Award for new Bosch motorcycle ABS ADAC, Europe’s biggest automobile association,pays tribute to road-safety potential

Europe’s biggest automobile association has conferred an award on the new Bosch antilock braking system (ABS) for motorcycles. Presenting its “Gelber Engel” (yellow angel) award, the German ADAC pays tribute to the great potential for more road safety offered by this new Bosch development. The modular design of generation 9 allows various levels of sophistication, from a system with basic functions to a high-performance ABS. The “ABS9 base” variant weighs just 0.7 kilograms, and is half the size and weight of the previous generation. “Our entry-level ABS is by far the most compact system in the market,” says Dr. Werner Struth, president of the Bosch Chassis Systems Control division. “Its cost-optimized design makes an ABS affordable for all classes of motorcycle for the first time.” The new ABS enables a wider proliferation and can make motorcycling considerably safer.


Bosch has been manufacturing brake control systems for motorcycles since 1994. While all the ABS systems on the market were previously based on passenger-car technology, engineers at the Bosch competence center in Japan have now designed a new ABS specifically for motorcycles. A first variant of generation 9 already went into series production in November 2009. Up to now, only every tenth new motorcycle manufactured in Europe is equipped with ABS. Worldwide, the figure is only every one-hundredth bike. By way of comparison, the figure for passenger cars worldwide has now reached 80 percent.

Because of the lack of passive safety, motorcyclists are especially at risk in accidents. In Europe and Brazil, for example, nearly one in six road deaths is a motorcyclist, and the proportion is much higher in India and China. For the same distance traveled, the risk of a fatal accident when riding a motorcycle in Europe is 20 times greater than when driving a car. In this context, experts believe that the antilock braking system provides a huge boost to safety. It allows motorcyclists to brake safely in critical situations without locking the wheels, and without having to fear an inevitable fall. Braking distance is also reduced considerably. A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) in the U.S., for example, shows that if all motorcycles were equipped with ABS, 28 percent of all fatal motorcycle accidents could be prevented. And a study presented by Vägverket, the Swedish highways authority, in 2009 shows that 38 percent of all motorcycle accidents involving personal injury and 48 percent of all serious and fatal accidents could be prevented with the help of ABS.