ABS: Good, or Bad?

[The Spaceman_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.

Rider skills?
ABS allows the 99.999% of riders and drivers who cannot threshold brake at the limits of tire adhesion to achieve the same result by simply slamming the pedal or lever all the way down. And what do the vast majority of riders and drivers do in a panic/danger situation? They slam the pedal or lever all the way down. With no track days, no lifetime of training, not even coherent thought, Average Joe brakes like Vic Elford.

Here's what the AMA (American Motorcyclist Association) has to say on the topic:
http://www.americanmotorcyclist.com/Feat...aking.aspx
More than one of the internet myths on ABS that have been posted on this very thread are debunked.

It's funny, I remember hearing the same stuff about other safety technologies. Seat belts would "trap you in the car" or "restrict your movement" and were thus unsafe. Air bags were "dangerous explosive devices" that if installed in cars would "maim and kill thousands" every year. That last one was from no less than Lee Iacocca in his autobiography.

If people don't want to exploit every safety technology out there, that's up to them. Personally, I'll go out of my way to make my ride safer. I've been down, and I didn't like it.