Originally Posted By: 440Magnum
Originally Posted By: Tegger
Originally Posted By: Rand
What cars does it turn the steering wheel for you?
Maybe all of them.
http://www.toyota-global.com/innovation/...active/vsc.html
That system uses brakes, just like all of them. Read it CAREFULLY- nowhere does it say that the computer does anything with the steering rack. It implies "steering" the vehicle, but not in the sense of turning the wheel anywhere other than where the driver turns it. I don't think any of them do, or ever will because the steering wheel is the only thing that tells the stability algorithm what the driver is trying to actually DO with the car. The computer senses the rate of rotation of the car, compares it to which way the driver is pointing the steering wheel, and does everything it can with the brakes to get the car to go where the driver is pointing it. The minute the computer takes over moving the wheel, car is driving itself, blind to the driver's input, and any stability algorithm without added external inputs (lane sensors, obstacle sensors, etc.) fails. What is still TOTALLY incumbent on the driver is anticipating what's going to happen. The driver cant just throw the best stability control system in the world into a hairpin turn at 80 mph in the snow and expect to come out the other side with the shiny side up.
It would be different if the car could sense the lane boundaries... but even then what if the driver is swerving out of the lane to avoid a kid in the road? Eventually we'll get to self-driving cars that can detect the lane AND the kid, but for the most part we're not there yet.
There's two that I know of that manipulate the steering wheel. Cant remember which one does which - but one of the systems will shake the steering wheel via EPAS if you start to go out of the lane (I think that may be ford) and the other will steer via EPAS to keep you in your lane.