Cali Superbike School BMW S1000Rr Is Safer

[carlson_mn]

good thread over there, crazy for sure.

i still wonder how ABS will work once a bike leaves the pavement, i.e. running wide on a corner into the grass, but the ABS won't let the tires slip and you can't stop prior to the trees 100 yards away.  that's my fear/scenario...  or if you follow someone when the road randomly turns to gravel (I've heard this can happen :/ ) and they control-skid to a stop digging a trench while ABS does its thing and you hit them going 10 or 20 mph or something...  not dissing the tech, just wondering how it'll help when the lack of adhesion lasts longer than you want it to.

a.s.

In my experience it works fine on gravel, think about braking on gravel... tires don't lock up right away, you can brake pretty good before that happens, and ABS lets you do that and keeps you right on the brink.  Now if you're out having fun on gravel on a GS or whatever, well it'd be nice to turn it off which you can on most of those bikes so you can slide it around as you like. 

If a bike is going wide and running into ditches.... well ABS won't help you there, but I'd still rather have it on grass than not have it.  Front brakes and tire will wash out in no time on grass if it locks up in my experience.  But I think either way that's a bad situation where you better be able to ride it out.

[gely]

good thread over there, crazy for sure.

i still wonder how ABS will work once a bike leaves the pavement, i.e. running wide on a corner into the grass, but the ABS won't let the tires slip and you can't stop prior to the trees 100 yards away.  that's my fear/scenario...  or if you follow someone when the road randomly turns to gravel (I've heard this can happen :/ ) and they control-skid to a stop digging a trench while ABS does its thing and you hit them going 10 or 20 mph or something...  not dissing the tech, just wondering how it'll help when the lack of adhesion lasts longer than you want it to.

a.s.

Andy-  I have experienced your fear and lucky for me, I wasn't hurt, and was able to ride to Push Mtn road and back home.  We were doing ~70-80mph through that corner in the picture below while riding in Arkansas. I thought there's no-way I'm going to make it even if I leaned some more, so I decided to stand the bike up and tried to ride through the yard.  As soon as the bike was up, I grabbed hand full of brake, knowing worse case my front tire would wash out, but I would land on the grass. 

My front tire didn't wash out and I was able scrub off a lot speed until I noticed there was a fence and trees up ahead, I then decided to jump off the bike. 

I believed that if I didn't have ABS I would have crashed as soon as I hit the grass, very close to where tk crashed.



This picture shows mine and tk's path.



My path and trees and fence up ahead.

[aschendel]

Ge, you'd be singing a completely different song had you ridden off a cliff at 10mph 100 yards from the road, but I definitely hear what you're saying and appreciate the first-hand insight.

I know I'm being paranoid about a specific short-coming (it takes longer to stop *in some situations*), but I've rolled through enough intersections in my car with ABS clicking away full blast in the snow (yea! I can steer but I can't stop!) to feel like it's an important question for me.  I would just hate to crash into a ride leader who can non-ABS skid to a stop before my ABS-equipped bike can stop...  In my car I can use the hand-brake but there isn't such an option on the bike.  It might not end up working right, but I think it would be sweet to have the rear ABS elongate the pulses if activated for a large enough distance.

a.s.