Plenty of people riding around on bikes with just a coaster brake and nothing in front. Fixed gears offer a lot more modulation and control than a coaster brake.
On slow bikes, cruisers and uprights. The gearing and body positioning on Deshi's bike wanna go fast, can easily go faster than any cruiser or dutch granny bike.
Originally Posted by
Deshi
If you bothered to read my earlier post, you would know that there is no where to put a brake on this bike. Even if I wanted to, I could not.
Yet, despite it's incompatibility with a brake, you still choose this bike as your commuter, to ride it on the road, assumedly in traffic. Couldn't find a brake-compatible fixie in your town?
I have my reasons for riding this bike. There is no reason in trying to explain this to you because you are so narrow minded in thinking every person that rides a track bike is a hipster wannabe fashionista.
Actually, I assume that some people ride track bikes because they race them, like they're designed and built to be, in a velodrome. Others, I assume, simply enjoy riding a fast bike with a fixed gear drivetrain, regardless of whether they're currently "hip". I only assume that people who ride brakeless in traffic are trend-chasing hipsters.
Fixed gear = simple, practical, enjoyable cycling style that happens to be trendy right now. Brakeless = closed-course specific race cycling style that happens to be trendy right now.
Beyond its trendiness, the only explanations I've ever heard for running brakeless are that it "looks cleaner" (form over function, fashion above sense), or that it "heightens awareness", presumably through increased risk (and just think what levels of awareness are achievable by high speed sidewalk cyclists riding counterflow to traffic, what Zen masters of cycling they must be).
Oh, and "this bike won't take a brake." Which is just silly, since you could simply choose a different bike to ride in traffic, instead of marrying yourself to one ill-designed for it.