If you’re a motorcycle rider, picture yourself in this scenario: an obstacle suddenly appears while you’re leaning into a bend. You go to brake and either the front or the rear wheel loses its grip and slides out – making it almost impossible to keep the motorcycle under control.
This is one of the reasons why so many fatal motorcycle accidents occur in a bend. The new Bosch MSC motorcycle stability control supports riders when braking hard in bends, which means this motorcycle assistant system can defuse thousands of critical situations and significantly bring down the number of fatalities in bends.
If the rider brakes or accelerates too hard, MSC reduces the brake pressure or the acceleration to a level that allows the motorcycle to be steered much more safely. The system was first applied at the end of 2013, in KTM’s 1190 Adventure and 1190 Adventure R.
Now ADAC, the leading German automobile association, has recognized this major safety improvement. On January 16, 2014, it awarded the Bosch MSC its 2014 Yellow Angel in the “Innovation and Environment” category. This is the second Yellow Angel to have been awarded to Bosch motorcycle safety technology (the first was in 2010 for its ABS Generation 9).
Bosch’s stability control brings together a whole range of safety functions to provide support during braking and accelerating, both on straight stretches of road and in bends. For the first time, this control system now works when the motorcycle is leaning hard.
To achieve this, the experts at the Bosch center of competence for powered two-wheeler safety in Japan have added a sensor box to an existing powerful ABS. This box can measure or calculate the pitching and rotary motions on all axes more than 100 times a second. This makes it possible to adjust brake pressure, braking distribution and engine torque extremely quickly – whether it is a case of the rider pushing a little too hard or the bend getting unexpectedly tighter.
MSC is predominantly aimed at motorcycles in Europe, Japan, and the United States.
