No he wasn't. If you read it as it is written, he is wrong. In fact, I feel it's insulting.
Conventional wisdom says to use both brakes at the same time. This is probably good advice for beginners, who have not yet learned to use their brakes skillfully, but if you don't graduate past this stage, you will never be able to stop as short safely as a cyclist who has learned to use the front brake by itself.
The fastest that you can stop any bike of normal wheelbase is to apply the front brake so hard that the rear wheel is just about to lift off the ground. In this situation, the rear wheel cannot contribute to stopping power, since it has no traction.
Brucey wrote:even if the rear is skidding, it is still helping to slow you down to some extent. If you are upright (rather than leant over) it doesn't cause a catastrophic loss of control either.
My guess is that most folk don't manage to get the front brake on 'by rote' (i.e. initially) to any more than 70-80% of what is required to lift the rear wheel off the ground fully. This being the case there is still 20-30% braking capacity possible in the rear wheel.
cheers
The last time I made an emergency stop, I did lift the rear wheel a bit. I went from 17 or 18 mph to stopped within a few metres. I don't know exact distance or speed. But I recall the lifting feeling & a moments' worry that I was going to go over the handlebars.
“In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.” ― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
Brucey wrote:SB was correct, but only if you can bring the front brake to the limit instantly. Most folk can't (or instinctively won't) do that, not within a fraction of a second anyway. Given that you should be aiming to stop in a little over 1s from about 20mph, that doesn't leave much time to get the front brake on very near the limit, and until you do that, the rear brake can contribute usefully to you slowing down.....
The utility cyclist wrote:Surely you would rather lock your back wheel up as opposed to your front brake, particularly with only one hand on the bars, having seen the pros panic brake when coming up to a bend at too fast a speed and/or poor line and lock a front wheel up it wasn't pretty, a back wheel that has locked up is far easier to control.
I'd rather not lock up my brakes at all but the rear wheel will lock up much sooner than the front with the resultant reduced braking. When I'm braking it is with the idea of slowing down or stopping, and the front brake will do that much more effectively, and in an emergency that could be critical. Also locking up the front wheel takes some doing and in a straight line is perfectly controllable.
The utility cyclist wrote:Surely you would rather lock your back wheel up as opposed to your front brake, particularly with only one hand on the bars, having seen the pros panic brake when coming up to a bend at too fast a speed and/or poor line and lock a front wheel up it wasn't pretty, a back wheel that has locked up is far easier to control.
I'd rather not lock up my brakes at all but the rear wheel will lock up much sooner than the front with the resultant reduced braking. When I'm braking it is with the idea of slowing down or stopping, and the front brake will do that much more effectively, and in an emergency that could be critical. Also locking up the front wheel takes some doing and in a straight line is perfectly controllable.
Odd that most people have much more success in achieving the former than the latter. Could be because real life doesnt grant us emergencies on good surfaces in straight lines.
The utility cyclist wrote:Surely you would rather lock your back wheel up as opposed to your front brake, particularly with only one hand on the bars, having seen the pros panic brake when coming up to a bend at too fast a speed and/or poor line and lock a front wheel up it wasn't pretty, a back wheel that has locked up is far easier to control.
I'd rather not lock up my brakes at all but the rear wheel will lock up much sooner than the front with the resultant reduced braking. When I'm braking it is with the idea of slowing down or stopping, and the front brake will do that much more effectively, and in an emergency that could be critical. Also locking up the front wheel takes some doing and in a straight line is perfectly controllable.
Of course we don't want to lock a wheel up but a back wheel locking up is easy/easier to control, locking a front wheel up is just as easy to do but a hell of a lot more of a problem to control you/the bike. Have watched the pros on many occasion grab a massive handful of brake, lock up the front and basically get chucked off/crash into stuff because they have lost control completely, a back wheel lock up does not usually end that way, you should try it for yourself and report back the results
I don't know why its like this, its the same in Canada.
We went there for our silver wedding about 15yrs ago, and among other places visited grouse Mountain, so I had to have a go at the mountain bike trail around the peak.
Now that really was a hoot!.
Fortunatley (as it turned out) it started with a tourist photo shot of me on the bike next to some totem poles, which my wife insisted on having. Why fortunate?
Well, that's where I found out the brakes were the wrong way around - so going a over t on the slope approaching the photo spot was a bit safer than finding out on another part of the circuit!
Anyway, as I picked my self up, I commented that the brakes were different to the UK - the other way around! "Gee" said the tour guide "All the brits do that, I wondered why - no-one has mentioned that before"!
Needless to say I was super careful to keep my hand away from the left-hand lever and my fingers on the right-hand lever on what was a very enjoyable trip - I was the only one on that session so it was all at my speed (slow - well I was in my 50's at the time!) but we still went further than if he'd had to wait for a group to assemble at the various stopping points. The views from the tracks were fantastic.
If you do go there, its well worth having a go.
Brompton, Condor Heritage, creaky joints and thinning white (formerly grey) hair ""You know you're getting old when it's easier to ride a bike than to get on and off it" - quote from observant jogger !
Debs wrote:I don't know how it came to be but over the years the motorcycle industry has more or less standardised the front brake lever for right hand.
I have a feeling this was standardised by a regulation from the USA DoT sometime in the late 1960s. The size and wealth of the USA market ensured that it became the norm worldwide.
I'm another fan of left-to-front (on UK roads). I favour front braking quite heavily. By coincidence, the other weekend I was aware that my front blocks were getting a bit worn, and used the back more to nurse them home. I kept getting lock-ups - and I'm used to all the tricks, such as sliding your weight backwards.
Front-wheel skids are relatively unlikely unless you brake while leaning (a big no-no), or hit gravel, ice, oil or similar. The front gives far more control than the back. Obviously it's true that front-wheel skids are much more serious, but much less likely, which makes it hard to weigh the two risks against each other.
Never ever ever locked up the front wheel on a normal road. .
You're not squeezing the lever hard enough
Seriously I think a lot of cyclists are unaware of just how hard you can brake with the front brake. I think it might go back to childhood for many who were warned that they would go over the bars if they braked hard with the front brake. When I had a bike shop I had one customer who used to wear out rear brake blocks at an alarming rate but never the front ones. I tried to convince him to use the front brake but without success.
I have a lot of experience of motorcycling as well as cycling, and this may be partly why I'm confident braking hard with the front brake. However it can't be over-stressed that the front brake is the one that wil stop you the most quickly and therefore might well save your life.
