WARNING: Counterproductive "safety" features.

[Ron50]

Oh … I see now.

Does your Grenadier have autonomous emergency braking?

Haven't seen any reference to it but this incident suggests it could have.

My understanding of how stability control works is that it brakes individual wheels to straighten the car up; whereas autonomous emergency braking slams them all on at once.

There was no oncoming traffic or even nearby foliage for the camera/radar to detect to suggest an emergency and I had not applied any braking.

In the circumstances, with light throttle and a reasonably high gear, all the wheels would have been travelling at the same speed so you wouldn't expect ESC to be triggered either.

So I'm in the unfortunate position of not even being sure of the causal factors so that I can avoid them in future.

If the car doesn't have emergency autonomous braking maybe there was enough throttle on the skatey loose gravel surface to trigger the ESC to apply the brakes on all wheels simultaneously.

Up to the point of the incident the car had felt as if I was in complete and normal control - no warnings that I was pushing things.

 

[Michael H.]

Haven't seen any reference to it but this incident suggests it could have.

My understanding of how stability control works is that it brakes individual wheels to straighten the car up; whereas autonomous emergency braking slams them all on at once.

There was no oncoming traffic or even nearby foliage for the camera/radar to detect to suggest an emergency and I had not applied any braking.

In the circumstances, with light throttle and a reasonably high gear, all the wheels would have been travelling at the same speed so you wouldn't expect ESC to be triggered either.

So I'm in the unfortunate position of not even being sure of the causal factors so that I can avoid them in future.

If the car doesn't have emergency autonomous braking maybe there was enough throttle on the skatey loose gravel surface to trigger the ESC to apply the brakes on all wheels simultaneously.

Up to the point of the incident the car had felt as if I was in complete and normal control - no warnings that I was pushing things.

Mine definitely doesn’t have AEB, but I wasn’t sure if newer Aussie spec Grenadiers had it.

If you had it, you’d also have lane departure warning, intelligent speed assist and driver drowsiness detection.

 

[Ron50]

Well, bugger, page 114 of the paper manual says ESC off cancels at speeds above 15 mph/25 kph. My test drive just confirmed this.

 

[Shopkeep]

Maybe on dirt roads at speed you should have the centre diff locked and be in high, not sure if this alters or tweaks the ESC but might reduce excessive power transfer to any given wheel causing slip and reduce chance of ESC trying to intervene?

 

[Michael H.]

Well, bugger, page 114 of the paper manual says ESC off cancels at speeds above 15 mph/25 kph. My test drive just confirmed this.

Just to clarify … it says that you can’t turn ESC back on (if you’ve deactivated it with the ESC OFF button) at speeds above 15mph/25km/h.

And it's wrong by the way. You can turn it back on at any speed.

It’s been corrected in the electronic manual.