i'm ****in' irlollin'
you win at the internet

oh yeah and um bikes

Trying to keep it simple for redhouse: If you ride like you can not be seen then you ride to avoid contact with the dude in the Eldorado chatting on is cellphone. He is not looking for you in the first place. If you ride like he does not know you are there, then when he runs that red light while phoning into Dominos you will already have stopped or diverted around him.

so you're saying, move with the swiftness

He's saying that risk management is 99% of safety on a bike in traffic. Sorry, but lights, helmet, brakes, a bulletproof vest, plate mail armour, and all the kings men won't save your ass if a 2000 lb. truck runs your ass over. If you are aware, it means doing what is going to save your life. If that means going with the flow of traffic, stopping at red lights, taking detours, increasing/decreasing speed, or :eek: stopping and putting a foot cdown until traffic clears, then so be it. You can only choose one outfit for your funeral, so looking cool is not really the point here.

why is that dude wearing a helmet and trying to eat that burger?

just curious.

maybe i should wear a helmet now...if you should wear one while eating...

right. all of this = move with the swiftness.

Hes wearing a helmet in case his big fat ass falls off the chair, and he hits his head on the wall!,
if he does'nt die of a heart attack first!

i agree with all that, that helmets, brake, lights, etc, won't stop you from getting hurt if you don't ride right. but **** still happens, and sometimes even if you're riding right. i just think, myself i want a little extra protection...a little extra visibility with a light, for example, though i'm not about to pretend everyone sees more or even gives a damn.

Yelling at the top of your lungs doesn't hurt either. It kept me from getting run over by an SUV making an illegal U-Turn in Fort Greene last night. Horns & Bells probably dont' do anything. I usually yell "YO YO YO YO YO YO YO" instinctually as loud as I can when someone's about to kill me. It usually gets them to stop.

ah...."YO YO YO YO YO"....that's a lot better than a string of obscenities...doesn't neccessarily result in a fight. although out here, the "YO" is a little weird...it's always seemed like an east coast thing to me.

YO is clearly a philly word.... cause it was made famous by rocky.

i think if you use it often (and don't live in philly where our wage tax covers our YO usage) you might owe sylvester stallone some royalty checks...

I instictivly let out a gutteral Aaaaaagggghhh! in those situations, and most people are instantly paralyzed. I've never had someone respond in any other way :).

If you think you need a brake, you definitely need one.
If you don't, you still might, it depends on how you ride and what transpires, as long as you have your out, you're ok. If somebody takes your out, you are meat. As Sheldon Brown has pointed out, they definitely make you faster, and make life more convenient. It is defintely easier to stop with a brake, break, or brek. No matter how you spell it, it is easier. It is about choices though, aesthetics.
Yes, Yout', please get a light and a helmet. You can swing that for 75 bucks eassy for a Cateye Opticube and some effective lid. A certain courier who was struck from behind, in the head, probably wishes he was wearing one when that happened. Take it from somebody who has broken two legs, two ankles, a foot, an arm, and a finger, broken bones aren't s'bad, but a head injury, that you don't want.

a friend of mine was just telling me how a friend of his in dc was hit in the back of the head by a truck and is in a coma. it makes me sad hearing about that kind of ****.

an awesome helmet story: my friend was riding his road bike down the richmond city streets as fast as he could, was racing some cars apparently, and his foot came off the pedal. i don't know how as i wasn't there, but apparently he literally went right off the front of his bike, flipped in the air, and landed on his back/head. when he got up and took his helmet off (all in one piece, thank god-- this kid younger than i am), his helmet was cracked in half. he's fine. that was the only story i needed to know that i need a helmet. that and my one small wreck that i had... that **** is scary.

I sometimes ride several days without using my brake, and then when I need it I really need it.

At my level of skill, I have to make a choice between a fast gear and a controllable gear.

A front brake lets me ride a higher gear.

Give me a couple of years and I might try no brake.

Ironically, this last spring, I had a fall on ice that broke four ribs and punctured my lung; and, if I had not had a front brake I might not have fallen (but then again...).

Regarding helmets, my helmet definitely saved my brain in the above fall.

I hit the pavement HARD and my head snapped into the asphalt like the tip of a whip.

I refer you to this guy;

"One time I was driving like super sweet fast and then I saw some jerk with a brake and white leather belt on so I RAN his hipster arse off the road! He wasn't wearing blinkers so I pretended it didn't happen."

