Electronic Stability Program (ESP)

We often hear or see high performance cars understeering or oversteering, but if the roads are slippery or you push the car to its limits while driving, any car can oversteer or understeer. 

Understeer happens when you go around a corner much too fast and the front wheels don’t have enough traction. As a result you end up going forward instead of turning. Oversteer is just the opposite, the car turns more than the driver intended to causing the rear wheels to slide and the car to spin. Understeer is common on front wheel drive cars while oversteer is common on rear wheel drive cars. 

Electronic Stability Program helps to control these movements before they become accidents. ESP cannot work on its own, it uses the car’s other safety features like Anti-lock brakes (ABS) and Traction Control plus a few sensors to keep the car on the road. 

The Electronic Stability Program uses Traction Control to cut acceleration from the wheels the moment it detects wheel slippage thereby preventing oversteer and understeer. ESP also uses ABS to activate the brakes on individual wheels at the required level to prevent the driver from losing control.

Electronic Stability Program functions via three types of sensors:

Wheel-speed Sensors –  Measures the speed of a wheel in relation to the engine speed.

Steering-angle Sensors – A sensor in the steering column analyses the steering input angle by the driver and the direction the vehicle is travelling in. It makes corrections by changing the speed of the vehicle so that the driver can have constant control of the car.

Yaw Sensor –  A sensor located in the centre of the car detects side to side motion of the car. This helps the computer know which wheels have more grip and transfer more or less power or brake pressure (depending on the situation) to a wheel to have maximum traction at all times.