well, I have been a member for a few months now but just got my eight to weeks ago velocity red,6speed,gt,spoiler. I havent posted much since i got the car been to busy driving it! today the unthinkable happend, got in a wreck on the freeway the guy in the truck infront of me hit the car infront of him and never hit his breaks. We were in traffic going say 35-40 mph I was too or three car lengths behind the truck. I slammed on the breaks with the dsc on cant rember if the wheels locked or not. cut the wheel hard to the right but the car did not slide. the truck ended up with the bumper about 3 inches from my windshield. The eight is fine exept for front bumper, front fender, hood, left head light. I am not saying that dsc is soley responsible for the wreck, but wanted yalls thoughts. oh and the ploice concluded I was not at fault so this wont cost me mone I will just be without my 8 for a couple of weeks. I drove a 270 whp fc before the eight and it has gotten me out of alot of close calls. Trees down across twisty back roads, drivers on wrong side of divided hwy and so on. thanks for reading and forgive the spelling the wreck just happend about to hours ago so I still abit shocked. Thanks.

 

I could be wrong, but I don't think the DSC plays into at all. it would have more to do with the ABS system than anything else. If anything, the DSC kept you from spinning which could have resulted in an even bigger mess.

 

Why did you want to slide? Losing control of your vehicle and sliding into the truck sideways would have been much worse. There is very little to protect you in a side impact.

 

well that was the thing-i cut the wheel all the way to the right, but the car didn't go as sharp as it should have. cold dsc have caused that?

 

Also just because the police didn't give you ticket doesn't mean your Ins. company will try and place SOME of the blame on you for not being far enough behind the truck so until the claim is closed don't assume anything. As for DSC it helps, but it's not magic. You would have hit that truck without it.

 

one more thing the car is an 04 there has been a brake recall right? how do I know if the brake recall work was done?

 

There was no recall for the brakes. There is a service bulletin for brake "squeal", but thats all.

 

i think its called an accident .. last time i checked rx8's breaks were pretty damn good

 

Sounds to me like what caused this accident was:

1) You following a truck too closely to be able to stop in time when the truck got in an accident

2) You not seeing looking far enough ahead and driving defensively enough to notice that traffic was stopping in front of the truck in front of you - never follow so closely that you can only see the vehicle in front of you.

I'd say what DSC did do for you was keep you from spinning the car out and making things a whole lot worse.

Sorry for the lack of sympathy, but 90% or more of accidents are caused by driver error. In this case, the truck hitting the car in front of it was one driver error accident, and you hitting him was another. I'm amazed you weren't charged with "failure to stop in safe distance".

As a cop once told me (and for that matter also my insurance agent) - "there is no such thing as a rear-end collision where if you are the person doing the hitting that you are not at fault. It is your job to stop in time no matter what the circumstances.

 

Its BRAKES are also quite good.

 

Non DSC related, maybe you overloaded the front tires by turning the wheel too fast therefore didn't turn sharp.

 

might want to ask yourself why your are getting out of so many close calls..

as to the car. without the abs and dsc it would have been worse....

looks like you are on of those people that thinks it is always someone elses fault.

beers

 

Like everyone else said, DSC probably saved your ***. I don't have DSC on my RX8. I wrecked mine a few months ago on the freeway, the back end slid out from behind me and I couldn't regain control. DSC would have HELPED me.

If the brakes would have locked up, you would have slid into the truck anyways. When the brakes lock up, you're still going to slide a good distance. It also sounds to me that you weren't paying enough attention to traffic ahead of you.

I had something similiar happen to me today. A truck that was in front of me slammed his brakes and came to a stop on the freeway due to a traffic jam ahead. I was going 80mph and still had time to stop.

Next time don't follow so closely on the HWY, the RX8 is a great car, but it doesn't work miracles.

 

thanks for the input, not saying it is the car's fault, best car i've ever driven and in 8 years its the 1st wreck i've ever been in. thanks for your advice.

 

They are better than quite good. At the time of the RX-8's release, it had the best performing brakes ever fitted to a Japanese production car....bar none.

As far as I know, nothing released in the last few years has bettered the RX-8's stopping ability.

