bjamesW32

Forgive me but I hope this is a generic enough question to ask here. I drive a Chevy city transit bus. We have a small fleet of these. Upon delivery of the newest half dozen busses a lot of the drivers are uncomfortable driving them in the snow. Complaints of getting stuck in one inch of snow? Getting 'stranded' half way out into an intersection. Inability to scale even the mildest of snowy grades. A couple of the most veteran drivers do not like to be assigned to them. I thought they might be exaggerating. Yesterday I was assigned one of these newer buses for the first time. Each of the above complaints quickly materialized for me. It was maddening. Everyone just writes it off to "shitty traction control" getting in the way of driving. There is a dash panel switch that toggles it on and off and the dash leds announce that it is on or off accordingly. But either mode makes no difference. I decided to get really curious. I went back to the places where I got "stranded" in the snow and noticed in each case that my front tires were on dry clear pavement while the rears were on ice or snow. I went through half a dozen tests in a vacant parking lot where I could safely position the bus accordingly.... front tires on clean pavement and rears on ice/snow. Every time, the moment the rears began to slip, the front brakes were engaged. Actually locked up. I cannot believe this is normal. Is it? It turns out that this explains every complaint heard so far from drivers. On even mild snowy grades the bus would just shudder to a stop on the ascent the very moment the rear wheels lost traction. The front wheels were getting locked up by the traction control. All of this while accelerating, but not touching the brakes at all. The only way to release the front brakes is to step on the brake pedal again. On the very same grade I could ascend it without trouble as long as I kept it to 1mph and crawled carefully without allowing the rear wheels to break loose. The getting stranded at an intersection is as well explained. if the front wheels enter the dry zone beyond the crosswalk and the rear wheels break loose even a little, the traction control locks the front brake and the bus is hanging out in the open intersection. The drivers that complained about this said they were forced to stop and reverse out of traffic. I'll have to explain to them that they can tap the brakes to release the front end and continue on carefully. But this cannot be right. Can it? From an hour of search on the internet the only possible explanation I can find is that these transit busses may come with the full suite of traction and stability control software and (possibly?) what ford and chevy refer to as "line lock" mode was accidentally enabled. It fits the behavior to a T. It's a mode designed for the race track to enable drivers to warm up their rear tires. Spinning them automatically locks the front end and can be programmed to "launch" at certain points. And sure enough, the service page on this mentions that tapping the brakes will override the lock and release the front end. I want to bring this up with my boss but don't want to look foolish for doing so. Am I right to be concerned here? Or are we all just being impatient with new technology and learning how to cope with it? Thanks for any suggestions.

I have a technical help question related to gm commercial sized trucks. City commuter bus. Where can I ask?