Modern Motorcycle Rider Aids: Enhancing Safety and Control

Men have become the tools of their tools. Welcome to the Throttle and Roast podcast. I'm your host, Niels Meersschaert. In today's episode, I'll be looking at rider aids that are becoming more common across even low cost motorcycles. Now modern motorcycles have a wide array of electronic additions that can aid a rider, It is important to understand their intent though. Any motorcycle has an envelope of conditions through which it can operate effectively. Once the motorcycle starts to go beyond that envelope, control becomes impossible. So keeping the bike within the envelope as much as possible can keep the bike safer than it would be without those constraints. Now in general, these work by having highly sensitive sensors that can measure small changes in conditions while the motorcycle is being ridden. And these are combined with actuators that can change output to controls with similarly small tweaks. Now that combination allows the rider aids to react to far smaller indications than a typical rider would even notice Now, many of these systems are built on top of earlier systems and even integrate together. So it's more common today for motorcycles to have several of these. Now I'm going to be going through many of these and we'll give a little bit of background on each one and why they may help you. So let's start with ABS. Now, ABS is probably the original rider aid that you would think of as being available for motorcycles. And it was first BMW on a motorcycle in 1988. So it's not all that old that we've actually had this technology. Now, obviously, ABS had existed on cars before it was brought into motorcycles, but adding it onto two wheels was thought to be a very valuable feature. if we think of the timeline for this, disc brakes had started to become more prevalent on motorcycles around that time. And this gave even more braking power and more potential to overwhelm a tire's grip when you were slowing down. Now, ABS works by comparing the rotation of the front versus the rear wheel to determine that a wheel is actually locking Now, this first system that was put together by BMW weighed 11 kilograms, which is about 23, 24 pounds. It's a good amount. And today, of course, you'll be able to find an ABS system that's going to usually weigh less than two kilograms. So much, much lighter. So if we think of those early systems, they were just really, really heavy, but it did provide a capability that we did not have on motorcycles in the past. Now, these early systems, they worked by pulsing the brakes. And what this would do is that if the brake was locking up that tire by pulsing the brake, you allowed it to kind of get moments where it could rotate and this could maintain control. This is typically more critical on the front than on the rear, because if you lock up that front brake, you're also going to lose any sort of steering capability that you have. have the bikes tire will just continue going in the momentum of where the bike was already heading. Now, modern ABS is more sensitive, and it can not just pulse the brakes, but it can even adjust the pressure to maximize braking. So early systems really had this kind of like clattering type of a feeling, whereas a modern ABS system, you may not even notice that it's actually working. makes it a little bit feel less intrusive to a rider than the early systems did. And when we think about how ABS is continuing to evolve, I mentioned that that front brake is really the critical system. Well, we even have ability to have an off-road ABS where this allows dual sports and ADVs to still be able to lock up the rear wheel, which we want to do to help rotate the bike in off-road conditions, but still keep that front wheel from locking So ABS sounds like it's a pretty good thing for the most part, right? Well, then we started adding in a couple of other systems Basically augment what we had with ABS. And the first one of these is linked brakes. Now motorcycles will have both a independent front brake and an independent rear brake. So these two different braking allows the rider to have maximum control over where they put the amount of braking force, whether they favor more towards the front or more towards the rear or even using one at the exclusion of the other. The problem is, is that what happens is that some riders would really only favor one brake over the other, and this does limit your braking capability. oftentimes, especially for a newer rider, they're only going to be using that rear brake. And the problem is that when you're trying to slow down a big bike going at a good speed, the rear brake is only providing maybe about 30% of the braking force. And because the bike naturally shifts forward, what happens is that weight transfer occurs, and that's why you get less braking capability with the rear brake. With less weight on the rear wheel, of course, now it's more likely to lock. So it actually makes it more likely that you need ABS if you're only using that rear brake. So what linked brakes allow you to do they basically enable both brakes to be controlled from only one of the brake levers, whether you're using the foot brake or the front lever. Generally, they will try to go for about a 70-30 split in terms of how much pressure is applied to each brake, So this can make it a little bit easier for you. Now, there are some smarter systems where if you use the rear brake, which in some cases you do want to use the rear brake instead of the front, especially for controlling your movement in a parking lot where you don't want to lock up that front wheel. And this will allow you to have a little bit of brake force go to the front brake, but not as much as you would have if you were actually actuating that front brake. So you can still have the benefit of mostly using the rear brake, but still get some slowdown, especially if you're a newer rider and you're not used to using both brakes. It will still slow the bike down a little bit quicker. Now, the next rider aid that we have that is starting to make an impact for riders is Ride By Wire. Now, older bikes actually used cables coming from the grip to the throttle body. So when you actually rotated the grip, it was a direct physical connection to