Traction control thingy ruins the fun so needs to be off when you want to start throwing the car around or everytime i boot it or lob it into a corner i end up licking the windscreen as the TC cuts the power and the car hits a brick wall 
Please Explain Traction Control
- Thread starter ladybird
- Start date
Ah, I knew I'd forget something. Well a lot of things, but I forget what they all were . . .
The button next to the handbrake will turn off TCS if that's what you have. If you have ESP it will still turn off TCS and set the margins higher for ESP (but not turn it off completely).
If you find that the driver aids are being a nuisance, it can be a good idea to find out why.
If the car is remapped or has had suspension modifications, the software will not know about this and will react as though your car is still standard. This is bound to cause trouble. This is also true for "tuning boxes", many of which simply put a resistor in the fuel temperature line to decalibrate the sensor, making the ECU add more fuel.
If you're using different tyre or wheel sizes on the back compared to the front, that will also upsed TCS and ESP, since it's looking for different wheel speeds to decide when to cut in.
Tyres with low grip (e.g. cheap or long-life tyres) will naturally start to lose their grip earlier and provoke the driver aids.
Finally, it might be worth examining your driving style. The driver aids are all aimed at making smooth, safe progress, and a harsh driving style will provoke them into action. It isn't necessary to be harsh to go fast.
I won't start a debate about whether it's more fun to be hard on brake and accelerator, because that will lead to the question of whether it's legitimate to have fun on the public highway, which will descend into flame wars. So open another thread if you want to have that debate.
The button next to the handbrake will turn off TCS if that's what you have. If you have ESP it will still turn off TCS and set the margins higher for ESP (but not turn it off completely).
If you find that the driver aids are being a nuisance, it can be a good idea to find out why.
If the car is remapped or has had suspension modifications, the software will not know about this and will react as though your car is still standard. This is bound to cause trouble. This is also true for "tuning boxes", many of which simply put a resistor in the fuel temperature line to decalibrate the sensor, making the ECU add more fuel.
If you're using different tyre or wheel sizes on the back compared to the front, that will also upsed TCS and ESP, since it's looking for different wheel speeds to decide when to cut in.
Tyres with low grip (e.g. cheap or long-life tyres) will naturally start to lose their grip earlier and provoke the driver aids.
Finally, it might be worth examining your driving style. The driver aids are all aimed at making smooth, safe progress, and a harsh driving style will provoke them into action. It isn't necessary to be harsh to go fast.
I won't start a debate about whether it's more fun to be hard on brake and accelerator, because that will lead to the question of whether it's legitimate to have fun on the public highway, which will descend into flame wars. So open another thread if you want to have that debate.
WOW !!! thats some sort of explanation
So basicly, if im stuck in snow turn it of, if im in a naughty mood and wana floor it turn it off, but for my usual sensible driving leave it on
So it will be on 99.9% of the time then![[B)]](/forums/styles/seatcupra/oldforumsmileys/shades.gif "Cool [B)]")
Thanks peeps , lots of opinions is always good but sometimes confusing !
So basicly, if im stuck in snow turn it of, if im in a naughty mood and wana floor it turn it off, but for my usual sensible driving
leave it onSo it will be on 99.9% of the time then
Thanks peeps , lots of opinions is always good but sometimes confusing !
WOW !!! thats some sort of explanation
if im in a naughty mood and wana floor it turn it off, but for my usual sensible driving
Its a great explanation.
It may be better for peeps to leave it on when in a naughty mood.
For me, when in wet conditions it works very well, especially pulling out from 'T' junctions, however, it can put you into a false sence of security of what amount of grip level you actually have, as it is good you can corner not knowing how close to the limit your tyres are, with it turned off, you can feel one of the tyres start to slip and then adapt for conditions.
So it could be argued that it could speed some drivers up, making them less safer. . .
Last edited:
Driver aids undoubtedly assist most drivers to avoid incidents that would otherwise involve collision, injury or death. Their downside is that in insulating the driver from the consequences of their follies, the driver never gets any better.
