I'm pretty sure modern racecars use a combination of in-wheel sensors and GPS/dataloggers to check vehicle speed. Thus, if you romp on the throttle on a modern F1, you won't see the speedometer needle fluctuate as the rear tires go up in smoke.
RE: street-cars: The ABS sensor used for speed readings is not
specifically on the non-driven wheels, it's just usually on the front wheels. (I say usually but I think it's all of them). Older cars will take it off a speed sensor cog that's driven by the gearbox.
It
would be nice from the point of view of realism for PD to implement this, but then, they'd have to go over all 1000 cars and figure out which implementation works. Does this racecar use a datalogger to give accurate speed readings, or a wheel sensor, or a gearbox sensor?
Does this roadcar use an ABS sensor? If so, is it front-wheel drive, rear-wheel drive or alll wheel drive? Is it all wheel drive with a locked 50:50 torque split? Is it all-wheel drive only when the tires are spinning? Is it front-wheel drive or rear-wheel drive when the center differential isn't engaged?
Does it even
have ABS? Certain cars come in both ABS and non-ABS versions, even for the same model year... thus some will have the gearbox sensor, while others will have a blank where that sensor goes and will have an ABS sensor instead.
Almost every car in the game from the late 90's and up will have a wheel sensor instead of the gearbox sensor... as long as they're not the non-ABS equipped "stripper" models (like the EVO RS models for previous generation EVOs... although the RS
does have wheel speed sensors...). Some of you guys seem to be living in the dark ages...
I don't know about you... but I like it fine the way it is.