pjclinch wrote:In practice, you get good with what you're used to.
When we adopted our son he came with a wee BSO with (by my standards) terrible brakes. But he knew what they'd do and did okay. Christmas rolled around and an Islabikes Beinn 20 appeared c/o Santa with good quality V-brakes. I don't think I've ever heard anyone seriously suggest Isla make rubbish or V-brakes aren't a viable braking technology, but even though on his first ride I cautioned him that the brakes would be a lot more powerful, about 30 seconds later he went over the bars having locked the front wheel...
You can't simply remove the human in charge of the brakes when assessing braking performance on a bike.
Pete.
I've adjusted my grandsons' brakes so as not to have this issue, I would have thought it common sense in all honesty not to put children/inexperienced into significantly unfamiliar situations and mechanical operations that are vastly different to previous, that's just asking for trouble, and yours amongst many are a prime example of that that end up with a bad outcome.
Small increments of change til they get used to things, more so when they are young and have much less ability to grasp boundaries/limits, letting them make mistakes but in a way that is more often than not going to be less pronounced. This is why helmets are such a bad thing for kids (and indeed racing/competitive types), they feel more protected and then go and do more dangerous/riskier stuff and so end up coming a cropper, often followed by helmet saved their lives etc yet the evidence of riding without helmets suggests that that's simply not true, or we'd have thousands of dead child cyclists, tens of thousands of serious injuries to children from cycling and all the other groups of people riding bikes, which just didn't happen.