MXA’S AMA RULE OF THE WEEK: WHY “NON” TRANSLATES INTO NONE

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Read this rule carefully. It says that traction control is prohibited, but does it. What it really says is that “non-production electronic devices” are prohibited. That means that if a manufacturer has traction control on its bikes as part of production, then they are not illegal.

At this moment Kawasaki, KTM and Husqvarna have traction on their stockers. Honda announced decades ago that it had traction control, but then read the previous rule, which didn’t have the word “non-production” in it before 2015, and took the words “traction control” out of their literature. They did not take the traction control system out of their bikes though—just the words.

Don’t be confused by the part about “sensors that can determine wheel speed.” While those are are still illegal, if not production, modern bikes do not use wheel sensors for traction control—that is very old technology. Modern bikes use the bike’s ECU to read “runaway revs” that indicate that the rear wheel is spinning. When the computer spots runaway revs it retards the ignition in a millisecond to stop the spinning and then advances the ignition immediately.

Launch control is not considered traction control under this rule because it is limited to the starting line and is disabled in the first turn. SInce it does not read runaway revs or control wheel spin it isn’t illegal. Launch control detunes the engine to kill horsepower on the start so that the wheel is less likely to spin—but it doesn’t try to stop the wheel from spinning if it does.

Now, if you read the rule carefully you probably think that “non-producton” traction control is illegal. It is under the letter of the law, but a short walk through the pits at any AMA National will reveal a large number of bikes with aftermarket GET traction control dials on them. So, they are all illegal right? Yes, but this is a rule that the AMA does not enforce. Which at any given time could be said about every AMA rule.

GET doesn’t call its non-production traction control device “traction control,” thus they think that the AMA isn’t smart enough to realize that it is traction control. Guess what? They are right.