Turning off the driver aids, when you know you want to push the limits, is an understandable move. What you should also take into account is that there's a higher likelyhood that you will lose it. If you are resolved to do so, you should aim to use roads with good visibility that you know well, that have no likelyhood of pedestrians or farm vehicles, at times when they are quiet, and in good weather. Your car should be in good condition, tyre pressures and treads good, brakes reliable and no known suspension or steering problems. Don't push it round blind bends. Remember the law of the land sets limits on what you are allowed to do, and I in no way condone breaking the law.
You generally only expand your personal limits by pushing against them. That does not make it OK to involve somebody else in an accident because they were in your path as you lost control.
The best place to find the limits of the car is at a track day or on a skid pan. There's nobody coming the other way, emergency services are in place and you can practice corners over and over again, pushing harder each time. Skid pans are the best place to learn skid control. At a pinch you can use an empty lot or car park in the snow - but look out for any obstacles.
The best fun I've ever had in a car was when I had a Mk.1 Golf GTI. 110 BHp in a car weighing 810kg with no driver aids, no ABS, not even power steering. 6Jx14 P-wheels giving lots of grip. The same power-to-weight as a Mk.1 Leon Cupra, but without the inertia.
I can see the reason for most driver aids, and would never turn off ABS, but the one I'd get rid of first would be power steering - you get a much better feeling for the road surface and grip levels without the hydraulics in the way.
Turning off the driver aids, when you know you want to push the limits, is an understandable move. What you should also take into account is that there's a higher likelyhood that you will lose it. If you are resolved to do so, you should aim to use roads with good visibility that you know well, that have no likelyhood of pedestrians or farm vehicles, at times when they are quiet, and in good weather. Your car should be in good condition, tyre pressures and treads good, brakes reliable and no known suspension or steering problems. Don't push it round blind bends. Remember the law of the land sets limits on what you are allowed to do, and I in no way condone breaking the law.
You generally only expand your personal limits by pushing against them. That does not make it OK to involve somebody else in an accident because they were in your path as you lost control.
The best place to find the limits of the car is at a track day or on a skid pan. There's nobody coming the other way, emergency services are in place and you can practice corners over and over again, pushing harder each time. Skid pans are the best place to learn skid control. At a pinch you can use an empty lot or car park in the snow - but look out for any obstacles.
The best fun I've ever had in a car was when I had a Mk.1 Golf GTI. 110 BHp in a car weighing 810kg with no driver aids, no ABS, not even power steering. 6Jx14 P-wheels giving lots of grip. The same power-to-weight as a Mk.1 Leon Cupra, but without the inertia.
I can see the reason for most driver aids, and would never turn off ABS, but the one I'd get rid of first would be power steering - you get a much better feeling for the road surface and grip levels without the hydraulics in the way.
I learnt to drive in a Long Wheel base 100L 2.0l petrol transit, on compacted snow, so no power, and like the 1980's cars no driver aids.
ABS must be one of the best aids to come along. . .
I agree with all of the above !Maybe this should be a sticky, or at least copied Muttley's explanation entered into the FAQ or the Britannica Definitions so it can last the test of time and not get buried pages and pages down the forum.
Dyscontinued wrote
So I've tidied it, up and done some factchecking and include some more references below.
Ladybird wrote
I have never had Traction control before and im not 100% sure what it actually does !
I have always left it on ! So what difference does it make when you turn it off ?
You do realise you've opened a can of worms and now all the old barricades are being manned again?
To deal with your original question: Traction Control in VAG cars is a system to prevent the driven wheels from losing grip when accelerating. It is implemented by the ABS computer which is attached to the ABS pump and uses the ABS wheel speed sensor information. There is no extra hardware involved with TCS - it is all in software, written by Robert Bosch GmbH, makers of the ABS system.
Some have mentioned ESP - this is much more than Traction Control, and is in all ways more complicated. I'll keep to Traction Control in this post.