the throttle body. Now, where we had a little bit of tweaking that we could do is you'd have a cam that could be installed into the throttle grip, or even at the throttle body or both. And what this would do is it would change the feel. So it wasn't really a one-to-one. So it wasn't, "Hey, I turned it exactly 10% of the entire throw on the grip. Therefore it turned 10% at the throttle body." No, the cams allowed it to be a little bit more variable such that you could almost soften it around the starting point and then give more throttle throw as you moved further into the grip rotation. The downside of that approach is, of course, whatever you had at manufacturer or if you replaced the cams, that's the only ratio, the feel of how much throttle responsiveness you have. When we add in ride-by-wire, what this does is it replaces that. There's now a potentiometer that is right at the throttle grip, and it's measuring how much throttle you are requesting, send that over to a computer, and then the computer actuates the throttle body on its own. it can take it as a request, but not output the exact amount that you have requested. It can adjust it as is necessary. So this becomes, in many ways, the ride-by-wire is almost a foundational technology. It simplifies a lot of other systems that we'll get into later in the episode of what you're able to do because you've already made this one part of the bike more of a software function rather than a physical hardware one. So let's switch into cruise control. Now, some bikes offer cruise control where they can maintain a set speed of the bike, and if we think about that ride-by-wire, this does really enable you to do it. So that's why you're got to be able to do it. You basically enabled the bike itself to be able to control the throttle independently of what you're twisting on the throttle grip, and therefore having a Cruise control is far more possible to have when you have a ride-by-wire system. Now, I don't want people to get confused with cruise control with a throttle lock. These are different things. Now, a lot of bikes have had throttle locks that you could add in after the fact. Even some bikes had very simplistic versions of them out of the box. I remember my old 1972 BMW R75 actually had a little twist that was down at the bottom of the throttle grip, which could lock the throttle into a single position so that you could hold the throttle at whatever you requested. And this works. It's helpful, certainly, to reduce some fatigue that you would have when you're riding. But the downside of it is it doesn't adjust the throttle as you're climbing or descending a hill where the amount of power needed is going to vary. So, while when we're riding on our own, we can kind of intuitively do that, if you have a throttle lock, it doesn't do it. And this is where a real cruise control that's setting the speed can really be helpful. Now, both of these systems, whether you're using a throttle lock or the modern cruise control, can really be of benefit when you're doing long miles on, let's say, a highway where you have a relatively steady speed for a long period of time. I mean, if you're holding your hand in that position, it can start to cramp up, it can get a little tired. So, having the ability to take your hand off, stretch it a little bit, is really helpful. But these new systems where you can actually do it set at a specific speed is really very powerful. Now, the next setup that we're going to talk about is what's called a quick shifter. Now, most motorcycles on the market today are manual transmissions. And as such, we use a clutch to disengage the engine from the transmission and then allow it as we shift gears, we can let that clutch back out and slowly match the speed of the transmission with the engine speed so we can get less of a bucking bronco kind of a feeling to it. And this allows us to have a nice, smooth transition from one gear into the next. Now, what a quick shifter does is there's a little sensor on the shifter lever and it registers that you would like to change gears. And what it can do, and most early systems of this were only for upshifts, what it does is it can actually retard the on upshifts so that the clutch is no longer needed. It will actually slow the engine down to match the revs that are necessary in the next sequential gear and therefore have a nice, smooth transition without needing to do anything. Now, if you think of this, this is building onto that ride-by-wire. Since the computer is actually controlling the throttle, it's using that system along with the quick shifter in order to make this a little bit more smooth without you having to use a clutch. Now, there are motorcycles today that have both up and down quick shifters, and what they do when you downshift is they'll actually blip the throttle to get the engine up to the RPM that is going to match what the new gear is going to be shifting into, and therefore you'll have a smooth downshift, whereas in the past we would have to do that manual bump on the throttle as we were going into a lower gear. And what this quick shifter allows us to do is we really only need the clutch for when we're starting from a stop. Every other time that you're riding the bike can be completely done just with the quick shifter. especially if you're trying to get high performance and you want to as quickly as thus the name quick shifter, it's really good for at the track, really good for fast bikes, to be able to get in and out of the next gear quickly, usually going to be much faster than you could do if you were going to be manually shifting it. So now we start to get into some of the systems that are really kind of built on top of what we've earlier discussed. So the first one I'll talk about is ride modes. These are generally built on top of the fact that you have ride by wire. We no longer have this single cam profile installed like we had with a physical cable on some of the older motorcycles. Because it's a ride-by-wire, the rider is effectively requesting a throttle position, and the

