ElI5: What does traction/traction control mean?
In: 8
Traction is how much grip your tires have on the road. Not all tires are the same, and not all surfaces are the same.
Tires are like shoes in a way – if you have inappropriate footwear you will have less grip – if you’re using racing slicks on a drag strip, which is dry and sticky with no debris, there is a lot of contact between the tire and the ground, so you get the most traction with that flat piece of rubber…
But if the track is wet, those slick tires are now not capable of channeling water to the side. So the car will tend to glide across the surface, almost like ice.
So you end up with different sorts of tires that are optimized for different uses.
Traction control is a system that a car has that either cuts engine power or applies the brakes when it detects that a wheel is spinning freely. Some people misunderstand and think that traction control gives them more traction, which is not true. But something it does do is stop you from wasting the traction that you have – so it’s a little bit more difficult to lose control of the car.
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