Originally Posted by
mikeinroch
I would think (and more experienced commuters than me have mentioned this) road tires on a crushed-stone trail would lead to a lot of flats. Some of those little bits of gravel are shaped like arrowheads and they will work their way through the tread and pop the tube. I've gotten flats on my road bike this way (from a stone I picked up on our relatively clean roads) and on my mtb from riding on the MUP (through a WTB Slickasaurus 1.5" tire). Fairly rare on the mtb, but I would think a thinner high-pressure road tire would suffer a lot of flats.
Also, it seems like emergency braking would be more of an issue on a road bike, though you usually don't need to stop that fast on the MUP (except when dogs on retractable leashes dart across the entire path).
This might sound counter intuitive, and maybe it's just bad luck, but I always seem to get MORE flats on thicker tires than I do on thinner ones. I suspect some of that is that I'm probably more careful with my road bikes. Logic would certainly seem to say you'd be right, but I've experienced the opposite.
I'm not sure why you'd think roadie brakes would be compromised...the two pivot side pulls I have on my Merlin, De Rosa and Merckx are all positively teeth breakers. The single pivots on my Raleigh Pro are substantially weaker.