well, what does that represent? When I move the throttle and I rotate it, how much of a change in the effect of throttle position am I going to effect because of that? And what I can do with this is I can effectively have different ride modes and shift how much the position of your throttle grip will actually result in a change at the throttle position. And you can think of this almost like imagine an old cable actuated bike. Well, if I had multiple different cams that I could switch out from while I'm riding the bike, that's fundamentally what ride modes are doing for you. They're allowing you to completely change the feel of how the at the to the throttle at the engine actually match Now, most bikes tend to have about three different modes. They usually have something like a rain mode is usually the mildest curve. It's often really soft, especially right off of idle. Some of them will even limit maximum power so that you don't overwhelm the rear end of the bike. So it can really help you if you're getting into conditions where it's very easy to overpower it. Another one that you'll hear sometimes is is called road or normal mode. And this is kind of the Goldilocks. It's the middle of the road setting. This is probably the most close to what a typical bike would have had with the built in cams when you got started. This works for most riders in most situations. It's a good kind of all around one. And that's why most people when they're riding, they'll use this road Now, the next mode that you might see is something called like a sport mode most commonly. And this is a much more sensitive setting. It can make the bike feel more powerful since you get more power for a given throttle position. And in a sense, it really can make you have a bike that feels sportier without having to get a new bike. So it's it's kind of cool that you can do this. Some people will feel that it is a little bit of a gimmick and it is Your bike isn't really changing, but just the way it feels changes. And what this allows you to effectively do with your motorcycle now is you can have a bike that has different feelings of how it rides and how it responds. Based on either the conditions, so if it's wet weather, you might want to use that rain mode or even your mood. Are you really in a very sporty fast paced mode? Well, maybe you want to put it in that sport mode or you're just chugging along. You're just cruising. Maybe you leave it in road mode so you can actually really adapt the bike the bike to your needs in the moment. And this is really cool in the past, if we wanted to change the feel of the bike, we really had to physically go and change the cams. Well, now I can have three different feelings of the bike in one ride, which is really cool. Now there's even some bikes that will have a custom mode. And this is where you can even fine tune what that sensitivity is. So you could make it kind of be more or less sensitive than let's say the sport mode or more or less sensitive than the rain mode. So you can kind of tweak it to what your needs are for this custom mode. So you'd have almost like a fourth mode that you could choose

from. Now, let's switch into traction control. one of the best ways I can think to describe traction control is think of it almost as the inverse of ABS. It actually uses the same sensors that we have for ABS that are measuring the difference in wheel speed between your front wheel and your rear wheel. And of course, on motorcycles, the rear wheel is the wheel that is getting power. So if it is rotating faster than the front wheel, while we're requesting power, I know that I have started to spin that rear tire and I'm overpowering that tire. So what the computer is able to do is because the ride-by-wire allows the computer to adjust the throttle position that's actually hitting the throttle body, regardless of the grip position. What it can now do is it can reduce the throttle output compared to the throttle requested and keep those rear tire and front tire moving at the same speed. So you don't overwhelm that. Now, some bikes even allow you to adjust how much intervention occurs. This can often be done based on the ride mode. So maybe a sport mode allows you to get it a little bit sideways, a little tweaking, whereas a road mode and a rain mode will be really trying to keep that overpowering in check. some bikes with the custom ride modes can even tune the traction control to the riders taste. So you can really make this feel exactly the way you So, for example, if you're going to a track day, maybe you want to be able to let that rear end slide out a little bit as you're powering in going through a corner, well, you can tune that to your taste and set it up exactly as you want. And this allows you to have a little bit more fun. But then when you want to get back onto the street and have a little bit more intervention so that you don't get really crazy sideways, it will allow you to maintain that. And the big thing is it still will allow you to operate within an envelope. So you don't overpower the rear such that the bike would become uncontrollable. You can keep it right on that edge where it's still within control, but it's maybe a little bit less So it's kind of cool that you can do. And you can do this if you had full intervention. And it's kind of cool that you can now do this with traction control on your So the next couple of ones that I want to discuss really have to do with the transmission and the clutch. And if we think about some of the earlier ones that we've discussed, we talked about that ability to have a quick shifter allows you to immediately shift gears. you really don't need the clutch except for when you're getting going. Well, this first one that I want to talk about actually is called an e-clutch. And if you've ever ridden a scooter that has a CVT and a centrifugal clutch, you kind of know that the clutch disengages as the speed drops and it keeps the engine from stalling. But when you start going, as you start to rotate that throttle grip and you start to apply power, clutch is going to start spinning. It's going to now start to grab as it speeds up and you'll have a nice smooth engagement. Now, of course, a CBT will effectively have infinite gears. It'll just adjust as necessary. But really, it's the centrifugal clutch that's the real difference here. Now, Honda has an e-clutch on some of their beginner models like the Rebel 300. And this acts like a centrifugal clutch where you just