Ever lost your brakes !

[PDQ Mobile]

I have been cycling for over fifty years and only once had a brake fail completely. That was an overheated hydraulic disc brake. My cable operated brakes have never failed. Partly luck, no doubt, but also perhaps the fact that I never ignore something feeling wrong with a brake. If a cable frays you get some warning, sometimes in the form of the brake rubbing after release of the lever, as the frayed cable has too much friction for the springs to overcome. Similar effect from a damaged outer. So don't ignore little feelings that something is not quite right. Get off and have a look at those cables. It takes a minute or so to do a quick check that will put your mind at rest or save you from a trip in an ambulance.

So that's two for hydraulics and the rest are cable operated?
Though I guess any brake can be made to overheat on really long steep full loaded descent.

Good technique still has a role to play?

[Tigerbiten]

Unless I am mistaken only one full failure of hydraulic (tigerbiten page 1; and one only brake) is reported here?
All the rest are cable operated brakes.

My hydraulic failure was caused by the fact I was using them on a recumbent trike.
On the trike, the brake lever points up.
This makes the lever body above the piston seal a good dust/grit trap.
Dust/grit + rainwater = grinding paste which destroys the piston seal after time.
If the lever is normally set horizontal, this is much less likely to happen .
Plus I'm running twin calipers off one lever therefore twice the force on the main piston seal.
Once I put a dust cover over the lever/brake body, I've not had one fail like that ......

[Phileas]

The other scary braking problem I used to get before I had discs was following a cold spell when a black paste sometimes appeared on the rims which could lead to the unnerving situation of approaching a junction going downhill where the bike continued at the same speed however hard I pulled on the lever.

[drossall]

This of course is why we are required to have two independent braking systems. I like Brucey's idea of replacing front and rear cables on different occasions (and therefore from different batches).

A friend once had a self-inflicted failure, when young and quite inexperienced. He fitted some of those old, slide-in pads for Weinmann-type sidepulls, and put the shoes back in the wrong way round (with the open ends, where you slide the pads in, pointing forwards). Next time he put the brakes on hard, the pads duly pinged off up the road He ended up riding home with bits of wood wedged into the shoes as make-shift pads, as I don't think the proper ones were ever found.

I guess that type of incident is why shoes now tend to be sealed at both ends, even if it's a pain to fit new pads.

[Brucey]

So that's two for hydraulics and the rest are cable operated?....

well, do bear in mind that maybe 1% of all bicycle brakes are hydraulic, and of those a similarly small fraction are Maguras.

FWIW I have yet to own a hydraulic system of any kind (including ones in cars, motorcycles, plant tools etc) that didn't (regardless of age or maintenance regime) either manifest some weird behaviour that I didn't like under certain conditions and/or actually fail in some way.

There are a few situations where I think that on bicycles it is worth the effort/consequences and hydraulics are a good choice. But for the average user, I think that cable brakes are easier to live with; easier to maintain, easier to repair, easier to diagnose faults with. I know of several LBSs where they don't like selling bikes with hydraulic brakes, not because they can't work on them, but because they cannot work on them in a cost-effective fashion. I know of others where most kinds of fault are dealt with in one way; they just chuck the lot in the bin and fit a new set. They do this because at their hourly rate they soon end up with a more expensive repair if they actually try to fix them, and the outcome is never 100% certain as soon as you start messing about with seals and so forth.

...... Plus I'm running twin calipers off one lever therefore twice the force on the main piston seal.....

That arrangement should result in the same pressure, but twice as much travel in the MC, vs having two separate MCs one for each brake caliper. If the pressure in the system were doubled somehow, the brakes would come on twice as hard.

cheers

[pwa]

I have been cycling for over fifty years and only once had a brake fail completely. That was an overheated hydraulic disc brake. My cable operated brakes have never failed. Partly luck, no doubt, but also perhaps the fact that I never ignore something feeling wrong with a brake. If a cable frays you get some warning, sometimes in the form of the brake rubbing after release of the lever, as the frayed cable has too much friction for the springs to overcome. Similar effect from a damaged outer. So don't ignore little feelings that something is not quite right. Get off and have a look at those cables. It takes a minute or so to do a quick check that will put your mind at rest or save you from a trip in an ambulance.

So that's two for hydraulics and the rest are cable operated?
Though I guess any brake can be made to overheat on really long steep full loaded descent.

Good technique still has a role to play?

