Originally Posted by
Trakhak
My guess is that the companies maintained the same designs even after bike shoes transitioned from thin, stretch-to-fit leather uppers to all-synthetic construction (resulting in shoes that retained their original shape forever) without changing the fundamental dimensions.
Greg LeMond raved about his discovery of Carnac shoes back in the mid-1980's. Those shoes were wide and tall across the toe box. They were unlovely to look at compared to sleek traditional shoes, though, so they didn't catch on among amateurs. "It is better to look good than to feel good."
I think that's partially right, but the problem is more widespread than bike shoes. The core of it is that the people who design and test shoes are people who like shoes, which is to say they are people for whom current shoe designs work well. If you like shoes and they fit you, you're more likely, especially as a child when your feet are growing fastest, to wear snug-fitting shoes that don't give your feet room to expand. Thus, even when a company tries to design a foot-shaped shoe, they're measuring mostly shoe-shaped feet.