Oh, I understand the need for clipless on a fixie, but these are two things that put together with city traffic would scare me as I would never ride a fixie in traffic, plus clipless pedals = scary. Not putting it down, it's just something I would not have the guts to do.

Front wheel skidded sideways? I bet this happened fast! You'd most likely still fall clipped or not. When it happened once to me I went down so fast I still had hands on bars and I bet at least one foot on a pedal when I was wondering WTF just happened. I was lucky: I ended up with bruise on a shoulder, a bump on a head and cracked helmet - one of few events that made me a believer in helmets... and studded tires, BTW :D

Obviously the pedals' fault:

Yes, and I assure you - for 99% of us, this would *not* be the end of the post, lol -

I agree with you, electrik, that the benefits of clipless pedals are often oversold -- by bike shops who have products to move, and by well-intentioned cyclists who try to justify their fondness for them by making arguments that overgeneralize. I did this myself, foisting them on my poor wife, who tried them a few times and decided that cycling wasn't for her -- until we swapped them out for platforms. Sweet relief!

But scare stories like the one you linked to don't help much, since of course clipless pedals aren't foolproof. They cause people to fall and hurt themselves. I have the hardware in my elbow & humerus to prove it. But that isn't so much an argument against clipless pedals as it is an argument against any activity that entails risk, such as cycling.

OP, here are my dogmatic two cents. You can live with clipless pedals, and you can live without them. You can tailor your riding style on hills, whichever way you choose. Beware of arguments for the manifest superiority of one over the other. Ride what feels good and live with the risk.

Elaborate



:D

In part your sarcasm is just wrong. Riding clipped in increased the risk and penalty for him of not being able to clip out. So, instead people blame the rider for making a mistake, nice. You can't ignore the clipless pedal has actually played a key part in that accident and i'm sure that fact isn't lost on most people.

I'm not really sure it is a frivolous "scare" story, I just wanted to post something that shows the risk of being clipped in during a crash. Best case it is just skinned hands and knees at a red light.

When I figure out what "pop up into a manual" means - maybe I can figure out whether the clipless pedals were completely incidental to the story or not, lol.

Tibia or fibula?

Yes, you fall faster on ice, because you don't fall "over" - the bikes skids out from under you and you drop straight down.

See I read that as showing the risk of being clipped in while popping a wheelie. Or perhaps the risk of popping a wheelie. But if you want to go on and claim the guy's pedals "played a key part," you should probably explain why mountain bikers use super-scary clipless pedals at all.

Sorry but I really don't think you understand the issue here which explains your simplistic response to the problem. I know my route and know it well, the variable here is my load and the way I feel when i ride that route. Sometimes I am cycling back from work with extra gear and sometimes after a joy ride. Depending on which ride it is and what time of the day it is my body might respond differently. So I don't use the same gear for the same part of the route all the time. I sort of let my body tell me what the right one is at the time.

You sound like an experienced cyclist so maybe this reasoning is just unfathomable to you. Maybe once i am half as experienced as you are I will know my body much better so that I can predict which gear it wants me to be in.

I appreciate everyone's response. I just like to emphasize that this really happened to me once. I really don't think it had anything to do with me not switching gears in the right moment or not. I believe these kind of things just happen on bikes once in a blue moon but when they do being in a clipless is just really scary IMHO. I am not sure what I am going to do for now, as I say i have hybrid SPDs so I might use the platform side on the uphills for now or work furhter on my technique.

Cheers,
Jerry

I don't think he's implying that you should know which gear you'll be in every step of the way, only that you'd know where the steepness of the inclines change.

There's one hill on my summer group ride that's just a killer. I quickly get into my granny gear as it starts out really steep but then the incline becomes more gradual so I can gradually shift up.

I think what other people have suggested is to ride up that hill in a lower gear than you really need to and downshift well before it becomes really difficult to pedal. That way you're not putting so much pressure on your drive train, and more importantly, not as much pressure on your knees.

I would bet it was mostly because it carried over from their road riding days. As to explaining why he was riding clipless that isn't my responsibility and anyways I don't see you saying his pedals didn't play a key role. Was i wrong to interpret when you wrote "blame the pedals" as glibness about the rider being an idiot? Because despite your sarcasm it seems to me that you're reluctantly on board with the idea that riding clipless ups the penalty and risk of injury when you fail to clip-out.

Yes, you are wrong. Clipless pedals aren't dangerous, and the fact that some guy popped a wheelie and busted his foot up doesn't mean much to me. If the OP does a lot of manuals maybe he should watch out.

No, you are wrong!

edit: oh wait, people probably want an explanation... but i thought i would just respond in kind to lambo. hah!

Oh ok.

http://i.123g.us/c/congrats_onothero...ard/102760.gif

OP, refrain from popping wheelies and you'll be fine.

OP should be aware that you get what you pay for when it comes to many things and they probably should include lambo's advice in that category!

edit: i would like to add, what would life be without wheelies?? we could end up a bunch of super serious road racers.. lol

Had a similar experience and decided to get back on the horse. Fear is more the perception of danger than the reality. Have fallen a couple times since w/no ill effects other than a skinned knee and dented pride. :p

good thing that wheelie story was free. i'll be sure to be oh-so-super-scared next time i clip in.

I switched to multi release SPD cleats and they helped a lot with those "Oh $hit I'm falling and still clipped in" moments. You can yank out of them with very little rotation in a panic situation. On the down side, sometimes they unclip unexpectedly, but that hasn't been a problem for me because I'm instantly aware of it and clip right back in. I don't think I'd still be commuting with clipless pedals if I were still using the standard SPD cleats.

