Originally Posted by PaulRivers

Thanks for adding your experience. :-)



Ah, well my articles were rather long, I wrote this about it -
They also have a great amount of variety in the pedals you can get - you can get standard 2 sided pedals, "campus" pedals with a cleat on one side and a flat pedal on the other for riding with or without cleats (personally I don't like them as this means looking down every time you put your foot on the pedal to make sure the right side is up, and maybe having to flip it with your foot. Some people really like them though)

I deliberately kept it brief because I hadn't wanted to get into a debate with the "pro campus pedal" crowd here on the forums. I've used this style of pedal for over a year and I never grew to like them. I feel like they're the worst of both worlds. You're sitting at an intersection waiting for a light, and finally it's your turn to go. You coast into the intersection and - have to look down at your pedal to clip in? This is the absolute worst and most dangerous time to look away from the road. That's why I have such a strong dislike of them. You don't have to do this with purely flat pedals, or with 2 sided clipless at all - with both you don't have to look down at intersection to get your foot on the pedal (with practice). Some people say you get used to them - all I can say is that in a year of using them, I never did. And I felt like any gains I got from clipless were negated by the time I spend screwing around with clipping in and out - I like clipless, but you don't gain *that* much time (in my opinion) by using them versus using a good pair of flat pedals. I rather felt like using campus pedals was much ado about nothing - they were more hassle than flat pedals, but required enough extra time to clip in and out that you didn't gain any real speed, so all I gained was extra hassle. If I was in a particular situation - where when I used clipless I never or almost never had to stop at lights and signs - it might be worth it, but that's about it in my opinion.

I've also seen several other posters who have tried and used campus pedals have a similar sentiment, from people who almost got hit by a car because they weren't looking at traffic, to other people who just felt they were to big of a pain with very little benefit. I know I'm not alone in my opinion.

To take the other side, there are many people who say that they really like them. All road pedals except Speedplays are 1 sided, and really it's obviously not like people using road pedals are somehow getting mowed down at intersections at a higher rate (well not from their pedals at least). Obviously people do use 1 sided pedals all the time without terrible catastrophic results or something.

I dunno, I didn't want to get into one of those long-winded debates. I don't like them. The fact that there's several different kinds of campus pedals available suggests that they are relatively popular though. So...who knows.