248427 Resource 106832 108325 108325 1263411889693 1263411889693 Controlled New Motorcycles and Safe Riding

Better Brakes More Power

Looking over the new crop of motorcyles is always a great way to spend the Winter season (OK, the rainy season in California).   This year, there are some real breakthroughs.  Honda's new VFR is loaded with new technology and changes in direction from previous bikes.  BMW has the S1000R, a newly revised 1200RT, and an overall refreshed feel to their offerings.   From a rider's perspective, what I want in a bike is fun, but I also need safety to fully enjoy the ride. Personally, I am a believer in ABS and linked brakes.  ABS saves your cookies in gravel, slick conditions and when riding in crud.  Linked brakes deal with the chance that you will lock up the rear in a panic situation.  Together, they will avoid a certain percentage of accidents.  Honda's new brakes will shorten your stopping distance, which is the biggest single improvement I can think of. New technology incorporating air bags and thin body armor that hardens on impact may make a difference in the kind of injuries suffered by those who can't avoid a crash. These are good things.  The bad thing is that we still share roads with drivers who have ever more distractions.  Cell phones, GPS, sound systems, and now the ability to get Twits through your car threaten to create ever more accidents between motorcycles and cars.   Because these accidents are caused by the failure of the other driver to pay attention, there isn't much being done to reduce this risk.  If anything, it continues to get worse.  Smaller, quicker steering cars is another contributor to the problem. Even here, there are some early attempts to alert drivers of cars to other vehicles in their blind spot or path of travel.  We'll have to see how these work where the vehicle of concern is a motorcycle. In the meantime, it is important when looking at the new bikes to consider the safety features.  This is not just the braking and handling systems, but the way the bike fits, the way it fits your riding style, whether the mirrors actually work for you, and everything else that affects your potential for dealing with those who share the road with motorcyclists. 10 application/xml false ABS BRAKES BMW 1200RT BMW S1000RR BODY ARMOR HANDLING HONDA VFR LINKED BRAKES MOTORCYCLE AIR BAGS Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_2; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.8 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Safari/531.21.10 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 mpadway 69.17.49.44 false true false false true 201650 false false true false false false true 106832 blog blogsite/MichaelPadway/web