The story so far.. (an introduction to “normal” motorcycle brakes)

For car or scooter riders (which sometimes only have one brake lever) here’s how proper motorcycle brakes work. Motorcycle brakes are operated by two levers: one on the right hand for the front brake, right foot for the back brake.

Motorcycle brakes explained

The right hand/front brake is just like bicycle brakes if you’re from Australia, UK, South africa, NZ. but the opposite to bicycles in Europe, USA. Ask me how I know they’re different and I’ll show you the scar on my arm from trying to ride a mountain bike with a USA setup.

It’s easy to remember: all brake levers are on the right, all gear stuff (clutch lever and gear pedal) are on the left. Brain is hopefully in the middle coordinating things.

What’s good and bad about motorbike brakes?

Before I tell you about the pros/cons of having front and back brake separate I need to tell you about motorcycling’s dirty little secret: we can’t really properly use our brakes while cornering. This is because, just like cars, most braking is done with the front wheel(s) and because it will either stand the bike upright in a hurry or else slip out from under you: you can’t use your front brake while going around corners. Yep, that’s right: 60-90%  of the braking power of a motorcycle is completely unusable whenever they’re going around a corner. Keep that in mind when you next have to yank on your car brakes while hammering around a corner at speed.

So the advantage to separating out the front brake from the rear brake is that you can apply the rear brake without having to use the front brake. How is that useful? Well another name for the rear brake is the “steering brake”, that should give some hints. If we have to brake while going around a corner a bit of rear braking is possible. Too much though and you’re stuffed, but a bit is certainly possible. For slow speed maneuvering the back brake is quite handy for giving you more control by using it to hold the engine back and thus having more “drive” available for the wheels at slower speeds.

Generally speaking: the way you most effectively use motorcycle brakes is to apply the front and back together smoothly avoiding skidding. If you try to use just the back you’ll find it locks and/or takes a long time to stop (when you finally do you’ll smell burning rubber that you’ve left for the last 50 metres or so).  If you just use the front: it’s likely you could brake better by having the back brake involved to “bed the bike down a bit” and spread the gripping effort across two wheels rather than just one (which is safer if you hit a patch of oil/gravel/sand etc with one wheel).

In terms of technology motorcycles (because of lack of electronic systems) have some areas where we have far superior brakes to cars (motorcycle brake pads/calipers are pretty high tech), but that isn’t enough.

The big issue with having control over both brakes is that it takes a lot more skill to coordinate the balance between front and back to get effective braking.

So what’s the problem with riders and current brakes?

Everyone tends to think they’re Valentino “prancing motorcycle superstar monkey” Rossi or Casey “pretty fast for that drug related last name” Stoner and can brake perfectly. They can’t, not even close. The deaths from motorcycling statistics show this.

Riders are also often caught out because their stopping distance is inferior to cars (who have 4 big fat grippy tyres and anti-lock braking that they can apply at any time without too much stress versus two skinny coin sized contact points).

We motorcyclists ride machines that can drag off a jet, but we get out-braked by anything from rusty decades old VW beatles to milk trucks.

Motorcycle riders also tend to be complete and utter Luddites when it comes to new technologies. Some examples over the decades:

• proper suspension – “Oh we’ll lose all feel of the road”,
• disc brakes -  “I like drum brakes because they are much simpler”,
• steering dampers – “but it’ll screw up the steering”
• hydraulic brakes – “what if they spring a leak?”, “I won’t be able to feel the brakes”,
• electronic fuel injection – “but I understand carburettor design” etc etc.

The complaints against ABS on sports bikes today:

• It’s heavier (so is a wheelchair lift on your car or that 15 kilos of beer belly you’re carrying. Really, a few extra kilos on 180 kilos of bike are worth it for safety, just like leathers weighing 10-15kg versus shorts and t shirt weighing few hundred grams)
• it’s expensive (so is intensive care but wait: didn’t you just spend 500bucks on wavy brake discs, 200 bucks on pimped out shorty levers and a 150 dollar tail tidy?)
• I want more control (sorry Mr Rossi or Mr Stoner, I didn’t know you read my blog..)
• I know how to brake effectively (statistically you most likely don’t, if you’re claiming you do then that’s a worry to start with)

Of course if you want to buy a new bike from a company that continually shuns any real technological advances: go buy a Harley.

Keep in mind the same people that poo hoo ABS (despite all evidence of improving braking performance) are the ones who will recommend spending thousands of dollars on uprated suspension to dive less during braking, different brake pads and braded brake lines to reduce fade and so on. Or spend several thousand dollars making the bike more noisy and more polluting by changing the exhaust just to get a few more horsepower. So go figure.

What is Honda’s “Combined ABS”?

In a (long run-on) sentence:

When you hit the brakes hard the electronic magic in the bike uses a bit of both front and back brakes (the “combined” bit) to achieve maximum stable braking while preventing the wheels from skidding (that’s the “anti-lock braking” bit) which it works out via sensors on the wheels.

Here’s the satisfaction results and stopping distances from Honda on earlier attempts at ABS/Combined ABS.

So it’s the combination of ABS with combined braking tweaked to be as non-intrusive for sports bikes as possible. Combined braking is found in scooters all over the place, ABS is in any new car/van and has been available as an option on touring/enduro bikes for decades.

In a picture it is this:

Honda Combined ABS diagram. (Image courtesy of Honda's info)

In video it’s this:

And some more video resources explaining more:

Talking about the test launch where they put down sand to test it.

Having ridden in sand: yanking on the brakes is not something you’d do, so that must have taken some balls to trust the technology. If I wasn’t in love with the triumph daytona 675 I’d probably buy one. If I can test ride one I might consider swapping because you never know what might run out into the road and need you to drop anchor in an emergency.

Conclusions

I love that Honda has taken the lead on this at long last.

I think it has been long overdue on sports bikes and have been a bit annoyed that such an option isn’t available because of the typical macho bullshit attitudes that drive much of motorcycling (particularly in sports bikes). So I’m making a bet that within 5 years Suzuki, yamaha and hopefully triumph will all be offering ABS of some sort on their sports bikes and hopefully across all of the range. BMW already offer it on their “almost sports bikes” I believe.

Weight, expense and “lack of control” are the arguments used since the year dot against anything new in motorcycling. Helmets for example are too expensive, weigh too much, impede rider vision, feedback and control: but they’re safer. I think this technology is in the same realm and probably adds about as much expense and weight as a helmet.

Too many lives are lost while we play pissing up a wall contests over how we can out perform technology and make excuse after excuse as to why it should stay forbidden or for touring bikes only. By all means put a switch on it that goes from “extra safety mode” (on) to “dickhead hero mode” (off) and see how we go.