Originally Posted by Racuerex
You would be stupid to race BMX without clipless, you only get half the power otherwise. I raced for seven years with clips, almost like second nature to me now, I'm not trying to be mr. hippy hipster and ride around without any brakes, but you will and can get just as hurt on a bike with or without clips, I have crashed plenty and if you have your clips setup right, any sideways motion on the clip and you would pop out. I used to hit doubles and triples and occasionally screw up and clip out mid air to save my ass. Once you learn it and set it up correctly, you would have to be dumb to scorpian a bike or stay cliped in while crashing.
Like I said, clipless wasn't really being used 10 years ago, at least where I was. I only saw a few select people at Nationals/Grands with them. I'm sure things are different today (actually looking again at getting a BMX bike, if I can find a nice shape mid-90's Haro Group 1 frameset to build) and I can understand the power aspect, but it really put me off to them.
Don't get me wrong, I've ridden them on one of my mountain bikes, and one of my road bikes, but I personally feel more comfortable with straps. This might be different if I had a fixed gear, but I ride a single speed conversion soooo...