i've always wondered the threshold of a car's ability to stick to the road upright and not flip over. what are the variables to this? sorry if it's been discussed before, but i dun recall it being talked extensively about. the reason is because i want to learn how to drift in the future, and i'm always afraid of flipping. as long as the tires are moving it shouldn't should it? help me.

Have you been watching Initial D? :p

i dare you to flip your car sideways w/o hitting a curb. try it. im serious.

unless you do something as dumb as locking the wheel on the freeway, its not going to happen

uh u really cant flip ur car unless u hit something

depends on the type of car, but you can easily flip an SUV witout hitting anything.

sorry, i guess i assume that this guy isnt a complete idiot.

or attempting drastic evasive maneuvers in his isuzu trooper (tipper)

you would want to drift an SUV why?

I saw a Chevy Suburban swirve to miss an accident, turn sideways on the freeway and then rollover multiple times. Rollovers in SUV's are quite common in highway accidents due to the speeds involved.

Remember all that stuff about Explorers flipping over when their tires exploded on the road? The study conducted by the feds showed that the majority of those roll-overs happened when the vehicle drifted over the shoulder of the roadway and became unbalanced as the driver desperately tried to jerk it back onto the road.

The key factors in a car tipping over are weight, center of gravity, friction, and inertia (the tendancy of items in motion to stay in motion in the direction they are going - Newton's First Law of Physics). Speed is a part of the inertia component.

Weight and center of gravity are important because the higher the weight, measured from the ground, of the particular vehicle( how high the center of gravity is) the higher the tendancy of it to want to "tip over" with a quick change in direction. This is why SUVs are known as being "top heavy" for instance, because they have a lot of their weight high off the ground.

This is where friction and inertia come in. The vehicle wants to keep moving in the original direction it was traveling and at the same speed, so when the mass of the vehicle is high from the ground, a quick change in direction will cause the top of the car to "lean" in the direction it was going. If the combined force of the sideways friction of the tires (causing a pivot point for the weight to tip from) and the weight shift of the vehicle is too high, the vehicle will roll over.

This is why sports cars and race cars are designed low to the ground. That way the center of gravity is low to the ground making it much less likely if not impossible to tip over (you will lose traction on the tires before it happens) unless there is some outside influence on the car (like hitting a median side ways as mentioned by some others above).

There are lots of outside variables that can affect when any particular vehicle will tip over such as if an improper tire wheel combo causes a tire to come of the rim while cornering, or any number of others. For the most part though, when everything is working as it should, most sport oriented vehicles will not have any kind of a problem with rolling over. Just make sure you carefully explore the sideways friction limits of your car carefully because that can cause just as many problems, such as "drifting" into someone elses lane or oncoming traffic.

It would also help to get some professional instruction to make you feel more comfortable about driving a car at the limits of it's tire traction. Whatever you do, just be careful.

:)

thanks for the info dtech. i just wanted some reconfirmation.
and i should have specified that i wasn't talking about an suv or any other top heavy vehicle. i'm just talking about a regular sports sedan/coupe. and not considering outside obstacles like a curb. just felt like the tires would somehow stick to the ground and cause it to flip. i guess what i should have asked was what's the threshold of traction. ah well. thanks people.

Originally posted by hikoboy
just felt like the tires would somehow stick to the ground and cause it to flip. i guess what i should have asked was what's the threshold of traction.

...what?? :confused:

There is no point in tire squirm that would "hook" the car into going over high-side other than the shift in center of gravity that causes rollover. Tires are meant to give at the limits, not catch a lip and cause a tumble. Depends on many factors stated above. I'm no physics major and I'm likely wrong.
:)

Originally posted by hikoboy
just felt like the tires would somehow stick to the ground and cause it to flip.

what i meant was that i thought it would still keep grip, and since tires aren't meant to go sideways theoretically (or realistically? i dunno at this point :P) speaking, so it would "stick" on to the ground and flip, you know what i mean? i'm not sure if i understand myself at this point, i think i need a nap :o

p.s. why arent some of the icons working?

I've seen somone do a J turn in a Landrover Discovery on tarmac...

It was pretty awesome, but it did get on 2 wheels... It was in a talk about driving by some people from the "close protection" & body guard business... REALLY amazing... started off showing how to get away or avoid confrontation... then moved onto attack... how to disable another car witout disabling yours... how to blow different roadblocks etc... the J turn was actually used as an attack at one point... I was impressed...

Originally posted by collinsc
sorry, i guess i assume that this guy isnt a complete idiot.

or attempting drastic evasive maneuvers in his isuzu trooper (tipper)

you would want to drift an SUV why?