Baseball, hockey, golf, etc. are interesting cases, because they favor cross-wired folks whose dominant eye and hand are on opposite side of the body. These are the same folks who may tend toward dyslexia. I, too, am left-left-right dominant, but with the added complication that an unstable left kneecap and slight weakness of the left quads may have played a role.

The drive thread of a traditional freewheel does indeed have to be clockwise, but the lockplate has to be anticlockwise. They beat this problem in cassette systems by separating the cog retention ring from the bearings, so that a clockwise thread could then be used there.

But since you have to machine the threads on the cog and hub it's just as easy to machine anti clockwise and put the drive on the left side. It would also tighten as you ride.

Hi,

Good point. And no good reason to ever change it, as left is worse for most.

Problems with left pedals and left cranksets caused the adoption of reverse
threading which unfortunately they ignored for square taper bottom brackets.

rgds, sreten.

Yes, that's why I said I was making it all up.

This. Mechanical Precession

And then the engineers at Dodge in the early 70's figured you don't need left hand thread lug nuts on the left hand side...

What were those folks thinking in the 60's. Nevermind, figured it out... the 60's.

I'm a righty yet I start with my left foot. I swing my left leg over the bike when I mount it. I always have done it like that since I was a kid, so it would be a long awkward time to try to change. Somehow, I don't think I'll be changing the way I mount a bike or take off.

As always, you have over analyzed the question again. The answer is quite simple. If it were on the left side it would not be right.

Safety bicycles were introduced into a world of horse riders, and most horses are, in fact, traditionally mounted from the left in the industrialized countries that pioneered bicycle manufacture & riding. People naturally begin to mount bicycles the same way they'd always mounted horses. Manufacturers put the drive train on the 'off' side, away from the riders' clothing. To facilitate left-side mounting, kickstands and the mounting step on ordinary bicycles (highwheelers) are always on the left, too.

Why are/were horses mounted from the left? Because most people are naturally right handed, and in the 19th century lefties were forced/trained to be right handed, too, so back in the day it was nearly a 100% right handed world. So, if you're right handed, where do you wear your sword, Mr. Man-of-action-and-adventure? (FYI - Cavalry sabers were issued into WWI.) That's correct, you wear your sword on your left hip. Now think about it: If you mount from the right, swinging your left leg over the horse's haunches, the sword...can and will wind up between your legs!

Now you know.

^^^ winner, winner chicken dinner...

YES!!

Whenever I mount my bicycle while I am wearing my sword, I am so glad the drivetrain is on the right!

(Nice response, by the way)

[.

Why are/were horses mounted from the left? Because most people are naturally right handed, and in the 19th century lefties were forced/trained to be right handed, too, so back in the day it was nearly a 100% right handed world. So, if you're right handed, where do you wear your sword, Mr. Man-of-action-and-adventure? (FYI - Cavalry sabers were issued into WWI.) That's correct, you wear your sword on your left hip. Now think about it: If you mount from the right, swinging your left leg over the horse's haunches, the sword...can and will wind up between your legs!

Now you know.[/QUOTE]

If I remember correctly from a Logic class I took in college, since most of us have moved on from the sword weilding days of yore, your argument is illogical.
I've concluded that there is no logical reason for a drive train to be on the right side except for the fact that it has always been done that way which is in itself illogical.

I didn't study logic. I studied engineering. If Ignaz Schwinn's right hand man had walked into his office in, oh, 1923 and said, 'Hey, boss, nobody wears a sword any more, and less than 10% of the American public rides a horse on a regular basis. For no compelling reason, and to eliminating any backwards compatibility and frustrate our existing customer base, let's retool the factory and put the drivetrain on the left and the kickstand on the right", Mr. Schwinn would have replied, "Collect your things. You're fired."

Typically ignorant boss.

Horses have sure messed things up for us of the "enlightened age". Why the house set-back distance from the street? That wasted 20-25 feet of grass that has to be watered and mowed constantly? Because in the days when everybody rode horses, the housewife did not want visitor's stinky horses tied up right next to the house. They wanted the smell away from the house. How many people still ride horses? Yup. So, why do we still have a set-back?

I like the setback. Without it, I couldn't yell "Get off my lawn!" at the neighborhood kids.

Uh - aren't you overlooking the right hand threading argument?

No, I didn't overlook it. I just don't think it's a legitimate excuse for denying left handed riders the option of having a left hand drive bicycle. I also don't believe standardization is as important as it once was. Todays factories and todays machinery being computerized can just as easily cut a left handed thread as a right handed one. We're not talking nuts and bolts here but rather cogs and hubs. I also believe that bicycle manufacturers offer an infinite amount of options today. I don't think that offering a left hand drive bicycle would be that big of a deal. They make golf clubs for left handed players don't they? Why discriminate against lefthanded bicyclists.

tradition!

I have seen more than one home brew fixie w/ left side drive, and, of course, a cog lockring. This makes decent sense from a safety standpoint, because now braking becomes self-tightening. The drawback is that the pedals will self-loosen unless the cranks are retapped to restore the correct clockwise threading on the right side crank.

One of my friends encountered the same problem when he converted his crossover drive tandem to aluminum cranks, thinking he could simply use three right side cranks and one left. Three of his pedals kept threatening to fall out until he retapped the cranks.

So it's not "why?" so much as that you have an agenda you're trying to advance. Why didn't you say so in the first place?

That changes my answer: I'm thinking it's because the people who market bicycles don't think they could sell enough to make it profitable. My son, for example, is a lefty and, to tell the truth, I've never noticed which side he mounts his bike from.

I think that I've seen left side drive freestyle bikes advertised but I don't remember the brand. The idea is they allow grinding against the curb on the right without damaging the drive train. If I google "left side freewheel" I wonder if anything will pop up.

How does which side the drivetrain is on discriminate against anyone?

That sounds correct.