Indian Announces Removal of Brake Throttle Override

Today, Indian Motorcycle Product Director, Gary Gray, told us that, because of feedback from journalists and the riding public, effective immediately, the Brake Throttle Override (BTO) system developed to prevent unintended acceleration in its ride-by-wire throttle system will not be installed on any of the 2015 Indian models. Additionally, owners of a current Indian who wish to have the BTO disabled on their motorcycle can simply take it to an Indian dealer to have its ECU flashed with the new software.

Although the BTO has been present on all Indian models since their release last year, we first noticed its effects on a group ride at the Roadmaster’s introduction. In short, if a brake was applied for a period of time in which the throttle was also open, the system would cut in and disable the throttle which led to the two surprising incidents we mentioned in the latter part of our review. Since all manual transmission motorcycles already have a foolproof means of cutting power to the rear wheel in the clutch, we were concerned that the BTO was a technological solution that had the potential to cause more problems than it would prevent.

This type of immediate response from a manufacturer is, frankly, surprising. However, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised since this is the same company that produced an all-new motorcycle – including the engine – in just 27 months. Still, we are impressed with the unambiguous steps taken by Indian to rectify this issue in such a short time.

By Evans Brasfield