Puney, high profile, pizza cutter tires on a car not designed to handle well could more easily lend to a car's roll-over potential. The risk of extending a non-peformance oriented tire past it's intended design could roll a tire off the rim of a wheel, this would be far more detrimental than too much traction.

 

Sorry I'm not buying that. Popping a tire off it's bead requires extraordinary force, I've done it at rallycrosses where the tires are slammed sideways into sand. The tires you speak of will simply slide on pavement unless they are horribly underinflated, but I don't think that that element falls within the scope of our discussion. Additionally a bare wheel will have an even lower coefficient of friction on pavement than the tire would. It would have to be some really soft asphalt for it to dig in and trip up the car. Unless you've extended the scope to off pavement situations. I think that Jesse and I were trying to limit the discussion to the aspects of a car that can lead to a high flip tendancy.

It may be reasonable to consider off pavement excursions as they do occur at autocrosses. Off the pavement, the terrain plays a greater role in determining flip probability. Relatively soft terrain allows for the possibility that a car's tires could dig in while it's sliding sideways, this can trip the car into a roll. If there are low immovable objects in the terrain, tree stumps, curbs etc. they can trip up a car too. In such situations your best bet is to have a long wide car with a really low CG.

 

Agreed with Tony...

It's not going to roll the tire off the rim. To do so would require the tire to have a lot of *TRACTION*, but little narrow crappy tires infact don't, so they just slide long before there's an issue of unseating the bead.

 

I guess we're splitting hairs but, this from a NHTSA web site:

"....emergency steering maneuver could cause the tire to "de-bead," i.e., separate from the rim, which could "trip" the vehicle and cause it to roll over."

There are of course many factors that alone or combined can lead to a roll-over. Too much traction on a car ill-equiped to handle the forces can cause a roll-over, with this I agree. But, if this Mitsu was stock, I doubt he's rolling on R compounds. And if he's'rolling on puney tires, you said he'd push....this could happen, but these tires could also dig-in, roll off a bead, grab and trip the car as well.

 

You seem to missing the point here, so answer me this question...

What's going to cause the tire to dig in?

 

I know what you are trying to get at, this is why I said we are all splitting hairs.
You want me to reply that the tire could dig in because of too much traction. But, lets remember....you said puney tires will push rather than gain traction.

Puney, high profile, non-performance oriented tires can be stressed beyond their intention, roll over onto the sidewall (and possibly off the bead) thus suddenly increasing the contact patch and then....due in part to an instant gain in traction, and a suspension not engineered for these sudden and excessive loads, could cause a car to roll-over, especially if the vehicle has a higher center of gravity.
So yes, a sudden gain in traction has much to do with a car's tendency to roll over. But, has more to do with several factors combined like suspension geometry pushed beyond it's limit, a higher CG, and tires not designed with high performance characteristics. Any number of these ingredients combined could easily lead to a roll-over, not just "too much traction."

Throw in a dose of over-enthusiastic driving and a very technical and tight auto-x course and you could have a reciepe that could lead to (although rare) a vehicle roll-over.

So, I'm not missing the point, I'm just seeing more of them.

 

This is wrong. This is what you KEEP saying, and it's STILL wrong. I don't know how to explain it any better, so we can just agree to call it a dead horse.

Not only will a puney tire NOT roll onto it's sidewall, but having the wheel scrape along the ground will not cause a *gain* in traction. Rubber being scraped across pavement is sticker than metal being scraped across metal.

 

I don't need you to explain anything to me.
But, please allow me to reitterate my only point to you;
An over abundance of traction IS NOT THE ONLY thing that can cause a roll-over. There are a multitude of events that can and do occur that will result in a loss of control and an on-road vehicle roll-over.

One of which is an on-road tripping event, one possible tripping event is caused by a tire leaving the bead of the wheel's rim. Where high profile, this sidewalled, puney tires have more of a likliness to have this happen. Couple that with a vehicle that exhibits poor handling dynamics and bad things can happen, one of which could be a roll-over.

Infact, there have been numerous studies conducted by the NHTSA to determine which factors cause on-road roll-overs, both tripped and non-tripped.
Even the NHTSA admits that their findings still to this day have not conclusivly determined all of the factors (in which there are many) that can result in vehicle roll-overs. Or even which factor is the leading cause of vehicle roll overs.

Yep, I beat the horse a couple more times, and you are right....it's dead.

 

I was at the event where this specific roll took place and the cause of the roll was a 205/55 summer street tire rolling all the way onto the side wall, not coming off the bead though, and cathcing the lip of the rim on a rough asphault. There was a clear point in the loss of control where the marks went from rubber on asphault to alum. wheel on asphault and you could even pin-point exactly where the wheel caught under full load and just unsettled the car enought to sent it over on the roof. After the incident everyone figured low tire pressure, but cooled down each tire was within 1 psi of 45lbs. so no tire came off the bead. So this is a case where a soft sidewall and lots of grip in a front heavy car caused a "tire failure" in a round about way and flipped a car. The same thing could have happened on the street in a collision avoidance situation.

One thing to point out though is that a regular Lancer has fairly narrow wheels I think, so perhaps he just had too wide of a tire and too narrow a rim for the sidewalls to work effectively. I have virtually identical tire on my car to what this guy was driving, but with a correctly sized 6.5" wheel width.