HAHA. In Atlanta, the avg. highway speed is 80mph. I have friends who are cops who said they won't pull you over until you break 82mph. If people drove on the downtown connector at the posted speedlimit of 55, traffic would be even worse than it already is.

We need an Autoban in this country!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think the fact that we have a relatively light car with wide tires really contributes to any loss of control. Hit a patch of freestanding water at 60+mph with our tires and they might as well be water ski's. Not wet roads, but puddles.

I got a ticket for 78 on 85 inside the perimeter once :( So some cops will pull you over.
Good thing you do that in your BMW. Wouldn't want mazda to void your warranty on misunderstood information or anything :D

The DSC/TCS systems really are one in the same. Turning off the DSC only really just relaxes some of the parameters. The system works by comparing wheel speeds at all 4 wheels to engine rpm, and measures lateral acceleration front and rear. When it detects understeer or oversteer, it can selectively brake any wheel on the car and/or change throttle position.

Yes, you will be faster on the track without the systems, however once the car is out of shape, there is NO driver who will recover it faster than the DSC/TCS system, because no driver has control of each individual wheel's braking.

dsc uses the abs system to brake any tire it feels it needs to, not just the rears. The system is incredible.

There is another viewpoint of this event. The car hit a slick spot, DSC failed to prevent the skid. Then DSC failed to correct the hook slide (the post recovery skid the other direction) not once but twice. You could easily read this story as a failure of DSC. The car eventually corrected, was it the driver, was it DSC? Why assume DSC was responsible, because it was there? Only if the driver sat there like a deer in headlights, and made no steering inputs or throttle adjustments can we know that DSC drove the car to safety.

There is a danger to DSC. Since it does prevent most small skids, drivers may lose the reflex to correct skids, and prevent the hook slide during recovery. Then, when DSC is overwhelmed, as it was in this case, the driver doesn't have the skills to correct safely. Once the car is going sideways, no amount of single wheel fiddle braking will save the car without the correct steering wheel input.

--R.

The DSC monitors the steering inputs while its making corrections. It is very very hard to spin this car with the DSC on.

When i disable DSC/TCS... i'm a lot faster, but i also spin out alot more. On the track this is fine and not a big deal, but on the street this is stupidly dangerous.

POINT: DSC/TCS stays on when driving on public roads.

Well, I have the base model 8. I do not have either of these luxuries. I just deal with it. When it is raining badly outside, i just put my car in a higher gear so my tires wont spin much around turns or anyhting. The only thing i'm worried about is that i'm looking at the greddy turbo, and w/o traction control i'm afraid i'll spin everywhere!

keep it out of boost or retard the boost to a higher rpm...

Prior to the RX8 my jones for speed was satisfied in an 01 Cobra. That car had traction control which used the brakes and also adjusted the throttle/spark to compensate for wheel spin. Frankly.................the system was junk. When it kicked in, it just felt like the car was running out of gas, I'm talking DRASTIC engine bog. Obviously, kicking out the tail was easy, and fun, at most speeds in that car. I turned the system off every time I started it (even in the wet).

The DSC/TCS in the 8 is a whole different animal. The dry traction on the OE Bridgestones is so good I've only seen the yellow light come on a couple of times (on public roads) and i've never been able to really feeeeel the adjustments in street driving wet or dry. But that day in the rain(I called it a downpour in my prior post, it was in fact a Texas turd floater!), on the leafs, the DSC just fixed the slide almost before it started.

Having experience the hook slide you speak of, with and without DSC on, I can attest to the quality of the DSC system. I've take some courses that taught skid recovery, and I am a fairly experienced rwd driver (particulary when it comes to skids :o :p ), and once the ol' girl gets out of hand she can be difficult to recover safely. If your alone on the road, that's not too bad, assuming you stay on the road, but in traffic you endanger many lives. The DSC may not get it the first time, but it does limit the severity of that first slide, and thereby limits the severity of the hook. Thus allowing the car to come back under control.

I agree with the danger of relying on the DSC too much, but I still instinctively attempt to correct the slide myself regardless of traction control. But then I've driven rwd cars for 15 years without such a safety net, so I don't think I'll ever just let the traction control handle it.

My experience is difeernt. The RX8 is one of the easiest cars to control in oversteer I've ever driven, and that is without DSC.
--R.

Rex, true. Everyone needs to realize that there are limits to DSC same as there are limits to ABS. The poster described a hydroplane situation where the tires were not making any road contact. The DSC's programmed response might have been to brake, but, if there is no traction, it is going to back off and free-wheel and keep trying until it finds traction. If you hit the guard rail before the DSC gets things under control you would have hit the guard rail without DSC, maybe even quicker. No automated system is going to overcome the laws of physics.