ABS: Good, or Bad?

[Guth_imp]

One irony for the general audience of this site is that as a person builds up cumulative hours of riding experience, that same person also ages. Sadly, with age comes a degradation of physical skills and reaction times.

ABS isn't going to help someone avoid every single bad situation involving braking or avoidance maneuvers. Neither are track days or riding dirt bikes for that matter. On the flip side, non of these things are going to hurt ones chances of survival on the street.

While I chose to go without ABS, I don't see it as a bandaid. I certainly do not view ABS as a substitute for skilled riding or good planning, but I do see it as complimentary to those things. It would seem to me that a truly skilled rider at the top of his or her game could hop on a bike with a good ABS system and use it to its full advantage. If that's not the case, I'd generally suspect the riders skills are at fault rather than the ABS.

Not so. First off, I'm certainly one of the older riders on this site, at 57, but I am riding as well as I ever have, through continual practice and training. I don't ride off-road any longer but at my last track day I was planting my knee quite happily into the pavement and pulling the front tire off the ground from time to time...not too bad for an older man. In fact, I'm riding quicker now than ever because the equipment I have is so much better and tires have improved dramatically. So you can forget the notion that old guys get slow. I rode with Reg Pridmore recently and he rides like greased lightning, and the guy's pushing 70.

Second, we need to understand what ABS actually does and that's our problem here, a lack of understanding.

ABS does not just "take over" the braking and brake to perfection, like the RoboCop suit. All it does, to one degree or another, is release the brakes when a slide is detected. At this point the rider should have brains enough to release the brake a little and regain control. Most ABS systems are low-resolution, low-processing power, and are a band-aid only.

Automobile manuals have been telling us to mash the brakes to the floor and ride it out in an emergency and that's also wrong for someone who knows how to use the brakes. I have a couple of pretty high-performance cars and it's fun to feel the ABS and stability control kick in when the tires touch some uneven pavement, but it's only for a few tenths of a second. The rest of the time, I'm in control.

Consider this...the winner in a MotoGP race is the rider who crosses the finish line first (unless there is some technicality involved, of course). If ABS, like traction control, would help with this, these guys would be using it. They don't use it because it would be very dangerous if a pack of racers came shrieking into a corner, and the ABS released the brakes on a rider's machine whilst in very close quarters with another bike. It takes a lot of skill and concentration and you can't have computers running things. It's up to the rider to be good enough. If you have never ridden a machine with terrific brakes, in a racing environment, you cannot appreciate the superb feel and control that great brakes provide, at all lean angles and under all conditions. I can tell you that a good rider can very precisely and smoothly control and modulate the brakes even at deep lean angles and during a cornering transition.

Track days, off-road riding, braking and cornering exercises...we can't learn to really ride a motorcycle to its potential just riding around on the street or reading about it, we've got to do it. Or as Flynrider said -- and I paraphrase -- we can just keep doing whatever we're doing and hope the ABS works as imagined.

It's not that ABS is not a good safe add on. It is. All I'm saying is to me it takes away from the full control of the rider. Heck I have ABS on both my deluxe models. I was riding my 78 cb750four in my yard. I have a huge yard. 5 acres I also have another 15 acres that about 4 years ago I built a full Moto cross track. Had people coming from all over to ride. Doubles, triples, table tops step ups bad bad woop section. Made the track for my son. But back to the yard. And the 78 750four I was running about 18mph and my sons dog a Great Dane ran out in front of me I hit the rear brake. ( drum ) slid the bike around rear tire locked up then gassed it and missed the dog and was headed back from where I was coming from. No biggie if I would of slid down but with ABS I could not of done that. And I'm soon to be 54 in a few months ! I'm by far no expert but I can ride and can still think. Riding a bike should be a part of you after so many years if you really are into bikes! Nothing to argue about I just think I ( meaning me ) should be able to lock up my rear tire if I want to or need to. Crazy as it might should and I guess to some it is. But I had a 03 ultra classic that on long trips I would set my cruise move to the back set with no way to hit brakes or touch handle bars and ride for over 45 min on the back set. Had several friends on our 5k mile plus trips and they knew what I was going to do. Relax and ride. Never ride over your head! But man and machine can become as one and it's no limit to what you can do on a bike . Yea call me crazy but I got another good friend and we can swap bikes going down the hwy! My wife and I can swap from front to back of bike while cruising! Got another friend that can wheelie a gsxr1000 with 5 people on it and then do a stoppie with the 5 on it with rear end almost flipping over the front but he can control that bike with mere brake control. Wet roads etc newbie riders ABS is great. Guys our age we rode all of our life's with out ABS and we HAD TO LEARN TO CONTROL IN RAIN, water, gravel etc. Yes I'm ole fashion and proud of it. As I get older I might want the training wheels to keep myself in the wind

Well-said, my friend, well-said. Freddie Spencer, a little-known racer that you might have heard of once or twice, once remarked that he had a track built in his back yard and when he was four years old, rode that track from dawn to dark, clockwise and counterclockwise, with half of it wet down and the other half dry. Spencer did and can still do amazing things on a motorcycle (such as winning a World Championship at 19) but it all comes down to training and experience.

I myself could also relate countless stories of stuff that was just no big deal because I know how to handle a bike; once a guy crashed right in front of me on the racetrack and I knew he was going to slide right into my path. The only way I could avoid him was to lock up the rear in an "on/off" pattern as any good dirt rider knows how to do. This kicked out the rear end of my motorcycle and allowed me to just barely miss him. I walked the track right after and could clearly see the skid marks in a broken-line type of pattern showing what I did.

Another time (since we are chewing the fat) I was riding with a group of people at high altitudes in December, and was following a guy who was quite fast. I was riding a BMW R100GS, about 470 pounds and 58 HP but it could rail through the fast turns pretty well. I came around a right hander at about 60 mph and it was just as pretty as a picture, all coated with a thin layer of rime ice. There was no way to get through it so I just stood the bike up, shot over to the opposite shoulder, which was unpaved dirt (no traffic coming) and brought the bike to a nice stop.

The next guy who came around crashed.

Guys we are not making this stuff up.

Like it or not, old guys in and of themselves do get slower. This is a big part of why the up and coming guys in the world of racing are almost always younger than the outgoing "old guys" that they are displacing from the podium.

Your statement somewhat makes my point for me. Advances in technology have helped to offset the negative impacts of the aging rider, and then some.
Ridem, as far as the CB1100 goes, I'm not sure what you're getting at. Do you not use the front brake on your bike?

I'm going to try this one more time: ABS does not take away ANY of your control of your bike. It activates upon brake lock. Once your brakes are locked you have virtually no control of your bike anyway. Plus, your conventional braking strategy will work exactly the same on an ABS bike as a nonABS bike.

I understand that you feel that you don't need ABS and that is your choice. However, there are newer AND experienced riders reading this thread trying to find out if ABS is better than conventional. Some of the comments here seem to imply that no rider, or at least no experienced rider, should have ABS. Keeping in mind that we all should be employing good technique and therefore avoid locking the brakes in the first place, ABS is better because it will stop your bike in a more controlled manner IF you ever have a technique breakdown for whatever reason.

That's why I find John McGuinness' comments regarding ABS so insightful. He definitely contradicts the notion mentioned above and his skill set is off of the scale.