ABS
Well, almost. Just what is ABS? The ABS computer takes wheel speed inputs and monitors them when you put the brakes on. If one wheel is slowing down a lot sooner than the others (i.e. it's locking up), the ABS computer modulates the brake pressure on that wheel by pulsing it using a solenoid pump (you can hear and feel this) to regain grip. The purpose of ABS is to keep the wheels from locking up so that you can still steer under full braking and have a chance to avoid an obstacle. It doesn't provide the absolute best stopping distance, but it's better than most drivers, I think, as it takes the road surface under the tyres into account.
So the ABS system has wheel speed sensors, brake pressure sensors and can affect the braking of each wheel, by means of the software in its dedicated computer, the ABS control unit.
TCS
The same control unit can be used to control more of the car's behaviour. You can look at TCS (the Traction Control System) as ABS-in-reverse, controlling undesirable wheelspin during acceleration. The unit can tell if the front wheels are spinning faster than the rears. The TCS software sends a signal to the ECU which cuts the power to the front wheels, keeping your tyres in contact with the road.
This is the aspect of TCS that some find troublesome. It is felt to be intrusive, and indeed on modified cars it sometimes is reported as being alarming, cutting power in dangerous situations.
My feeling is that:
Poor tyres will provoke TCS, most especially when it's wet or in snow+ice.
Mismatched tyres (with different rolling radius) will provoke TCS because of the difference in wheel speed. This is why TCS should be disabled if you have to put a space-saver spare on.
Lowering suspension leads to stiffening (less travel, same weight to manage) which some drivers interpret as an improvement in handling. In most cases handling (ability to go round corners/change direction and keep a grip on the road) is made worse, and the early triggering of TCS is a symptom. Lowering Mk.4 Golf platform ride height moves the roll center down by twice as much as the center of gravity, making the car more roll-prone. The lower, stiffer car simply cocks a wheel, losing grip on the inside tyre, and less compliance means loss of traction if the car is upset by potholes or bumps etc. etc.
Leadfooted driving can also provoke TCS, particularly in combination with the above.
When you turn it off, you are most likely to feel a difference on poor road surfaces (rough or slippery) where the tyres will loose grip and pull the car to one side or the other. You may also see an effect when accelerating through long corners or out of short ones, where the loss of grip will lead to understeer - sliding towards the outside of the corner.
I've seen people wanting to turn off ABS/TCS in snow so they can "dig down to the road surface for some grip". A moment's thought should tell you that this is wrong-headed: Even if you could push all the snow out of the way, as soon as you hit the tarmac, your tyres grip and you go straight onto the snow you've just dug out. In reality, spinning your wheels on snow melts the surface which then refreezes to form an icy trough that you have to climb out of.
Limitations of ABS and TCS
TCS and ABS have disconcerting effects on very low-friction surfaces that are hard e.g. packed snow, and ice. ABS can appear to have disabled the brakes, but is in fact stopping you as fast as it can - it's just that there is no grip to be had. Very rarely on sheet ice it is possible to lock up all four wheels together, which will defeat ABS as there is no wheel speed difference. ABS systems are set to disengage at a low speed to avoid this happening, so as long as one wheel is still turning, the ABS will do the best it can. Sheet ice is to be avoided in any case, and if you must drive over some, go slow and make no sudden changes to speed or direction. ESP would cope better with this, as the accelerometers will detect that the car is still in motion.
On loose surfaces such as gravel and fresh, deep snow, best braking is achieved by ploughing into the material and building up a wedge of it in front of the wheels. ABS will try to keep the wheels turning, reducing the ploughing effect and making the stopping distance longer. This is a situation we rarely see in the UK outside competitions or remote country areas; the snow on our roads is rarely deep enough to exhibit this effect, and gets packed down quickly by traffic, and we have no public highways that are loose-surfaced.
TCS will do it's best to stop wheels from spinning, but since getting traction out of packed snow is often a stick-slip-stick process, the TCS can interfere and make things worse.
I've gone on a bit, haven't I
I can pontificate for England given a little push. I've not covered EDL or ESP, but feel I should stop now.