My hydraulic brake failure was on a tandem, so the brake had more work to do than on a solo bike. Very steep, twisty single track descent, so no scope for just letting the speed build up. And I was alternating between the three brakes on the bike. Presumably the fluid boiled and when I pulled on the brake lever there was no braking at all. Fortunately the tandem also had two sets of XTR vee brakes, which of course worked perfectly. In fairness to Thorn, who made the tandem, they did warn that hydraulic disc brakes can do this.

[The utility cyclist]

Bowden cables are quite fragile, likewise the cable clamps can easily loosen

How do cable clamps loosen? Mine never have and I don’t see what would cause them to. I use well designed hardware to minimise this sort of risk.

I use a torque wrench when fitting new cables to ensure the clamp is neither too loose nor tight enough to crush the cable and damage strands or damage the M6 fixing bolt. And after setting the cable tension I pull the lever right back to the handlebar ten times per Shimano’s instructions. This test is violent but reassuring.

I’ve never heard of nipples being plucked from cables, although the possibility has exercised my imagination. JohnW’s terrifying story won’t help with that.

In contrast to my careful choice of brakes, set-up, and maintenance, almost every bicycle I see around Paris has brakes that wouldn’t make me happy. The problems are too many to list and range from minor to shocking, but suffice to say it is the norm for bicycle brakes to be badly fitted, maintained, and even used. I ride with people who don’t even know to twist the barrel adjuster as the pads wear. One was reluctant to let me make that adjustment for him, saying he was taking the bicycle into the shop next week anyway! A huge number of the roadies at Longchamp ride with their quick-release permanently open.

You said they have to be fail safe and yet even flawed they produce so few serious incidents as to be not newsworthy.

Given my observations above, I have no doubt that bad bicycle brakes have contributed to accidents where that hasn’t been recognised.

Again, a few incidents in billions of journeys, how many deaths attributed to failed brakes, say in the last 10 years to make it easier for you or Cyril Haearn to research it? I can tell you that none of the deaths on UK roads in the last 2 years had anything to do with failed brakes on a bike.
Failed brakes are really not a massive issue because they rarely fail at all and the vast majority either do some maintanence to prevent it or get someone else or they are going relatively slowly they can stop/slow to avoid incident. Experienced riders who have a brake fail whilst going at a higher speed seem to be able to get themselves out of trouble.

This call for "fail-safe" brakes is just silly, there never can be nor should there because there's simply no need for it as the incidents of a serious nature ending in death or SI are are tiny tiny fraction of all incidents, I don't recall a cycling death in the UK due to it.
We've had a few people on this forum out of thousands of forum members saying they've had one incident and that now constitutes a problem in some people's eyes, out of how many thousands, tens of thousands of journeys for that individual, and that just those that have 'lost their brakes'
I've never 'lost my brakes', I'd say those that have are in the minority by a long way.
Mountain out of a molehill.

[Cyril Haearn]

@ Cyril Haearn
How many incidents out of billions of journeys? You said they have to be fail safe and yet even flawed they produce so few serious incidents as to be not newsworthy.
people check their brakes and even when brakes fail which is extremely rare the vast majority can deal with it or are not seriously hurt, I'm sure there are incidents involving serious injury even death but the numbers are infinitesimal or we'd be hearing about it. I was curious as to why you reckoned brakes needed to be absolutely safe 100% of the time (fail safe) and/or in the style of train brakes based on what we know about how little brake failure is having a detrimental affect on cycling safety.

There are dozens and dozens of posts about this in a few hours from maybe a few hundred users, seems to be a lot of interest. I have no statistics, do you?
(Did just read that the police caught two speeders last week, one wonders how many got away? )

I think 100% should be the goal just like in manufacturing or *road safety* in general, maybe through redundancy, my cycles each have two types of brake

Modern trains have air brakes, if pressure is lost the brakes are applied

I am thinking of starting a poll, wonder what the question/choices might be..

[andrew_s]

Personally, my only brake failures have been due to failing the reset the caliper release lever after having the wheel out.

However, this thread (one of quite a few at the time) details a problem with the then current Tektro Lyra cable disc brakes failing. See final post for a crashee who had the sense to deliberately crash, rather than carry on going faster and faster, as the lass on the Winnats did.
If the brake actuating arm moved too far, the cam that moved the pad would "go over the top", you'd get a bit of a click, and there'd be no braking until you'd let go of the lever and pulled again, and, of course, the same happened next time, unless you realised what was going on and didn't brake so hard.
As well as poor design, it was partly due to bad instructions leading to people used to rim brakes trying to adjust for pad wear by using the cable adjuster, and it was particularly common on the Genesis Day 01, where they'd fitted a thinner Shimano disc rather than the Tektro disc for some reason.

