Bosch aim to bring traction control to all motorcycles and cut accidents by 30%

The Head of Bosch’s Two-Wheeler and Powersports unit, Geoff Liersch, says he’s committed to supplying electronic safety aids – including traction control – to all motorcycles globally, to help prevent unnecessary road deaths.

• Related: How Bosch’s MSC unit works

“It’s pretty simple for me, I would like to see 100% MSC (Motorcycle Stability Control) systems on every motorcycle in the world. Why? Because we can save 30% of the accidents,” he told MCN during the 2023 Eicma trade show in Milan.

“Our challenge is to get costs down so the technology can be affordable in those areas,” he continued.

The German firm have already begun acting on this pledge by producing an MSC traction control unit for the Indian-built TVS Apache RTR 310 naked bike, which uses both a Bosch IMU and ABS system. This moves comes 10 years on from their first MSC, found on the much more powerful KTM 1190 Adventure.

“Sometimes that means the performance is not as good as the high-end bikes,” Liersch continued. “We will reduce the performance of the system away from a performance [focused system] more to a safety system in those markets.”

Despite progress, there’s still some way to go until the goal is reached. “I think Bosch created ABS for a motorcycle in 1990-something [1988 to be exact] and it took 30 years to get where we are today. So, I expect it’ll probably take us another 15 to 20 years. And that depends on how quickly we can move technology to a price point that can be accepted.”