering solution, some form of a fully integrated electro-hydraulic brake booster unit with an individual line to each wheel would probably work the best. This is absolutely nothing new and has been used on many road vehicles for over two decades at least. What I propose here would simply be a manually operated version of that – nothing more, nothing less.
And while I cannot make the claim that this would certainly result in faster real world lap times compared to a standard setup – it's all just a random idea, after all – I am confident that a skilled driver could do some rather cool things with it. If we're, for example, talking about closed course drifting for visual effect, then I believe this system would allow one to pull off some very impressive maneuvers.
Which is honestly what it's all about. This idea wasn't conceived as a means of obtaining the best possible lap times, but as an avenue of demonstrating human skill, mastery and genius. And also as a way of maximizing driver engagement and agency. I'm not interested in automated systems, I want to see and experience human action – our own abilities honed to the finest edge. This is what it's all about. Machines only as tools, not autonomous assistants – and man as the wielder. The same way a swordmaster wields a blade, a driver wields his vehicle. It is only an extension of his body and will.
In that sense, a manually operated stability control system would be one of the perfect tools to separate the wheat from the chaff.
