Photo: Paul Pelland during his Aerostich visit (Feb 2020)

Most riders today agree about the desirable complications of modern motorcycle safety features like ABS and Traction Control. I do, too, though at times still slightly struggle with some these high-tech enhancements. Electronic fuel injection is great and so are most other advanced technologies which improve a motorcycle’s efficiency and reliability, but the specific digital stuff which sometimes comes between me and my bike’s ride dynamics is occasionally more problematic.

With ABS and Traction Control sometimes I want it on, and sometimes I want it off. Playing with the frictional limits of tires is, in a few situations, part of the fun of riding, but these days most ABS-equipped bikes don’t give their riders a fast and easy off/on switch option.

A few years ago, my R1200R’s driveshaft needed replacement after less than 30,000 miles. This was both puzzling and expensive. Online research revealed it to be a fairly common late-model BMW problem, but this bike’s driveshaft failure occurred extremely early. Driveshaft replacement seemed to be rarely needed on bikes whose riders seldom got into the ABS, which I’d been fighting with since day one.

Believe it or not, when riding older non-ABS bikes in certain situations I've always enjoyed being able to nail the rear brake hard and briefly deliberately lock the rear wheel. In dense traffic on asphalt roads this reliably produces a loud tire squeal/chirp which can in sometimes be far more effective than tooting the horn and is always more civil (and in-the-moment more practical) than giving some clueless driver the finger. I can’t help scaring them this way, just a little. But my fancy modern safe ABS-equipped R-1200R will tolerate no such nonsense, depriving me of this occasionally useful and always fun “You idiot!” tire-squeal expression.

Instead of the usual short and loud tire chirp, on this bike you get a violent, jarring “knock!-knock!-knock!-knock!”, as its ABS rapidly cycles on and off, hammering away and rudely preventing the rear tire from breaking traction.

I quickly became used to this ABS-knocking but out of habit still found myself triggering it fairly often. Yes, of course it was reassuring to have while riding on greasy wet roads or when I was half-asleep, but generally I just wanted to make it go away.

The ‘off road’ GS version of this bike comes with an ABS-off button, but my R model is not so equipped. Converting mine to GS-spec looked costly, difficult and impractical. A few R1200R owners whose ABS had failed had chosen not to replace this heavy, expensive and complicated system and I decided I’d probably do that also, if my bike’s anti-lock ever failed. I like saving the weight, (who doesn’t) and especially value being able to deliberately skid the rear tire. I like being able to do that that just enough to accept the resulting diminution in overall safety. Similarly, I would not mind being able to try a few low-level stoppies once in a while -- but don’t get me started on those very efficient and durable Telelever forks. Fun is fun.

Well now it is five years later, and this bike has accumulated many more miles and its ABS system is still functioning perfectly. Sometimes I still miss being able to scare rude drivers in traffic with a tire chirp, but I’ve learned applying the rear brake hard enough to trigger the anti-lock system is a no-no because maybe it’s the ABS’s hammering that wrecks expensive driveshafts. I imagine BMW’s bike drivetrain engineers designing them to take the engine’s maximum torque for a couple hundred thousand miles and in the next office the brake system engineers are doing the anti-lock development and the two engineer groups never talk with each other about this. Or maybe they cannot imagine there are any foolish street riders out there who may wish to deliberately lock a rear wheel while in motion? Foolish riders like me.

Those BMW engineers worked hard to provide riders with ever-increasing safety while they were simultaneously taking away some of the finding-the-frictional-limit tire fun I’d always enjoyed having with my motorcycle.

A sorta sensible trade off, I guess. Most of the time. But I’ll always miss that rear tire chirp trick used to scare the heck out of an unobservant driver.

At least that loss provided a hopefully amusing story.   

– Mr. Subjective