You’re driving a small car. Say a Mazda or small Honda. A toddler runs onto the highway.
Will the car just flip some ten times without having changed direction much at all?
Just curious.
Whether the car flips or not will depend largely on the cars design, center of gravity and wheel base. The toddler is probably toast whether the car flips or not.
The car will not always flip, as a young driver in a 64 impala I swerved hard at about 60 mph maybe a tad faster and just spun out badly.
It depends. It is a toddler Hitler?
Since this may have a factual answer I’m moving the thread to General Questions. If the mods there deem it more opinion-like, yeah we’ll welcome it back here in IMHOland. 
Yesterday I yanked the wheel hard left at 20 mph and broke the anti-sway bar. Does that count?
WOW! That really should not have happend. What kind of car is it?
May we ASSuME that the wheel is pulled hard to one side and held there? If not, then the results will be different then if you swerve back right awawy.
The Center of Gravity (CG) plays a major role in the results as do many factors. Not the least of which is the road surface, and the condition and type of tires on the car. Some other factors are width and length of the rig.
The speed at which the car is travelling makes a huge difference in the results. Obviously, the result will be more prononced at 80 MPH then at 5 MPH.
IHTH, 48.
Typical passenger sedan will probably just understeer in the direction of the input. Sports car would probably trade ends a few times. SUV would probably start endlessly rolling down the highway if not flipping end over end.
Flipping or not, it’s going to definitely change direction in the same direction as you cranked the wheel. Whether it flips or not depends on a thousand different variables. Road surface, tire size, tire temperature, condition of the suspension, COG, etc. etc. This is one time where you probably want less sticky tires. Sliding is better than flipping.
If i were that toddler, I wouldn’t buy any green bananas.
Here’s one data point:
A friend of mine had a brake caliper break, which caused one front wheel of his Dodge Dakota pickup truck to immediately stop turning. He happened to be going 60-ish along Interstate 95 in Baltimore. The truck did a sudden uncommanded left turn into the center divider. It did not flip.
In an anti-anecdote to engineer_comp_geek, I saw a car changing lanes (relatively) lightly swipe the back of a truck while going 70mph down the freeway. The truck rolled at least 3 times, hit the center divider and skid on its roof all of the way across the freeway.
I guess since it traveled towards the left it must have had its velocity vector shifted to the left before it rolled.
A couple of data points. Cars with active/dynamic stability controls and SUVs with roll stability controls make them pretty much roll over proof. Assuming you don’t slide one into a curb and trip the car they are very close to impossible to roll.
I have driven Volvo XC90s on a track at 60+ cranked the wheel hard over to test the system. The vehicle just turns. Maybe not as tight as you might like but it stays upright.
About 15 years ago a salesman at a dealership was taking a customer on a test drive in a Mercedes sports car. He was describing how the steering self centers. While traveling at 50 or so he flicks the wheel hard left. The car turns into the center divider and proceeds to roll over putting both of them in the hospital. Oops.
There are certainly a number of factors that will determine what a car will do in that situation. One being drivetrain layout. Honda’s typically have a front wheel drive layout, so everything happens up front and they tend to have less oversteer than rear wheel drive vehicles. Also, it will depend on whether the accelerator is still being used. If the accelerator is being used it will probably cause wheel spin and you’ll be in a drift scenario, limited as that may be in a front wheel drive. If the accelerator is not being used, then the car is more likely to just jerk in the direction the wheel is being yanked. This is based on the fact that a tires grip can only handle some many things at one time. So, if a tire is busy accelerating, it will have less grip for turning and vice versa. Letting up on the accelerator will allow the tire to dedicate full grip to turning.
In order for a car to flip, especially a small Honda, it has to be going significantly faster and when the wheel is turned it has to basically go into a power slide long enough for momentum to lift up the side of the car that is trailing the slide. I do not think that 60 MPH is fast enough for that to happen, especially for a car that is so low to the ground like Hondas. I’m not a physicist, so I can’t get super technical, I’m just relaying it, as I see it in my head.