Originally Posted by treechunk
Given the same skills, a rider with a brake will be able to ride faster, as they can afford to leave less margin of error.
And I doubt that. Now you are talking about mental aspects (feelings).
Having a smaller margin of error does not
physically force one to ride slow.
Having a smaller margin of error might make the rider feel insecure and cause him/her to rider slower, but that has nothing to do with physics, but depends on the individual riders mental attitude. Physics doesn't care about error margins.
If I ride fast and then slam on my brakes and then get back up to speed I am about as fast as the person that rides fast slows down for a longer perdiod of time and acellerates again without slamming on the brake. As I said it averages out.