Originally Posted by
pdlamb
Perhaps true. But IIRC the average European bike commute is 3 km (don't remember if that was round trip or one way). The last 15 years of my bike commute was 10 miles one way (or more, depending on route). A "road bike" setup surely did help on windy days, and I never had any safety or sight line issues.
Better still would have been flat bars plus aero bars.
The last 20 years of my commuting consisted of 4 miles in Baltimore followed by a train ride followed by 3 miles in DC in the morning and the reverse in the afternoon. Drops for the first 10 years, flat bars plus aero for the last 10 years. (As we used to say when I was a kid, "Don't knock it if you haven't tried it.")