Technology continues to creep its way into motorcycling. ABS, Cornering ABS, and Traction Control are a few of the features that have found their way into motorcycling. Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of ABS and the other rider aides mentioned. I believe they have saved lives and made us safer riders. But, there is a new option coming to motorcycles that I have some reservation about – Adaptive Cruise Control.
BMW is developing an Adaptive Cruise Control system that they hope to soon start implementing in their motorcycles. Adaptive Cruise has been available in cars since 1992 and has since become widely adopted in a variety of four wheelers.
Our family car has adaptive cruise in it. It is a fantastic tool for long road trips on the Interstate. Just set the speed and forget it. The car will speed up or slow down depending on what the traffic in your lane is doing ahead of you.
In the city adaptive cruise can be a little more to deal with and needs to be used with a lot more caution. Traffic is much more likely to merge into and out of your lane causing some rather abrupt speed changes.
I have also noticed that it makes the car driver even more lazy in their mental awareness. It becomes a much lesser concern to take your eyes off the road for several seconds if you know your car will stop or slow down if traffic does the same in front of you. If a car merges close in front of you the brake force applied by the adaptive cruise can be pretty abrupt in a car.
I am not sure I want the brakes to aggressively apply in the same manner on a motorcycle. What if a rider has become lazy and is not looking closely ahead, they take a hand off the handle bars to stretch just in time for the brakes to apply abruptly. It is a whole different story than if you were in a car.
If the laziness of driving a car with adaptive cruise finds its way into motorcycling as a result of adaptive cruise on MCs, I think there are many more concerns to deal with. If the rider is not actively scanning ahead because they are reliant upon adaptive cruise to slow them down what about cars approaching at an intersection or large dips in the road. Motorcycles accelerate much quicker than cars, what about when a car in your lane changes lanes and your motorcycle quickly accelerates because it now has the following distance to do so.
I am sure that engineers are looking into all of these issues but it does not answer the question. Do we need it? Adaptive cruise will no doubt drive up the price of motorcycles and I am not convinced at this point that it will make them safer.
What do you think?