Now, I've had the *exact* opposite happen to me several times (well at least twice). I commute year round with clipless pedals, been using them exclusivley on all my bikes since '94 (and I've been a semi-serious rider since '74). My experience has been that when Winter conditions pitch my bike suddenly and unexpectedly out from under me I have released automatically and instantly without even (consciously) trying to release. I think this is one of the advantages of clipless pedals; a sudden and unexpected lateral movement of the bike will *cause* you to unclip as your heels will be "surprised" by the movement, with their inertia causing a release angle to occur.

Clipless pedals are truly a gift offering all of us safety and efficiency.

Safety. When I switched to clipless, I came from old-school toe-clips, straps, and cleats. For those not nearly 50, there are probably many who do not remember or have ever known the original cleats. They were made out of plastic, aluminum, or steel and can be easily thought of as a speed bump with a slot cut across the crest mounted upside-down to the bottom of your stiff-soled racing shoe. In the early days you needed to ride your uncleated shoes for a little while so the pedals left lines in your shoes over which your local shoemaker would then mount the cleats with the slot right over your wear line in the shoe.

The slot locked down over the trailing edge of your pedal and your toeclips and tightened straps kept the slot from rising above pedal edge. Mostly. In reality, if you had run-of-the-mill leather toe straps that you could stretch *UP* in an emergency and get the slot above the pedal edge, you could still pull out. If you were serious about efficiency, you got Alfredo Binda straps or Afredo Binda Extra straps (two straps of leather sandwiching a nearly unstretchable nylon layer) which couldn't be stretched for an early exit nor for lost power pulling up. If you knew some real racers you even learned how to route your straps out the outboard back pedal slot so that your Binda straps hugged the contour of your foot. The bottom line was that cleats, good straps, good routing and proper buckle routing (your straps should point up so can pull them tight) meant you were not every going to exit that pedal unless you released it manually with a flick of your index finger or you or somebody else released it for you after a fall.

The lost talents of this era are two-fold:
1. Any stopping or emergency maneuver required that you to also incorporate an emergency releasing strategy. Quite simply, your feet weren't coming out if you couldn't get your finger down to your straps.
2. You practiced a releasing(and tightening) strategy over and over and over again in your daily travels. You thought about it all the time.

I remember a particular ride in these pedals when I got a little lazy. I was on a downgrade, approaching a red light, very little shoulder. I *assumed* the light would change as I stayed in a pretty high gear(due to the downgrade) while I passed, very slowly, most of the cars waiting for the light. I got to the first car in line and the light hadn't changed and I was still in a very high gear and, surprise, there was no pavement left for me to pass or pull next to the first car in line. I was clipped in and knew there was no chance of releasing in time at such a slow speed. I had to ride off the roadway (wooded downgrade to my right) and power a high gear through some sand/soil while dropping about 6 inches below the blacktop. Somehow I made it through and got back up to the roadway as the light changed.

My opinion is the only safety issue with clipless is owning your release and realizing that they are different than toe clips. If you only know toeclips with uncleated shoes you only know one release, pulling straight back. That is about the only release that will *NOT* work with clipless pedals. You can twist your heel in, you can twist your heel out, but you *CAN'T* release pulling straight back. From where I come from, I never knew pulling straight back as a release, so that's where I might differ with a good many.

Efficiency. This has to do with the above note on not being able to release pulling straight back. Everybody pushes down on pedals. Some of us pull up on pedals (clipless and toe-clipped and power-strapped), but the real efficiency advantage of clipless over toeclips (sans old school cleats) is that you can pull back. For those of you who always, often, or occasionally ride clipless, try this: While you're pedaling up a hill at a comfortable speed and cadence, let this thought go through your mind: "I'm pulling up, I'm pushing down. Let's see what happens when I add pushing forward "over-the-top" (12PM) and pulling back(6PM). Flat pedals give you the dominant down-stroke, Toeclips and Clipless both give you the up-stroke, but only clipless and old-school toeclips with cleats, and I guess Power-Straps as well, allow you to pull back through 6PM.

One last comment. I think a lot of falls that are blamed on clipless pedals actually have to do with clipless riders who are attempting to "pull out of toe clips", which of course won't work. Own your release. Heel in, Heel out. Pick one.

Jesus, this is long. Apologies, maybe nobody will read it. Oh well.

Yes, awful things... and quite unsafe. Toe-straps were worse, especially off-road.. it was a very violent removal of foot from pedal if you could even jerk your foot out. Of course the new pedals are much better, but they are still not as safe as platforms.

So having said that, I will still posit that platforms are the safest pedal type for the majority of applications and riders. Even if i am to be mocked by small people who have never had a serious accident because they couldn't clip out fast enough or had to watch a beginner leave the sport or never push their limits because they are being "kicked off the horse" needlessly by their clipless pedals.

I love my SPD clip-less on all my bikes, 12spd road bike, fixed gear and cargo bike. I hate hopping on a bike with flat pedals.

I've fallen 2 times in the last 3500 miles. Both times I was doing stupid stuff on the fixed gear. The falls had nothing to do with not being able to unclip. My feet are trained to unclip when in doubt (even on the fixed gear bike, the tension is turned up a bit more then the other bikes). I am thoroughly confused at how so many people can't figure out how to us these wonderful tools properly.

Make sure you tension the pedals to your liking before writing clip-less off, they don't need to be all that tight. I have burned through a rear tire pretty fast via skid stops. Have yet to have my foot pop out (knocks on wood).