The brain is an amazing instrument—it has a lightning-quick ability to sense danger. Unfortunately for us, in the time it takes the brain to send a signal through the neural networks and down to your braking foot, well, a lot can happen.
But ESC takes only a fraction of a second to detect when things go awry. Based on how hard or how quickly you steer, a veritable army of sensors—which measure yaw, lateral g-force, steering wheel angle, and the speed of all four wheels—determines whether your intended path and your actual path are in sync.
If ESC determines that the car is plowing, or turning less than you intended, it provides extra braking force to the rear inside wheel; if the car is fishtailing, or turning more than intended, it provides extra braking force to the front outside wheel.
ESC is bundled together with Hyundai’s Traction Control System. Traction Control keeps tabs on your tires, and if it detects that you don’t have the grip you need, it will reduce wheelspin, allowing you to accelerate on gravel, snow, and other slippery or uneven road surfaces
Not surprisingly, cars equipped with ESC and Traction Control have some pretty impressive lifesaving stats: a 2006 study conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) concluded that ESC reduces the likelihood of all fatal crashes by 43%, fatal single-vehicle crashes by 56%, and fatal single-vehicle rollovers by 77 to 80%. The government has mandated that ESC be included on all vehicles by 2012, but Hyundai has set the bar even higher: it comes standard, today, on every Azera we build.
Sometimes people don’t brake hard enough. Other times, too much. The Azera is equipped with solutions and systems that work together to help in either situation.
Brake Assist measures the speed with which the brake pedal is depressed, which can reveal if the driver is in a panic situation. But statistics show that drivers often don’t brake quite hard enough, even in emergencies. In which case, Brake Assist adds that extra bit of stopping power, which can help bring your car to a stop up to 20% faster than without it.
Meanwhile, should you happen to hit the brakes a little too hard, ABS helps prevent your wheels from locking up and sending your car into a skid.
But how your car responds to braking can change, depending on a lot of different factors, including road conditions, how fast you’re driving, and even the weight distribution of passengers and cargo within the car. So, to further enhance your control of the car, the Azera comes with Electronic Brake-force Distribution, which uses sensors to calculate the appropriate amount of brake pressure to apply to each individual wheel.
So, while you never know when you’ll face an unexpected obstacle, at least you can count on the Azera’s help in steering safely past it.
You can be the most skilled driver in the world. Your car can have a long list of active safety features. But there’s still no guarantee that the front of another driver’s car won’t end up crashing into the rear of yours. Rear-end collisions are rarely fatal, but they can result in whiplash, an injury that’s likely to stay with you long after your rear bumper is repaired.