Did you know that when you lose traction on one tire, your car will apply brakes to the spinning tire, hoping to even things out?
If that doesn't help, the ESP will pull power, actually downshifting and chopping the electronic throttle.
Has anyone experiened this?
Helloooo! Yes, yes and yes. Did the ol' key trick on my Charger and got the NoESP mod on my Challenger to avoid this crap. Now I disagree that it's a bad system: I have tested it under various conditions and it works amazingly well (I was dubious about the one-wheel braking stopping slides). It's like ABS: a little weird, but effective. If you need it, by all means, use it. I'll feel safer being around you.
The problem is that, just like training wheels (that analogy is spot on), past a certain competence level ESP is not only unnecessary, but dangerous in that it will trip you up by fighting your inputs. It gets in the way. A good driver anticipates the car's reactions and makes his moves before the car even starts skidding so if there is interference you run into problems.
And HAL may be fast, but
HAL doesn't have all the data (it is blind, deaf and not programmed to understand the concept of fun) so
it can't possibly make all the right decisions. Losing traction is not always a big deal. If I give too much gas and overwhelm the tires then immediately lift off the pedal, the car often regains traction brutally and is catapulted forward, which can be planned and used to get out of a jam, like a vehicle gunning for you as you merge onto a wet road, for example. If I floor it and nothing happens at all, I'm just a sitting duck.
So experienced drivers and those seeking fun
need the off switch to prevent TC from stopping a burnout or ESP from sabotaging a power slide (which may very well make you crash if you start compensating for a slide that never comes). Various factory buttons, aftermarket modules and jerry rigs (
http://www.challengertalk.com/forums/f18/traction-control-bypass-mod-172009/) achieve this, at least partially. Because most of the time, what we call 'TC off' or 'ESP off' is really a 50% to maybe 80% reduction. But that's usually enough to restore enough control and fun while staying safe on open roads.
I've felt the rear brakes being applied against my will while cornering hard, and I've gotten the sick feeling of a dying engine while Mr. Squiggly flashed because I had temporarily lost traction. One downside people claiming that ESP is a safety implement that shouldn't be messed with by over-confident and arrogant drivers forget or disregard is that if your car is powerful and you drive it hard its rear brakes will go up in smoke thanks to HAL's repeated attempts at staying in the No Spin Zone
(TM). And too many people today are convinced that a car can't be driven safely with ESP off, which is maddening to me given how recent those nannies are.
So I disable ESP (which includes TC and ABS) as a matter of routine. I like to remain engaged and in control, I don't want a machine fighting my inputs, and I don't want to fry my brakes just because. Only in deluges do I leave the nannies on, more for liability reasons than anything else.