G.P wrote
Remember you asked for it . . .
EDL
EDL is Electronic Differential Lock, a means of providing limited-slip-differential functionality using the ABS system. The software compares the wheel speeds of the two front wheels and if one is spinning much faster than the other, applies the brake to the faster wheel.
It was the first of the friction-control aids to be developed after ABS, and in its early incarnations could be a bit rough. Later versions are gentler and more progressive with the braking.
ESP
ESP stands for Electronic Stability Program (and not extra-sensory perception - that was needed when driving Hillman Imps fast to predict when the back end was going to step out - but I digress).
ESP uses extra bits of hardware as well as further software in the ABS computer. The extra hardware is a steering angle sensor on the steering wheel, a yaw sensor and a transverse acceleration sensor. The steering angle sensor measures where you are pointing the front wheels i.e. where you want to go. The yaw sensor measures how fast the car is turning around a vertical axis and the transverse acceleration sensor measures how much sideways slip you have: the two together tell the computer where the car is actually going.
The ABS computer compares the two, applies brakes to one or more wheels and perhaps modulates engine power to get the car pointing in the direction you've told it to go with all four tyres gripping the road.
Four-wheel drive cars have a longitudinal acceleration sensor as well, which lets the Haldex computer on the front-to-back differential control the division of power between the two axles.
If you hurtle into a hairpin bend it won't save you from an abrupt visit to the scenery, but it can help if you have to avoid a sudden obstacle or hit a patch of oil or ice while in a bend. It has more control than you do, being able to modulate the braking force on each wheel individually, preventing the tyres from losing grip.
The downside of ESP is that there are advantages in motorsport-like circumstances to be had from going sideways. Loose surface cornering is faster and easier to control (for a practiced driver) with the tail out, as speed and direction can be changed by varying just how much sideways you are.
Lots of information here from Bosch about ABS, TCS and ESP.
Here's Tiff Needell on Fifth Gear on the subject of ABS/TCS/ESP
Turning off driver aids
Ah, I knew I'd forget something. Well a lot of things, but I forget what they all were . . .
The button next to the handbrake will turn off TCS if that's what you have. If you have ESP it will still turn off TCS and set the margins higher for ESP (but not turn it off completely).
If you find that the driver aids are being a nuisance, it can be a good idea to find out why.
If the car is remapped or has had suspension modifications, the software will not know about this and will react as though your car is still standard. This is bound to cause trouble. This is also true for "tuning boxes", many of which simply put a resistor in the fuel temperature line to decalibrate the sensor, making the ECU add more fuel.
If you're using different tyre or wheel sizes on the back compared to the front, that will also upset TCS and ESP, since it's looking for different wheel speeds to decide when to cut in. This applies particularly to space-saver spares, which are never quite the same size as the wheel/tyre combo they replace.
Tyres with low grip (e.g. cheap or long-life tyres) will naturally start to lose their grip earlier and provoke the driver aids.
Finally, it might be worth examining your driving style. The driver aids are all aimed at making smooth, safe progress, and a harsh driving style will provoke them into action. It isn't necessary to be harsh to go fast.
I won't start a debate about whether it's more fun to be hard on brake and accelerator, because that will lead to the question of whether it's legitimate to have fun on the public highway, which will descend into flame wars. So open another thread if you want to have that debate.
Pro's and Con's
Driver aids undoubtedly assist most drivers to avoid incidents that would otherwise involve collision, injury or death. Their downside is that in insulating the driver from the consequences of their follies, the driver never gets any better.
Turning off the driver aids, when you know you want to push the limits, is an understandable move. What you should also take into account is that there's a higher chance that you will lose it.
If you are resolved to do so, you should aim to use roads with good visibility that you know well, that have no likelihood of pedestrians or farm vehicles, at times when they are quiet, and in good weather. Your car should be in good condition, tyre pressures and treads good, brakes reliable and no known suspension or steering problems. Don't push it round blind bends. Remember the law of the land sets limits on what you are allowed to do, and I in no way condone breaking the law.