do that twist and go. You don't even have to worry about engaging the clutch lever as you stop. the big thing is, and this is what's kind of cool about it, really for a beginner, for a beginner, there is still a physical clutch lever, whereas on a scooter, there generally is not. But here, the rider can choose to manually use the clutch if they want, or they can use it as a centrifugal clutch. And this lets a rider kind of get the basics of riding down, and then they can add in using the clutch as they become more comfortable. So it doesn't force you to learn everything all at once, but you can kind of build with it. And I like this, especially within a beginner bike, because it allows you to disconnect these two independent actions of how do I ride the bike and how do I deal with the clutch? Especially today for, I'd say probably the vast majority of people who are becoming riders may not have actually ever driven a car with a manual transmission. Here in the United States, I think the take rate on manual transmissions is less than 2%. So you can't, most people are just, 98% of people are getting a car with an automatic transmission. There's only a handful of cars that even have it as an option for you to get a manual transmission. So it becomes harder and harder and harder to do so. and therefore fewer people have that experience of using the clutch at all before they got onto a motorcycle. So I like this E-clutch allowing you to have sort of easing you into the spirit of it. And if you think of you know, how do we make this easier for newcomers? Well, this next sort of rider aid kind of takes it to the whole other level, which is really an automatic transmission. Now, if we think of CVTs, they're kind of the original automatic transmission. We see this on a lot of scooters. The effectively, the more you twist the grip, the faster the bike will go, if we think of most motorcycle transmissions, they're independent gears. They're individual gears that you can select through a gear shift. With a automatic transmission in a motorcycle, most of these are being implemented more like an automated manual. And so you can still switch the gears with your foot, think of like that quick shifter that we had, there's actually not even a clutch lever anymore. So look at bikes like the latest ones from BMW, from KTM, from Honda. Most of these really don't have a clutch lever at all anymore. If you want the automatic version and it will just shift the gears as you flip them up with your Now, some of these bikes will actually use what's called the DCT or a dual clutch There's actually two clutches that are on the stack of the transmission. And what this does is it will disengage one clutch and engage the next one for the sequential gear. And what this allows it to do is make very, very, very fast changes between these two gears. And if you think of what we did with the quick shifter where it would adjust the engine to allow it to make that smooth transition, when I have a clutch that's actuating on its own, I can even make this itself. So really cool and especially for people who are maybe newer riders have never driven a manual transmission car and now they're coming onto a motorcycle and the thought or the prospect of having to learn how to manage a clutch is just overwhelming to them. Having these as an option is a great And then the final rider aid that I want to discuss for this episode is adaptive cruise control. If we think back to what we had with regular cruise control, if you were going up a hill, you may apply more throttle, but still maintain the same amount of speed. If you're going down a hill, it may retard the throttle and actually allow you to slow down. Well, now let's think about some of the other systems that we've talked about. We talked about that cruise control. We talked about linked brakes. We talked about ride by wire. Well, now let's take all of those systems. Let's add in a radar sensor on the front of the bike. And just like in a car system, this allows the motorcycle to maintain a following distance from the vehicle that's directly in front of you. So the motorcycle itself will reduce the throttle if it needs to. It will increase the throttle if it needs to to maintain the following distance. This will increase up to whatever you've set as a speed. It will even apply the brakes if it needs to. And if I have a automatic transmission on my motorcycle. It will actually downshift into the gears as is necessary to come to a full and complete stop if it requires. So the beauty of this is We noticed this in cars, having adaptive cruise control on a car really does make it less fatiguing as you're continuing to drive. Same thing applies to a motorcycle. Now where there's a big difference, and this is the thing I think I would like to see more automotive manufacturers implement, is that these motorcycle systems really do think of the kind of vehicles that you might be following behind. very often as you're riding in a group, let's say, you might have another motorcycle in front of you. Well, these adaptive cruise control systems will also be able to manage and notice narrow vehicles like a motorcycle and maintain the following distance with them. Some cars don't do this well. They will only work with a car or a truck, and when a motorcycle is in front of them, they really don't even notice the bike and they will just jam right up into it because they're not paying attention. having this capability on a motorcycle makes sense. I would just like to see car manufacturers do the same thing. So let's wrap up. We looked at the breadth of rider aids that are on the market today, and how many of them build on top of one another. We covered ABS, linked brakes, ride-by-wire, cruise control, quick shifters, ride mode, traction control, e-clutch, automatic transmissions, and the newest adaptive cruise control systems that are available on some of the top-end models. So my question for you this week is, what do you think of these rider aids? Are there some that you can't live without, or ones that you think really aren't all that necessary? Share your thoughts through the Text to Show link in the show notes, or leave a voicemail at throttleandroast.com/voicemail. Thanks for listening, I'll talk to you next week.