While traveling down the interstate at approximately 75 mph with the cruise control on, the car suddenly veered left and the abs engaged and slowed the car suddenly to about 40 mph. my immediate thought was that i had blown a tire, but then recognized the abs was causing the car to judder. the dsc and abs lights illuminated and remained on. the mil light did not illuminate. i took the car to a repair shop that diagnosed a faulty rotational rate sensor (yaw). the system recognized that it received erroneous data, but i believe failed in an unsafe manner. i purchased this car for my soon to be 16 year old daughter and cringe to think how she would've reacted to this situation. this failure put the car in the precise situation where you would want the dsc to be working.
Had just parked the car and a few minutes later it caught on fire. everything under the hood is burned. surveillance cameras caught the hole thing.
Daughter driving car, dynamic stability control(dsc) light came on and individual brakes started applying themselves uncommanded. drove to a local import shop that verified a bad yaw sensor. part is $1300.00 plus $300.00 labor. part is only available from bmw who has superseded the part number 3 times. i went to a salvage yard that had 13 cars that had the same part number effectivity and all of the cars had the yaw sensors removed. this is a well known problem and very dangerous unless you disable the dsc system which also disables the anti-lock brake system. below is just one of many examples of another owner that experienced this part failure. started the car this morning and drove it for approx 15 miles, no warning light and everything appeared ok. doing the national speed limit when holy cow, the dsc kicks in and the car pulls violently to one side then the other talk about heart missing a beat, nearly in the central reservation on the a52. i will be getting the fault codes read in the week and will definitely be switching off the dsc in future until fixed.