Originally Posted by livedarklions

Sorry, but this is all kinds of wrong because average speed of UCI riders is an absurd measure of innovation effectiveness. There were several innovations in the design of bikes that increased speed that were specifically banned by the UCI. The limits on speed are almost entirely dictated by two different factors -- the power of the motor (which really can't be redesigned without genetic engineering or PED) and wind resistance. The latter is readily addressable as an engineering matter through posture changes and/or cowling, but the UCI has determined that certain advances in those (y'know, the ones that actually work) are out of bounds for safety or other reasons. I'm not here to argue about whether UCI should have done this, but to point out that UCI has essentially frozen the basic technology at a certain point, leaving engineering to be limited to redesigning things that can only have very marginal effects on speed.

Taking this out of the racing perspective, the big advances, such as they are, in the area of consumer bike have really been in the ability to produce frames in all sorts of shapes, making a broader range of cycling activity accessible to the general public. Again, if we use speed as the measure of innovation, this will look terrible, but that's because the speed limitations could only be seriously overcome by putting riders inside of cowling or putting them on very low-profile recumbent bikes, and people aren't buying that stuff for practical reasons.

Sloping frames are practical, btw, because the materials have advanced to the point that the loss in structural strength caused by the shape is too small to matter. It's about fit and posture.

I tend to agree that disc brakes on road bikes are really a solution in search of a problem, but consumers seem to like them, so what do I know?