 

yea, I think I just need more time to get a better feel for the car. Once you have driven the same car for years it takes a while to adujst. the car still runs great and the airbags dident deploy. just gonna be without the eight for a week or so for all the bodywork to get done. I guess I gota drive the old turbo fc for a while now. even with nearly 300 hp the car is no fun after driving the eight. thanks

 

Don't you think that's called understeer? Btw, this car is happy oversteering, you should glad to have DSC for saving you from side impact.

 

glad that you are ok, thats the most important thing.

when you are breaking hard, your cars ability to turn suffers dramatically.

at any time a tire is only capable of 100% traction. when you accelerate, turn, or brake, you begin dividing that traction between these 3 tasks. Under full acceleration the tire is using 100% of its traction to move the car forward, if you want to use 80% of the tires' traction for braking, then you only have 20% left for cornering.

I dont think it was traction control. Sounds like you were braking too hard while trying to turn hard at the same time and didnt have sufficient traction.

 

Hi all!
I'm suprised by the reports of the RX-8 having a tendency to over steer. Remarks made by several magazines suggest this same issue. The solution, however, is very simple; plus zero sizing for the rear tires. Go up in rear tire width and down in profile one size. The Porsche Boxster uses a staggered tire size and is a little quicker through the slalom with no oversteer at all, even for its mid-engine, slightly rear-heavy design. The RX-8 with a full tank of gas and stuff in the trunk transitions to a rear-bias car. As such it should either have a wider rear track, or wider tires on the rear for increased lateral grip.

I suspect that the Mazda folks knew this, and chose to make DSC an option (to save cost) and equip all of the sport models with the same wheels (to save cost). Interesting that the rear track of the car is ALREADY slightly wider than the front. If you drive with lots of stuff in the rear, as I plan to with mine, once I get one, I'd suggest wheel spacers first, changing tire PSI second (harder front, softer rear), and the wider tires in the rear for the third option.

Of course as my current Mustang GT is a drift car, I LIKE going sideways! :D

 

DSC has only bitten me once... car cut me off on top of a overpass in NASTY thrunderstorm at night, this is on of those onramps in the top of a overpass... so I swerved in middle of bridge to dodge car and car fishtailed, i corrected, had car under control, and DSC decided to brake the right side ( I actually felt the brakes grab ) and see if I could handle driving backwards at 50 mph... well i got off of bridge ( dodging the 4 ft, concrete walls on either side, dodged the POS nissan Xterra that cut me off and went into the median backwards. Let ABS do it's thing came to a stop. Every light in the dash was on. Turned car off, back on and drove off. Was more concerned about getting stuck in the mud in the median than anything else.. DSC, ABS and about everything else disabled itself. Went to the next gas station , did a KAM reset, everything was happy... I also got my rims cleaned VERY well by the wet grass in the median.

lesson learned.. florida people still can't drive for ****... you can drive a bright yellow car, with headlights on, move over to the passing lane and some dipshit will enter the highway, go across 3 lanes and cut you off in a downpour...

 

yeah that's fun too. i dunno how many idiots in land yachts have about ate my car because they think they can stop their 7000lb tahoe as quick as I can when they are tailgating me to a redlight...

 

ah.... check Road and Track. The Ferrari and ac ouple other cars like the Vette equal the stopping distance in one category and beat it in the other category.

Or those cars equal the RX 8 in one category and is inferior in the other.

Categories ar short vs. long. 60mph vs. 100mph.?? something like that.

 

i think he was talking about japanese imports...

 

Glad to hear you are OK. Think of what another 10-15mph in your speed may have resulted in, and be thankful that you were not really hauling **** and the brakes are excellent. You may have had a face full of truck bumper; ain't good.

DSC probably did save your car (and body) from total destruction down 1 side. I'm guessing the driver's side since you said you yanked it to the right to avoid the wreck. When you braked hard you loaded the front suspension. When you yanked it right you added lateral load to the front suspension. Without DSC, or in your FC the inertia would cause your rear end to want to go where your centerline was going before the drastic directional change. Since DSC makes every attempt to keep you from spinning it made your rear stay planted and created a "push" or understeer situation. I doubt it was enough to make a difference in you clearing the impact though. Even under heavy braking the turn-in on the 8 is really good, but you can't outdrive physics and most people can't outdrive DSC.