[drossall]

This call for "fail-safe" brakes is just silly...

Not entirely. The context was that devices for giving some slack to allow wheels to be removed should be fail-safe. The one described is. Fail-safe means fail-to-safe, not failure-proof.

Designing such devices such that using the brakes causes them to be reset to normal position is perfectly sensible fail-safe practice.

[Cyril Haearn]

Personally, my only brake failures have been due to failing the reset the caliper release lever after having the wheel out.

However, this thread (one of quite a few at the time) details a problem with the then current Tektro Lyra cable disc brakes failing. See final post for a crashee who had the sense to deliberately crash, rather than carry on going faster and faster, as the lass on the Winnats did.
If the brake actuating arm moved too far, the cam that moved the pad would "go over the top", you'd get a bit of a click, and there'd be no braking until you'd let go of the lever and pulled again, and, of course, the same happened next time, unless you realised what was going on and didn't brake so hard.
As well as poor design, it was partly due to bad instructions leading to people used to rim brakes trying to adjust for pad wear by using the cable adjuster, and it was particularly common on the Genesis Day 01, where they'd fitted a thinner Shimano disc rather than the Tektro disc for some reason.

Even worse - what if the brakes suddenly lock going downhill at speed?

I do wish the laws of physics could be changed so that I could cycle uphill without having to go back down again

[MikeF]

I've never 'lost my brakes', I'd say those that have are in the minority by a long way.

I'm one of that minority - although I've not had an injury as a result. Having another brake apart from the front one is probably close enough to fail safe (but not guaranteed), although maybe not good enough in an emergency.

[andrew_s]

Riding fixed is very safe
My Gillott has two rim brakes that are never used

In Wales too?

I tried relying on leg braking going down a 1 in 6 hill one time. It didn't work.

I gained more speed as the pedals were going past vertical than I could scrub off when they were horizontal, and as I went faster, leg braking became less effective. After not very long, I was going fast enough that my legs flapping up and down made the back wheel bounce (not much weight on it on a 1 in 6), every time it lifted it stopped going round, and skidded as it landed. Grabbing the rim brakes just unweighted the back wheel more and gave more bounce. Fortunately the bottom of the hill arrived before I crashed.

There's a reason that the CTC used to put "cyclists dismount" signs at the top of steep hills.
(there are still a few about if you keep your eyes open)

[PDQ Mobile]

So that's two for hydraulics and the rest are cable operated?....

well, do bear in mind that maybe 1% of all bicycle brakes are hydraulic, and of those a similarly small fraction are Maguras.

FWIW I have yet to own a hydraulic system of any kind (including ones in cars, motorcycles, plant tools etc) that didn't (regardless of age or maintenance regime) either manifest some weird behaviour that I didn't like under certain conditions and/or actually fail in some way.

The point about only a small percentage is valid.

I am less convinced by the weird behaviour one though.

Most hydraulic systems I own (bicycle,automotive and plant) are remarkarkable for their reliability and durability.
And their ability to function well with minimal maintenance under adverse conditions. Wet and dirt.
Indeed many of the cable type failures on here suggest that the owners were conscientious about maintenance rather than those failures occurring on some poor neglected rusted hack bike.
Without trying to be controversial (I have a cable braked bike too) the two examples on here of hydraulic failure are one of water/dirt ingress because of unconventional mounting now cured by added protection.
And a second one of the fluid boiling on a tandem ((front?) disc on a long hard descent where good technique must play a role?

There is a separate thread about Magura rim brakes but many users found them, as I have done (on two second hand and old sets), to be super reliable, powerful and very low maintenance.

[ThePinkOne]

A good reason for using a back-pedal brake and having several different types of brake

Really, cycle brakes should be fail-safe like on trains

I seem to remember reading about the iam *advanced motorist* # test, one should test the brakes just after moving off, seems a good habit to get into when cycling too

# is that a contradiction in terms?

Trains also have a stringent maintenance regime, plus the Driver does a "running brake test" as soon as possible* after setting off on a new diagram.

I can think of several ways the brakes on a train could fail, either through lack of maintenance or (thinking freight wagons) if the brake rigging freezes- there was an incident in Scotland a few years ago where that happened. "Fail safe" has limits......

Reading the threads here, it seems that good maintenance and a running brake test would have prevented most of them if not all

*There are criteria, is usually done when running under greens and not on a steeply rising gradient if there is a possibility of stalling if lose momentum.

TPO