You generally only expand your personal limits by pushing against them. That does not make it OK to involve somebody else in an accident because they were in your path as you lost control.
The best place to find the limits of the car is at a track day or on a skid pan. There's nobody coming the other way, emergency services are in place and you can practice corners over and over again, pushing harder each time. Skid pans are the best place to learn skid control. At a pinch you can use an empty lot or car park in the snow - but look out for any obstacles.
The best fun I've ever had in a car was when I had a Mk.1 Golf GTI. 110 BHp in a car weighing 810kg with no driver aids, no ABS, not even power steering. 6Jx14 P-wheels giving lots of grip. The same power-to-weight as a Mk.1 Leon Cupra, but without the inertia.
I can see the reason for most driver aids, and would never turn off ABS, but the one I'd get rid of first would be power steering - you get a much better feeling for the road surface and grip levels without the hydraulics in the way.
References
Wikipedia (generally useful on technical subjects that are not the subject of a newsmedia-generated controversy)
ABS
TCS
EDL (Part of a larger page on Limited Slip Differentials)
ESP
2005 Australian study
Swedish ABS Study
Maybe this should be a sticky, or at least copied Muttley's explanation entered into the FAQ or the Britannica Definitions so it can last the test of time and not get buried pages and pages down the forum.
So I've tidied it, up and done some factchecking and include some more references below.
Ladybird wrote
I have never had Traction control before and im not 100% sure what it actually does !
I have always left it on ! So what difference does it make when you turn it off ?
You do realise you've opened a can of worms and now all the old barricades are being manned again?
To deal with your original question: Traction Control in VAG cars is a system to prevent the driven wheels from losing grip when accelerating. It is implemented by the ABS computer which is attached to the ABS pump and uses the ABS wheel speed sensor information. There is no extra hardware involved with TCS - it is all in software, written by Robert Bosch GmbH, makers of the ABS system.
Some have mentioned ESP - this is much more than Traction Control, and is in all ways more complicated. I'll keep to Traction Control in this post.
ABS
Well, almost. Just what is ABS? The ABS computer takes wheel speed inputs and monitors them when you put the brakes on. If one wheel is slowing down a lot sooner than the others (i.e. it's locking up), the ABS computer modulates the brake pressure on that wheel by pulsing it using a solenoid pump (you can hear and feel this) to regain grip. The purpose of ABS is to keep the wheels from locking up so that you can still steer under full braking and have a chance to avoid an obstacle. It doesn't provide the absolute best stopping distance, but it's better than most drivers, I think, as it takes the road surface under the tyres into account.
So the ABS system has wheel speed sensors, brake pressure sensors and can affect the braking of each wheel, by means of the software in its dedicated computer, the ABS control unit.
TCS
The same control unit can be used to control more of the car's behaviour. You can look at TCS (the Traction Control System) as ABS-in-reverse, controlling undesirable wheelspin during acceleration. The unit can tell if the front wheels are spinning faster than the rears. The TCS software sends a signal to the ECU which cuts the power to the front wheels, keeping your tyres in contact with the road.
This is the aspect of TCS that some find troublesome. It is felt to be intrusive, and indeed on modified cars it sometimes is reported as being alarming, cutting power in dangerous situations.
My feeling is that:
- a remapped car may need the TCS software to be adjusted. Especially on a petrol car where the throttle plate must move in coordination with the fuel quantity being reduced to cut power smoothly. Remapped cars are more likely to react badly when asked to cut power in acceleration. Diesels have it easier as only fuel quantity needs to be managed.
- TCS software is not acessible to the remapper, as it is in the ABS unit and not the ECU. Any changes to the ABS unit should be done by specialists. I don't know of anyone who offers such a service.
- The state of the tyres, suspension modifications, road conditions and driver ability also play a big part in provoking the TCS system. The TCS software was written for a car in good condition with standard ECU software, standard suspension and the same tyres on all four wheels.
Poor tyres will provoke TCS, most especially when it's wet or in snow+ice.
