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If you're shopping for a new vehicle for the first time in five years or so, you may notice the inclusion of an important new piece of safety equipment: the stability control system. And if you're trading in your luxury vehicle for a new one, you may have some sophisticated new electronics onboard.

The technology, designed to help prevent loss of control and a resulting skid, was until recently available on a small number of high-end luxury and performance models, but it's now either standard or available on a wide range of vehicles, including nearly all luxury cars, most sport-utility vehicles, and many inexpensive sedans, hatchbacks, and wagons.

Designed to prevent loss of driver control on slippery surfaces or during emergency maneuvers, stability control systems quickly detect a skid - or the conditions for a skid - adjust the throttle, and apply one or more of the brakes so as to counter the direction of the skid or spin.

Electronic lifesavers

With more power on vehicles across the board, and concerns over vehicle rollovers in the media in recent years, stability control systems have become valuable safety devices whenever drivers have to make abrupt maneuvers, and especially when the road surface is a bit slippery. At the same time, they help keep less experienced drivers - teens included - in check.

How many lives are stability control systems saving? We can't be entirely certain on the statistics yet, as just ten years ago very few models offered the feature, and the overall crash resistance of cars has also improved greatly over the past ten years.

According to preliminary results of 2004 crash data from five states, comparing vehicles equipped with stability control to similar, earlier versions of the same vehicle that didn't include stability control, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) deduced an average 35-percent reduction in single vehicle crashes for passenger cars and a 67-percent reduction for sport-utility vehicles.

The systems themselves have come a long way over the past decade. When first introduced, most of them interceded quite obtrusively. In some premium sport sedans and sports cars, for drivers who liked driving fast and pushing their vehicle close to its handling capabilities on an empty road, the system could take away some of the fun, cutting in abruptly and applying the brakes in a jarring fashion.

At the same time, with engine power at an all-time high and prevalent grippy high-performance tires that don't offer the sort of progressive warning that rubber used to, even experienced drivers don't want to be left guessing on an unfamiliar road.

The best and latest versions of stability control improve safety while also aiming to improve driver enjoyment, interceding much more smoothly and unobtrusively than previous iterations. In fact, they're so good that even the most track-experienced drivers will want to leave them on.

One of the latest is Lexus's Vehicle Dynamics Integrated Management (VDIM). VDIM gathers input data from several vehicle safety systems that formerly operated independently, including Brake Assist (BA), the electronic throttle, and the anti-lock braking system. Plus, versus the company's VSC stability control system, VDIM factors inputs from a wider range of sensors - including brake pedal pressure, pedal stroke, and data from the Electric Power Steering (EPS) system, along with yaw rate and steering angle.