study conducted by the Real Automóvil Club de Cataluña (RACC, or the Royal Automobile Club of Catalunya) in collaboration with similar organizations in Italy, Germany and Slovenia has indicated that the number of serious motorcycle crashes could be reduced by around 20%, if CBS and ABD became mandatory equipment.
One of the goals of this survey was to analyze the effectiveness of such road safety systems for small-displacement motorcycles and scooters. Europe has a plan for introducing mandatory ABS to this two-wheeler segment in the coming years, so such studies are used to back the lawmaking initiative.
In Spain, 75% of the accidents involving bikes and scooters happen in the urban environment, most likely because up two major factors: the number of such vehicles and the fact that the Spanish law allows drivers with the B category to operate bikes smaller than 125cc with no further training and testing required.
The survey also confirmed that two-wheelers equipped with traditional brakes are inferior in safety to those with CBS or ABS systems installed. And with riders facing 8 times the risk of being severely injured in urban accidents than what other motorists are subject to, the call for better, safer brakes only seems natural.
CBS is short for Combined Braking System, sometimes referred to as Linked Braking System or LBS, is being currently used in most of the bikes and scooter classes, and it involves a device which shares and distributes the braking power when only one of the brake levers is depressed. A control valve can be set in advanced systems to regulate how much braking force is applied to each axle.
A more advanced and expensive system, the Anti-Locking Braking System (ABS) uses speed sensors to detect early wheel slip under hard braking and modulates the stopping force to add stability in the wet and shorten the stopping distance on dry asphalt.
Google News