Mismatched tyres (with different rolling radius) will provoke TCS because of the difference in wheel speed. This is why TCS should be disabled if you have to put a space-saver spare on.
Lowering suspension leads to stiffening (less travel, same weight to manage) which some drivers interpret as an improvement in handling. In most cases handling (ability to go round corners/change direction and keep a grip on the road) is made worse, and the early triggering of TCS is a symptom. Lowering Mk.4 Golf platform ride height moves the roll center down by twice as much as the center of gravity, making the car more roll-prone. The lower, stiffer car simply cocks a wheel, losing grip on the inside tyre, and less compliance means loss of traction if the car is upset by potholes or bumps etc. etc.
Leadfooted driving can also provoke TCS, particularly in combination with the above.
When you turn it off, you are most likely to feel a difference on poor road surfaces (rough or slippery) where the tyres will loose grip and pull the car to one side or the other. You may also see an effect when accelerating through long corners or out of short ones, where the loss of grip will lead to understeer - sliding towards the outside of the corner.
I've seen people wanting to turn off ABS/TCS in snow so they can "dig down to the road surface for some grip". A moment's thought should tell you that this is wrong-headed: Even if you could push all the snow out of the way, as soon as you hit the tarmac, your tyres grip and you go straight onto the snow you've just dug out. In reality, spinning your wheels on snow melts the surface which then refreezes to form an icy trough that you have to climb out of.
Limitations of ABS and TCS
TCS and ABS have disconcerting effects on very low-friction surfaces that are hard e.g. packed snow, and ice. ABS can appear to have disabled the brakes, but is in fact stopping you as fast as it can - it's just that there is no grip to be had. Very rarely on sheet ice it is possible to lock up all four wheels together, which will defeat ABS as there is no wheel speed difference. ABS systems are set to disengage at a low speed to avoid this happening, so as long as one wheel is still turning, the ABS will do the best it can. Sheet ice is to be avoided in any case, and if you must drive over some, go slow and make no sudden changes to speed or direction. ESP would cope better with this, as the accelerometers will detect that the car is still in motion.
On loose surfaces such as gravel and fresh, deep snow, best braking is achieved by ploughing into the material and building up a wedge of it in front of the wheels. ABS will try to keep the wheels turning, reducing the ploughing effect and making the stopping distance longer. This is a situation we rarely see in the UK outside competitions or remote country areas; the snow on our roads is rarely deep enough to exhibit this effect, and gets packed down quickly by traffic, and we have no public highways that are loose-surfaced.
TCS will do it's best to stop wheels from spinning, but since getting traction out of packed snow is often a stick-slip-stick process, the TCS can interfere and make things worse.
I've gone on a bit, haven't I
I can pontificate for England given a little push. I've not covered EDL or ESP, but feel I should stop now. G.P wrote
Go on then, don't stop now EDL & ESP. . .
Remember you asked for it . . .
EDL
EDL is Electronic Differential Lock, a means of providing limited-slip-differential functionality using the ABS system. The software compares the wheel speeds of the two front wheels and if one is spinning much faster than the other, applies the brake to the faster wheel.
It was the first of the friction-control aids to be developed after ABS, and in its early incarnations could be a bit rough. Later versions are gentler and more progressive with the braking.
ESP
ESP stands for Electronic Stability Program (and not extra-sensory perception - that was needed when driving Hillman Imps fast to predict when the back end was going to step out - but I digress).
ESP uses extra bits of hardware as well as further software in the ABS computer. The extra hardware is a steering angle sensor on the steering wheel, a yaw sensor and a transverse acceleration sensor. The steering angle sensor measures where you are pointing the front wheels i.e. where you want to go. The yaw sensor measures how fast the car is turning around a vertical axis and the transverse acceleration sensor measures how much sideways slip you have: the two together tell the computer where the car is actually going.
The ABS computer compares the two, applies brakes to one or more wheels and perhaps modulates engine power to get the car pointing in the direction you've told it to go with all four tyres gripping the road.
