That comparison was with older ABS systems and typical cars with GP bikes and riders in perfect conditions. To have a similar comparison consider a modern F1 car driver experiences up to ~4 Gs of deceleration during braking. Due to the higher CG, I doubt motorcycles will ever get to that level of performance. I know I couldn’t do a handstand with 3 of me on my feet too. 1 G would be ~45 degrees but 4 G is closer to a handstand.
Modern ABS and traction control systems use fuzzy logic and other methods and more sensors to dramatically improve breaking. Now it is not uncommon for more advance cars to get close to 1 G of deceleration. It requires a lot of skill, and comfort with stopping while doing a wheelie to reach this point and is not practical for emergency stops in less than ideal conditions.
Here is a diagram that show how narrow the band is where a driver/rider can best ABS. What this does not capture is that due to the low margin of error and high costs of exceeding that limit most riders/drivers will not brake hard enough early enough to compete with these systems. In other words, even if the driver/rider is highly skilled they are more likely to utilize that optimal braking zone if they have ABS available if they misjudge.
ABS does under-perform in some conditions like ice but modern motorcycle ABS like KTM introduced about 5 years ago will do better than even the top riders in gravel.
I can confirm from personal experience that motorcycle ABS underperforms on ice. In my case, it underperformed to the tune of about $200 worth of broken bits.
Also from experience: even with ABS, even with some racetrack braking experience, and even with a special customization that inhibits both endos and wheelies (it’s called “obesity”), I still leave room when I think to do so, for a lot of the reasons that have already been mentioned. I’ll add this, though. For some of us, there is a persistent, subliminal terror of stalling the engine when starting off from a stop. So you try to minimize how many stops that you make, and try to be sure that you get the clutch fully engaged after starting, which takes space. This may not be conscious, but it does happen.
There may also be a defect of scale involved. Your perspective on a bike is much different than it is in a car, and I would not be surprised if many riders were trying to transfer their idea of proper following distance from their car to a bike, and not quite getting it right because the perspective is different, and you don’t have the hood of the car helping to scale distances out. I know that my own following distances get to be inexcusably tight after I’ve been commuting daily on the bike for a few weeks.
In the last ~20 years, I’ve seen 60-0 braking distances dropping for cars. They’ve stayed the same for bikes. 110 feet is very good for a bike, 125 is about average. High performance cars can now stop in under 100 feet.
Well that’s my 30-years-out-of-date experience explained, which is interesting. But you’re comparing an average bike to a high performance car? What about typical cars on the road?
—but remember that “distance it takes to stop a car” is not the same as stopping distance. How many drivers driving with their left foot resting over the brake pedal now?
You’re not comparing apples with apples. I stand by my assertion upthread:
Take an average driver in an average car, and put him next to an average rider on an average bike, and the driver will have a shorter stopping distance than the rider.
Magazine braking tests results for average cars and average bikes are about the same, around 120 feet.
The thing about bikes is, the highest performance ones have the best brakes, but they’re also short and relatively tall, so they’re more apt to lift the rear tire when braking. So their brakes can handle multiple laps of hard braking without fading, but maximum deceleration is always limited by their geometry.
You have a good point about drivers not always having a foot poised above the brake pedal. On the other hand, how many motorcyclists can achieve, and hold at, max deceleration? It took me hours of track time to get comfortable with floating the rear wheel just above the asphalt. I know riders much more skilled than me who still can’t do that, because it wasn’t a priority. I’ll bet it’s far beyond the braking skills of the average rider to match the 60-0 times achieved by magazine testers, who test braking regularly.
You can stand by your assertions all you want, and I’ll continue to agree with you.
When I said ‘they’ve stayed the same for bikes’, I meant that bike stopping distances haven’t improved much over the years, compared to the improvement that cars have shown.
The highly focused on a simple task average human reaction time is about .3 of a second. But that is assuming perfect attention to an expected event. For an alert driver there is an average latency of
around 1.3 seconds.
At 30mph you are going 44 feet per second. This means that 44 to 57 feet at 30 MPH will be covered before you even know you need to react. If the average car is 15 feet long this means that you will cover 3-4 average car lengths before you even know to start braking. If you are following behind a truck and cannot see the traffic in front of you this means that if they rear-end someone you will hit them before you even apply the brakes unless you are more than 60’ from them.
This gets exponentially worse as speeds increase, but lets be honest, how many people give 3 seconds of distance at 30mph? This is 44 yards or pretty close to half the distance of a football field.
This is part of the reason multi-vehicle rear-end collisions are so common. While you may be able to react in the case of a co-slowing car, almost no one gives enough following distance to avoid an accident if someone in front of you rear ends someone without significant slowing.
That’s somewhat irrelevant though, innit? What started this discussion was why riders leave a long space in front of the car in front of them, and it’s specifically so that they can stop before ramming that car.
If the driver behind them doesn’t react in time, the driver’s better technology may help, but that’s entirely a second problem.
