What I find with ABS is that although the brakes may not work any better I have the confidence to really stab the brakes in an emergency without the fear of locking up. This definitely results in much faster stops. Unless you really grab a handful of brake ABS brakes work just like any other. This was made very clear to me last summer. There were six couples on HD touring bikes riding back to our motel from Street Vibes about 80 miles south of Reno. It was about 9PM and I was in front of the pack when a huge buck hopped a barbed wire fence not far in front of me. My *** puckered and I grabbed a huge handful of front brake stabbed the rear brake as hard as I could. Two of my buddies on older RKs (One '03 and one '07) skidded to a stop right next to me. Both could not believe how much faster my ABS equipped bike stopped. At least a car length faster than them.

I have recently changed out my brake rotors to the Matrix composite rotors. Matrix makes the rotors for Lyndall and Lyndall actually participates in their R&D. These rotors and pads definitely stop faster than my stock brakes.

Here is a link to some testing info on their website. There is a lot of good information on their site.

http://www.matrixbrakes.com/case-studies.aspx

 

You have to think about you have 2 wheels & 3 brakes when a car has 4 wheels & 4 brakes which I think would stop a lot quicker than your bike.

 

ABS equipped has nothing to do with it.

If ABS kicks in (on paved flat roads, wet or otherwise), you have made a mistake. You can do mistake-free braking on an ABS or non ABS equipped bike.

ABS is a backup system that kicks in if you brake incorrectly. (Highly) skilled riders (a very small group) can stop in the same, shorter distance on ABS or non ABS bikes because ABS never kicks in with (highly) skilled riders.

Panic situations change everything. A very small subset of an already small population of highly skilled riders will do it properly in a panic/emergency.

The difference between an ABS and a non-ABS bike is that on a non-ABS bike, if you make a mistake, you are hosed.

The sad truth is that most people consider themselves highly skilled when they are not.

 

The simple fact is a 4 wheeled vehicle will stop and corner faster than a two wheeled vehicle. Has to do with contact patch size. ABS isn't about stopping faster, it is about stopping safer. ABS prevents lock-up. Lock-up = loss of control.

 

In theory you are absolutely correct. But in the real world these ABS systems are not perfect (and I'm talking the HD system here).

Aside from intentionally testing the system, the only time I have ever had my ABS kick-in is going over bumps during a moderate to hard stops. In those situations the ABS lengthened my stopping distance considerably. Without ABS those bumps would have been simple little momentary chirps of the tire with full braking available while the tire was on the ground. With ABS, everytime the tire crests a bump and becomes light, the ABS kicks-in and you lose braking efficiency as the system is too slow in it's response and the brakes remain released too long. The system would work infinitely better if the designers could reduce the response time of the system by a significant factor.

Even though the ABS system is not perfect, I agree that for the vast majority of riders ABS is a good feature. But I also believe ABS is not the almighty savior that many of it's die-hard proponents would like you to believe.

 

Not all of this is true. There have been many many articles and tests done over the past 4-6 years comparing exact same bikes (one with abs and one without...I believe the first one I ever saw tested was a honda model with the abs option and the same bike without the option), exact same riders, exact same conditions and each and every time the rider on the non-abs bike came out on the longer end. I believe that the one I last read showed the rider got as close as 7 or 8 feet to the abs equipped bike, but then the testers made mention of that being the length of a typical car. I know for one thing...my 2008 GSXR 1000 had AMAZING brakes and stopping power but the problem with it was that the bike's stopping ability exceeded the bikes ability to not flip completely over when stopped too hard. There is no way in the world my abs equipped harley would match that bike of course BUT it does make me FEEL a lot more confident than I did before, having abs and all.

One thing I forgot to mention is that the rider on the non-abs bike got that close on DRY conditions. When the asphalt was wet...it wasnt even close. The stopping distances almost doubled. And I believe that when the speed was increased to 70 or 80, the distance almost TRIPLED at that point. I'll take the abs all day over the stories of how folks think the abs makes them slower. Better safe than sorry.

 

So you are saying that ABS kicks in before the wheels lock? Technically they are supposed to detect when the wheels have stopped before it kicks in.

 

You can find plenty of stopping distance statistics with Google. Most bikes don't have a chance against most cars, with or without ABS, and that's not just my opinion, that's test results. Few experts in slick conditions could stop the same car every time without ABS as fast as with; probably nobody on this forum could. But I wouldn't be surprised if ABS has caused as many accidents as it's avoided; it lets people get real aggressive with their brakes, and non-ABS cars (or with ABS but drivers can't react quickly enough) around them can't handle their thoughtlessness - like slamming on the brakes to make a turn or hit an exit, not unusual here. I know it can be frustrating to try and keep a reasonable and safe distance in heavy city traffic; that's why I don't ride in those conditions, I'm old enough to know how vulnerable I and everybody else is on a bike in those conditions, consider it no fun at all, and save my riding for when I can enjoy it. If you want to ride all the time, or don't even have a car, then you just have to take your chances.

There are so many different opinions here about ABS it's obvious most of them have to be wrong. Do some research and make up your own mind.

I've driven in Atlanta, pity people that live there and want to have fun on a bike, rush hour seems to last about 20 hours in that city, and I've seen bumper to bumper traffic from Chattanooga to Macon; that's the longest congestion I've ever seen.

 

No, abs keeps the wheels from locking at all. The physics behind it prove that a locked wheel has more than likely lost all of its friction and because of that, there is a slide and a sliding wheel will go a lot farther than a wheel that is still rolling with the brakes applied. When I made mention of my GSXR being prone to flipping over, I wasnt talking about the wheels being locked. I was talking about amount of "bite" force that was applied to the front wheel if you grabbed too hard. Those modern day rockets are amazing and over-engineered in everything that they do...handling, braking, acceleration, etc. They are a bit too much for even the experienced riders.

 

They're supposed to kick in when they slow a certain amount; I don't know how that's calculated. Sometimes you can get a chirp with them, and if you're in a turn on snow, they can break the tires loose, and ABS does nothing for you when you start going sideways. Police had to figure out other ways of investigating accidents; ABS usually doesn't leave any marks on the road - it sure would if the tires locked up, even momentarily.

Not all ABS is equal. Some systems don't work if only one tire hits a slick spot - you can drive with one side in an iced over gutter, and with those wheel's anti locks grinding away, the car happily just coasts on down the road, not even trying to slow the dry wheels. That seems stupid to me; maybe it's cheaper. The better systems will put full braking as possible on every wheel, regardless of individual traction differences.