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ABS Electronic Braking Article

589 views 2 replies 2 participants last post by  ZZR600-2008 
#1 ·
I have never had a bike with ABS, and several cars with it.

I do plan on buying ABS with my next bike, because of my lower reaction time and foot control from aging (I am 57 years old).

I think it is more of a help for a beginner, and in a small number of situations for everyone, such as when there is oil or sand on the pavement. The major problems are a beginner starting with an ABS equipped bike then switching to a non-ABS bike, the extra cost, and one more electronic part to maybe fail in the future.

Below is part of a braking article that I found:
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"Quite a few of my students are confused about what exactly antilock brakes do. A comment I've heard several times is "If I want the brakes pumped, I'll do it myself."

That's a serious misunderstanding of what antilock brakes do. In fact, you don't want the brakes pumped. You want them applied as hard as possible, just short of the point where the tires begin to slide. That's where you get the greatest deceleration.

The problem is that we humans have a hard time keeping the brakes at that point. The front tire, where nearly all of the braking power is, will slide if we brake too hard, requiring instant and dramatic action (namely, release of the brake) to prevent a fall. Many times we fail to react quickly enough, and crash. Or, fearing a fall, we don't apply the brakes hard enough and thus sacrifice some of our stopping distance.

Antilock brakes will not activate unless the rider makes the mistake of applying the brakes hard enough to lock a wheel. But if that happens, the machinery reacts more quickly than we can, releasing the pressure on the brakes to resume rolling and prevent a fall, followed more quickly than we can by reapplying the brakes to resume the stop.

The word from the experts at the motorcycle magazines, the people who do the 60-to-zero braking tests, is that under test conditions, they can outperform antilock brakes. That is, if their skills are already highly-developed, and if they have three or four tries to get tuned up, and if they know exactly when they're going to start braking, and if there are no traction surprises (like going over a sandy or painted patch of pavement), then they can outperform the machinery. But under real-world conditions, they say that antilock brakes win.

That's good enough endorsement for me. Furthermore, my guess is that over the next few years even test conditions won't be enough to outperform antilock brakes. Neither of my motorcycles has antilock brakes. My next motorcycle will have them."

From:
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Braking for Motorcyclists
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#2 ·
It will not help with your reaction time, but I usually ride with 2 fingers covering the brake and clutch levers. It took a month or so having to remember to do it, but now it's gotten so ingrained it actually feels uncomfortable not doing it.

To test it out, just find a dirty parking lot and do some emergency braking. On the 650, I feel a slight pulse on the lever and peddle, but not very noticeable. This is low speed only, so I'm not sure about highway speeds.
 
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