Originally Posted by
slide13
We don't really use chip seal in Iowa or Wisconsin were I've lived most of my life. I moved to Seattle for a little while and was really surprised by the stuff. It's quite terrible to ride on and even driving on it is loud and annoying. It's everywhere out there though, that is probably the only part of Seattle I don't miss at all.
It provides
massive grip for car tires, though. It's nasty to ride a bicycle on, but once you get the loose gravel off of it, cars stick like crazy, which is easy to sell to people making the decisions when you tell them it will reduce the number of car accidents and the cost of road maintenance as compared to asphalt or concrete.
The thing about riding on it that bothers me is not flats, but the fact that it seems to waste a lot of energy, and there's often a lot of loose material on top of it that makes not crashing harder.