Wonder if ABS would have helped when I locked the front at Croft hairpin yesterday? Teach me to have a scrap with an S1000RR with all the bells and whistles
There's pros and cons to everything of course, and if the safety features work then by all means they should be made available. But it would be nice to have the option. I'm not of a mind to own a 200bhp bike these days, so I don't feel the need to festoon my bikes with so much electrickery. Good quality suspension, brakes and tyres will save us from most things.
I ride a Ducati because it requires a high degree of sympathetic control and provides the best feedback of any bike I have ever been on, in short it is built to be driven. If I wanted ABS, traction control and the rest of that stuff to assist my driving I would get a Honda with matching textile gear (or a jap sports car). The option I would vote for is "as little as possible". They might all make the bike safer to drive but if you have been driving for over 30 years the enjoyment is more about the matching the capabilities of the bike with a gradually increasing level of skill than playing with some gimmick which decreases reliability and detracts from the involvement with the bike.
I have a 2000 rsvr as well as my mutleystrada and the only electrickery is a q/shifter i have fitted that i wouldn't be without now but the mutley is a 1200s with all the gizmos and to be honest i wish i had bought the standard model and saved my money and just had the suspension set up. With all the electronics on bikes now do you think we will have anything to buy cheap in a few years as projects because we will have to either spend a fortune on diagnostics and new electronics or strip all the crap off them to get them to work with a set of carbs.
