The same evidence, two answers
The effectiveness case for anti-lock braking systems on motorcycles has been settled for years. NHTSA's own research, published in its motorcycle safety studies ↗, consistently finds that ABS-equipped motorcycles are involved in fatal crashes at substantially lower rates than non-ABS equivalents. European regulators read that body of evidence and acted; American regulators have read it and continued deliberating.
The EU's phased mandate took effect in January 2016 under UN Regulation No. 78 and the type-approval framework ↗, requiring ABS as standard equipment on all new motorcycles with engines above 125cc sold in member states. Scooters and mopeds below that threshold received a lower-cost alternative: the combined braking system requirement. The phase-in was staged — larger-displacement machines first, then the broader market — but by 2017 the rule was comprehensive for the relevant category. Manufacturers had anticipated it; Honda, Yamaha, and BMW Motorrad had been rolling out ABS fitment across their lines ahead of the compliance deadline, in part because European buyers were already weighting it in purchase decisions.
In the United States, the Motorcycle Safety Foundation and allied groups filed a formal rulemaking petition with NHTSA seeking a comparable mandate. NHTSA opened a docket and requested public comment. As of the most recent public record, the rulemaking has not advanced to a proposed rule. The agency's standard explanation invokes the complexity of the domestic market — the volume of older machines in the fleet, cost impacts on entry-level buyers, the breadth of displacement categories — but none of these factors are unique to the American context. The European market carried the same legacy fleet and similar price sensitivity at the sub-400cc tier when its mandate was drafted.
The divergence matters most in the mid-displacement segment, where volume is highest and ABS fitment has historically been inconsistent. Royal Enfield, KTM, Triumph, and CFMoto all compete heavily in the 250cc–750cc range that the EU mandate most visibly reformed. In Europe, a new Royal Enfield Meteor 350 or a Triumph Speed 400 — built under the Triumph–Bajaj partnership and priced for accessibility — ships with ABS because it must. The same machines exported to the United States are typically ABS-equipped too, since manufacturers have largely harmonised their global specifications to meet the strictest applicable standard rather than producing market-specific hardware. The absence of a US mandate therefore has less practical effect on current new-model production than it did a decade ago.
Where the gap remains consequential is at the used-vehicle market and at the low-cost import tier. A significant share of motorcycles operating on American roads, including in Texas, predate the European mandate and carry no ABS at all. Texas recorded over 500 motorcycle fatalities in a recent annual TxDOT reporting cycle, a figure that the VMT exposure rate — the deaths-per-mile metric NHTSA uses for cross-mode comparison — places well above the rate for enclosed vehicles. The NHTSA finding that motorcyclists die at approximately 24 times the per-mile rate of car occupants ↗ stands as the most-cited single statistic in domestic ABS rulemaking advocacy, and it is widely cited in petition submissions.
The structural obstacle in Washington is not scientific dispute. It is the notice-and-comment rulemaking process, which is lengthy under any administration, and the political weight that cost-of-regulation arguments carry in US federal agency proceedings. The Association des Constructeurs Européens de Motocycles and the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme supported the European mandate through their own technical submissions; no equivalent institutional pressure operates on NHTSA with the same consistency.
Brussels answered the evidence in 2016. Washington filed it.