Four-wheel drive cars have a longitudinal acceleration sensor as well, which lets the Haldex computer on the front-to-back differential control the division of power between the two axles.
If you hurtle into a hairpin bend it won't save you from an abrupt visit to the scenery, but it can help if you have to avoid a sudden obstacle or hit a patch of oil or ice while in a bend. It has more control than you do, being able to modulate the braking force on each wheel individually, preventing the tyres from losing grip.
The downside of ESP is that there are advantages in motorsport-like circumstances to be had from going sideways. Loose surface cornering is faster and easier to control (for a practiced driver) with the tail out, as speed and direction can be changed by varying just how much sideways you are.
Lots of information here from Bosch about ABS, TCS and ESP.
Here's Tiff Needell on Fifth Gear on the subject of ABS/TCS/ESP
Turning off driver aids
Ah, I knew I'd forget something. Well a lot of things, but I forget what they all were . . .
The button next to the handbrake will turn off TCS if that's what you have. If you have ESP it will still turn off TCS and set the margins higher for ESP (but not turn it off completely).
If you find that the driver aids are being a nuisance, it can be a good idea to find out why.
If the car is remapped or has had suspension modifications, the software will not know about this and will react as though your car is still standard. This is bound to cause trouble. This is also true for "tuning boxes", many of which simply put a resistor in the fuel temperature line to decalibrate the sensor, making the ECU add more fuel.
If you're using different tyre or wheel sizes on the back compared to the front, that will also upset TCS and ESP, since it's looking for different wheel speeds to decide when to cut in. This applies particularly to space-saver spares, which are never quite the same size as the wheel/tyre combo they replace.
Tyres with low grip (e.g. cheap or long-life tyres) will naturally start to lose their grip earlier and provoke the driver aids.
Finally, it might be worth examining your driving style. The driver aids are all aimed at making smooth, safe progress, and a harsh driving style will provoke them into action. It isn't necessary to be harsh to go fast.
I won't start a debate about whether it's more fun to be hard on brake and accelerator, because that will lead to the question of whether it's legitimate to have fun on the public highway, which will descend into flame wars. So open another thread if you want to have that debate.
Pro's and Con's
Driver aids undoubtedly assist most drivers to avoid incidents that would otherwise involve collision, injury or death. Their downside is that in insulating the driver from the consequences of their follies, the driver never gets any better.
Turning off the driver aids, when you know you want to push the limits, is an understandable move. What you should also take into account is that there's a higher chance that you will lose it.
If you are resolved to do so, you should aim to use roads with good visibility that you know well, that have no likelihood of pedestrians or farm vehicles, at times when they are quiet, and in good weather. Your car should be in good condition, tyre pressures and treads good, brakes reliable and no known suspension or steering problems. Don't push it round blind bends. Remember the law of the land sets limits on what you are allowed to do, and I in no way condone breaking the law.
You generally only expand your personal limits by pushing against them. That does not make it OK to involve somebody else in an accident because they were in your path as you lost control.
The best place to find the limits of the car is at a track day or on a skid pan. There's nobody coming the other way, emergency services are in place and you can practice corners over and over again, pushing harder each time. Skid pans are the best place to learn skid control. At a pinch you can use an empty lot or car park in the snow - but look out for any obstacles.
The best fun I've ever had in a car was when I had a Mk.1 Golf GTI. 110 BHp in a car weighing 810kg with no driver aids, no ABS, not even power steering. 6Jx14 P-wheels giving lots of grip. The same power-to-weight as a Mk.1 Leon Cupra, but without the inertia.
I can see the reason for most driver aids, and would never turn off ABS, but the one I'd get rid of first would be power steering - you get a much better feeling for the road surface and grip levels without the hydraulics in the way.
References
Wikipedia (generally useful on technical subjects that are not the subject of a newsmedia-generated controversy)
ABS
TCS
EDL (Part of a larger page on Limited Slip Differentials)
ESP
2005 Australian study
Swedish ABS Study
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