Originally Posted by
GhostRider62
Even Sheldon Brown's site says disc brakes can be grabby.
Why so much faster to stop? 1) 55 km/h is about 15 m/sec. 2) Rim brakes lack the immediacy of hydraulic disc brakes. 3) There is also a transient delay to heat the rim whereas a disc immediate.
The difference is like comparing analog to digital. On/Off light switch to a dimmer. They both get you to full brightness, one just takes a bit longer ( some hundreds of millisecond)
The range of hand force required is higher with rim brake and the braking force is lower, so the sensitivity is higher. Thus, easier to modulate. I don't care what idiotic blogs and articles say.
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/disc-brakes.html
I agree that rim brakes are slower to respond to your input. Especially in the wet as demonstrated in the video.
Your thoughts on brake modulation are interesting. So you have equated higher hand force = easier modulation. But modulation really comes down to lever travel (resolution) and the consistency of the brake force response in relation to lever travel. Weighting of the lever is a personal preference and you could argue that they are set up too light, but that's just how most people prefer them.
I come from an mtb background so I'm used to 1 finger braking with decent modulation. You just have to learn not to grab the brakes too hard initially, which is unfortunately what rim brakes teach you to do!