Originally Posted by cheeseflavor
General questions for anyone on a recumbent, and just because I'm curious about them...
1) Are they as fast as a road bike?
2) How are they on hills?
3) What about visibility, both from your perspective and from the perspective of drivers? They seem to be a lot lower.
My take:
1) Depending on the bike, speeds range from 'comparable to a hybrid or city bike' to breathtakingly fast.
2) Generally slower on middle- or small-ring hills. Face it, you can't stand. OTOH the fast models don't lose speed as quickly at the bottom of a hill, so if the hill's short you can blast over the top and waste the uprights.
3) I ride mostly in rural conditions, and have had no problems with them seeing me on my lowracer. In the 'bad' column, I sometimes have trouble seeing over the grass at rural intersections, so I have to slow more while my upright-riding buddies just blast through. (My taller, 'standard' SWB recumbent is similar to a road bike in speed and has no problems with vision or visibility, in any environment.)