-there..my mockery seems Just now? :)

pedestrians, cars and other obstacles will jump a front of you at any time. You can't anticipate everything no matter how "good" you are. If you want to move fast in high traffic a brak can save ur butt and others around you. Lots of good riders had bunch of accidents throughout years of riding brakless. Is it worth it? In my 7 yrs of messing in nyc (thanks to a brak) i didn't have a single one, not even dooring.

I think that has more to do with luck than anything else. I mean, the only time I've been in an accident was when I was running a break, so I mean anecdotal evidence does very little to prove your point.

When you're running "brakeless" you're not truly riding without brakes. You're running without handbrakes. Just as a handbrake may be able to save you in some circumstances, it can damn you in others. My accident had to do with the fact I was running a brake and I ended up going over my handlebars.

Until I see an actual study that gives me hard information and puts all the variables into the pictue, I refuse to admit that riding without handbrakes is signifcantly less safe that with.

good enough junior. I was just sharing my experience, not trying to prove anything.

Sorry...I'm just a little sensitive. *sniff*

lmao

One of the rules of the form is to avoid using AOLease like lmao. Which, if you dont mind, clue me in becuase I haven't the faintest...

I ride most of my commute on a trail so the random stuff cars can do isn't so much of an issue for me. That said, a guy who is slower than me smoked me on the trail the other day, rolling a geared bike, running right up to a blind intersection, and then ending up not having to break, brake, or brak for that matter. Running sans handbrakes, you just can't take those kind of chances if you want to live long enough to pay for your kid's college. But he only rides to work like twice a week and I do it every day, so, um, I'm still superior to him, ok?

Sheesh, it is almost enough for me to stick a lever and a caliper on the biek, bike, or bieke. Better safe than sorry, but like people have said, what does that mean? Would I be more reckless thinking a brake would save me? Would I hit it on ice instead of just keep rolling and lose my front wheel like I saw somebody do yesterday?

I don't think it increases your chances of survival nearly as much as wearing a helmet does. I am very pro helmet. Personally I enjoy riding brakeless, I don't mind those that ride with brakes, personally I worked to hard to get unmachined sidewalls to scuff them up with a brake, but thats just me.

Not that we need to get into this again, but people tend to talk about two different things when they talk about hand brakes: safety, and statistical probability.

Contrary to what a lot of people may think, they're not the same thing. Safety is, by definition, the ability to be free from danger. Consequently, unless you are completely unsafe, there is still a possibility you will never be hurt, or get into an accident. Thus, statements like:

I was hurt despite x, therefor x is not effective.

or...

I have never been hurt using x, therefor x is effective.

are both not necessarily true, logically speaking. If you have been hurt with a handbrake, it does not follow logically that a handbrake is less safe, or that handbrakeless is less safe, it just means you were the expression of a certain statistical probability. In other words, since the certainty of crashing is neither 1 nor 0 when adding or subtracting a handbrake (I might add, even with a freewheel), stating how many years you've gone or have not gone without an accident since adding/removing a brake is not a valid argument.

But the theory has a basis. The basic equation is this: decreased total stopping distance (junior overload, maybe more than others, knows this is based on an equation: perception time + reaction time + mechanical reaction time + mechanical braking time) = decreased chance of accident.

So, unless someone is arguing that being able to stop sooner does not decrease your chance of being in an accident, the only valid argument is one which deals with which method produces the shortest total stopping distance.

So, let's not be silly here, brakes provide you with better mechanical braking time (physically stopping sooner), but that's not everything:

Your reaction time might be slower because you've been "lulled into a safety net by brakes."
Your legs react more quickly than your hands.
A direct drive is faster to start the initial decrease of speed than a brake cable.

I think it's pretty obvious that none of these added up equal the mechanical braking time decrease had by a brake vs brakeless, thus they are irrelevant.

But what does that mean? It means riding brakeless is less safe than riding with a brake. Being able to freewheel is more safe than riding a fixed gear (less chance of pedal strike). Staying in your house is more safe than going outside. Boiling your water is more safe than just drinking it from the tap, or the bottle even. Do we still do all of these unsafe things? Yes. Why? Because safety isn't everything.

So, in sum, I'm not saying what you should or shouldn't do; determining how safe or unsafe you are willing to be for the sake of either fun, peace of mind, or whatever, is up to you. But the bottom line is, unless you can disprove some of the above, it's pretty likely riding brakeless is less safe.

P.S. Endoing because you don't know how to use a handbrake properly isn't evidence of anything relevant other than your experience with handbrakes at the time.