Originally Posted by
habilis
On a fixed gear bike, crank length can make the difference between safely negotiating a corner or being thrown because of a pedal striking the pavement.
Unless you have a really, REALLY low Bottom bracket, that is not going to happen with any reasonably modern road pedal.
I run 172.5 on my fixed gear road bike and don't even come close to hitting the pavement.
I run 170 on my track bike and have only bumped the track at walking speed on the bank. You just kinda thunk through it. A bit of a surprise the first time, after that, no big deal. It's a 44 degree bank at Frisco though. It's really hard to lean a road bike over to 44 degrees.