GM Stabilitrak cuts throttle and throws car towards the ditch. How to fix?

So, a friend of mine has a 2006 Caddilac DTS.  He's been having intermittent issues with the Stabilitrak.  Says the car will occasionally refuse to accelerate and jerk the wheel to one side.  You know, in the name of safety.  Any way to completely disable the system? 

I understand that it can be wheel speed sensors, steering wheel position sensor, or the yaw sensor, or perhaps other causes.  I think he said dealer thought it needed a new yaw sensor.  Quoted him a number roughly equal to the value of the car to repair.

My in-laws had a similar problem with a Torrent of similar vintage. Actually got a GM engineer to come out to look at it. I never heard the final outcome but I'd always wondered if the problem was intermittent EPAS assist.

Yaw sensor would make some sense given the description. You can get one for $300 at O'Reillys. You could do some CAN logging and see which of those various values goes crazy at the time of an attack. I can tell you what messages they'd be.

The way to disable the system is to put it into an error mode. Unplugging something like the yaw sensor would probably do it. It's possible there's a fuse as well.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Thanks for the info.  The yaw sensor lives under the driver's seat, under the carpet?  I know these cars have a water intrusion problem that is most likely related.

I have no idea where it lives, I only know what it does :)

You should be able to pull some codes for this thing, there are errors for the stability management.

Sounds to me like an online Caddy forum should be on your viewing list.  Quick scan shows LOTS of discussion about Stabilitrak related issues.  Info there might be of questionable value, but you might see a trend develop if your read enough accounts of others' issues.

I had a similar issue with my 2007 express. It turned out to be junk interfering with the wheel speed sensor. I was going to take it off and clean it up but jacking it up and spinning the left front wheel forwards and backwards until it stopped making a grinding sound fixed it. Probably not the right way to do it but it worked for me. 

The dynamic stability control on my 2001 E46 does weird stuff too. I just disable it via the button before I drive anywhere. ABS still works, so I don't really care.

In reply to EvanB :

I too had a 2007 express with a similar issue!  I just ended up selling it.