Yeah, you'd think it would make sense to have traction/stability control turned off automatically when you select a special program. BUT, I'm sure the safety staff (aka: their lawyers) advised them against it. I'd think to avoid liability, It's better to put that on the drivers responsibility. Here's why. In severely compromised traction situations it usually requires slow speeds. Select a special program, turn off the traction control and let the special program do its thing.
The traction control works against you in those types of situations. Sure, the nannies will get tricked into cutting power and whatnot and you might get stuck but you're not likely to lose control and enter into a death spiral. However, if you switch to mud/snow and you start getting into higher speeds, even with that special program selected, the traction control cold save your bacon if you start to lose control, much more so than the operation of the special program. It would actually be better to leave it in general in those higher speed situations but you know people will select the mud/snow special program because they think they have to or should and if traction control was auto disabled then you're asking for the possibility for trouble.
So LR are erring on the side of caution.
I agree with it, leave it up to the driver to turn it off. People need to get to know their vehicle and know what they are doing with it to get what they need out of it. If they don't or won't get to know what they are doing, then at least leave some fail safes in place. Computers can't do everything for us...but that's for another thread. >
