Originally Posted by
Pop N Wood
I switched a drop bar road bike to bullhorns, ones that angled out and up a good way. I agree with everyone that the bike stability is unaffected, but with my hands a good half foot (or more) farther out, the bike's response to handle bar input changed dramatically. One inattentive twitch of the bars practically puts the bike down.
This is on a bike I've ridden for over 30 years.
Recumbent riders call this the tiller effect
Sort of becomes a semantic argument about what one means by the word "handling". Getting your grip points farther out from the headset unquestionably affects the bikes response. Is that handling?
Tiller effect is slightly different than what you're describing. The tiller effect is due the bars rotating around the fork axis, not the center axis of the bars. As the stem gets longer, your hands don't move in a circle.
The MTB community is increasingly going to very wide bars with the shortest possible stem to provide stability at both high and low speed.
Longer stems are generally better for stability, but narrow bars and weight forward are much worse. That's why TT bikes are notoriously twitchy. Small left/right weight shifts cause steering inputs, with a wider bar, those are decoupled.