UCI has no effect over Your consumer behavior any mora then FIA is keeping you from buying a F1 race car to put in your collection,

You just cannot enter in one of their sanctioned races ..

Quote Originally Posted by Flinstone View Post
mvcrash:No, the point is the low CG IS the WHOLE REASON why he could lock (slide) a front wheel and why a road cyclist cannot. There's a reason I said "on road bikes". Of course you can lock a front wheel on a recumbent and probably many sidewalk cruisers where your knees point to the sky. With a lower CG the endo limit is higher and you can get much more braking force on the tire without going over. When the CG is high (and/or forward, it's actually the angle to the cg from the front contact that matters, not the height), as in a road bike, you'll go over the handle bars before you can lose traction on the front wheel. Obviously exceptions exist for wet or loose pavement etc.

High speed air resistance also helps you stop faster without an endo but I don't think it changes contact friction threshold for endo very much since the air resistance force is probably directed pretty closely toward the center of mass.

Anyway these details are too much and if isn't possible in some extreme wasn't really the point. In fact the endo limit isn't sooo far from the traction limit anyway and rim brakes can deliver those levels of forces. That was the point.

UCI has a TON of effect on consumer options by way of (sometimes irrationally) influencing the decisions of other consumers in a market that is too small to provide a broad spectrum of options and mass production prices.

As for "anti lock" brakes being silly.. I don't know. With the cheap sensor technology available in smartphones now, an anti-endo (more tricky probably, but possible) front brake would allow you to push right up to maximum braking threshold, and yes it could have anti lock for wet conditions too. It wouldn't increase maximum braking but it would increase how close you could consistently and practically get to that max. Why not? If you're going to have wireless shifting, this makes about as much sense. I have to admit though, there's something about a bike as a purely mechanical device that is attractive to me. Sometimes I even want to throw the speedometer off and just push parts down the road. How far? enh.. out to that river over yonder and back.

Just to be clear where do you get the idea that the UCI has that big of an influence. As I understand it MTB and Hybrids make up 49 percent of the adult market. If you add Cruisers to that number you get about 62 percent of the market. Road bikes only make up about 20 percent and that has to be shared between allof the different levels of Road bike. The UCI has influence only on race bikes in that the manufacturers have to offer the particular model to the public to qualify to race. I dare say that is a very tiny fraction of bikes sold. In fact I believe if you look up the top ten brands sold in the US half of them don't have race bikes. I would almost wager most riders of the 62 percent don't even know who the UCI is. But just to show some of the numbers.

The Best-Selling Bikes | LIVESTRONG.COM

How many Harley-Davidson riders care about FIM Moto GP regulations ?

Who's the UCI and why do I care what they think? Want discs, buy a bike with discs, don't then don't

Hush; don't interject common sense while the discies are claiming better stopping power than rim brakes that can already overcome the traction of the tire and/or the endo limit. Especially don't point out that a rim brake is just a disc brake with vastly more surface area than their little mithril platters...and that doesn't send all the braking force through the spokes.

Some are so worked up about choices. I like having choices...same way I loved it when MTB disc brakes came in and made fast downhill braking so much easier (well, I still get crazy forearm-pump on this 7-mile descent on Monarch Crest) and so much safer. I'm quite sure no mtn bike rim brakes are spec'd on bikes anymore. I think road disc will not take over in that way and that fast, but I like my choices and they will be great for many people. Rim brakes on the road brake very well (except when wet) and the hydraulic rim brakes brake with much less effort, but there will be a place for discs and they will keep developing. I held out on carbon wheels till now because I did not want rim brakes on carbon rims. I'm researching disc carbon rims, now that I have a disc bike (two actually). I cycle to escape the craziness and happen to have become a bit of a gearhead. Purists need not buy them and I see their point (lighter setup, works well enough, simple and easy to maintain) but no point fighting progress...it is a losing battle.

So------------what will the stiff necked old fools of the UCI (suddenly it is 1895 again) have to whine about when the disc mfg round the edges of their disc so they cant "cut" a racing cyclist?