There is no way a rear brake stopping method (skid, whatever) can stop as fast as a front brake.

When you brake hard w/ a rear wheel, your momentum unweights the back wheel a bit making the friction you're creating w/ your backpedaling/skidding even less effective. When you brake with your front brake, your rear wheel will unweight but the front wheel will still provide stopping power.

And what happens when you want to go down that 40 degree hill w/o a front brake? Sucks to be you.

what I said is that brakes allow one to have a shorter decelleration time, which allows one to ride faster further. Brakes are not faster. The ability to use brakes allows for more speed.

Basic physic is all you need to understand this question.

To skid you unweight the rear wheel, decreasing the amount of friction the wheel can deal with before skidding. Skidding is less efficient for stopping than rolling at just barely less force than is required to skid.

The act of slowing the bike down causes the bike to want to rotate(think clamping down hard on the front brake). If your stopping action is coming from the rear wheel that is the pivot, so the bike and rider's weight are further forced onto the front wheel. Again, less force on the rear wheel provides for less friction.

The conclusion of those is that you will not get the same braking power whether you resist pedal or skip/skid.

IF you were able to resist pedal with a perfectly stable force the entire way through the pedal stroke(especially at the dead spots) AND do this while you put your weight over the rear wheel as much possible, then you could get better braking power, but not as much as even a single front brake.

That said, in my opinion the people who seem to ride faster brakeless probably do so for reasons of both skill and a desire not to have to deal with resisting or skidding if it can be avoided, so the overall average speed stays higher because there is less intermittent slowing down.

Given the same skills, a rider with a brake will be able to ride faster, as they can afford to leave less margin of error.

using brakes is faster.

given the same rider, on the same course (which requires periodic slowing and acceleration), on 2 different bikes (same gearing) 1 of which is brakeless, the other with a front brake.....
The rider will complete the course faster on the braked bicke since he is able to slow down quicker (i.e. spend more time at a higher velocity).
Top speed is the same, acceleration is the same, the time spent slowing down is greater on the brakeless bike

And I doubt that. Now you are talking about mental aspects (feelings).

Having a smaller margin of error does not physically force one to ride slow.

Having a smaller margin of error might make the rider feel insecure and cause him/her to rider slower, but that has nothing to do with physics, but depends on the individual riders mental attitude. Physics doesn't care about error margins.

If I ride fast and then slam on my brakes and then get back up to speed I am about as fast as the person that rides fast slows down for a longer perdiod of time and acellerates again without slamming on the brake. As I said it averages out.

Who says both need to come to a full stop? Take that into a account and the picture will change.

i never said stop. I said slow down.

What I actually meant was that someone who rides with the brakeless philosophy of not stopping, if given the ability to stop more rapidly, will be able to ride faster. Not only that, but the less effort you expend fighting your bike trying to slow down, the more energy you have to make it go faster. Baxtefer said it right.

It really doesn't though. Coming to a complete stop faster is accomplished by slowing down faster. You can stop applying the braking forces at any time, but the process of decellerating is phyiscally faster with a brake. Therefore, if you are require to slow down the same amount in either situation, the brake will slow you down more quickly.

No, the brake will instantly make them fall asleep and crash horribly or they will hit the brake so hard that
they flip over. Forget you physics poo and just believe. ;)

hahaha.

Yes you CAN stop your bike by skidding/skipping, but is it the best/fastest way to stop? NO, anyone who refutes this needs to go back to high school and get their diploma.

Why do people claim that they can stop faster or just as fast by skidding/skipping over a brake? I don't know why...I don't know why a lot of people say the things they say, ignore them and move on with your life. Not worth even talking to people who allow comments like these to fall out of their mouths.

Why do people claim riding brakeless gputs them in a state of Zen? I don't know why...maybe they do waaaaaay more drugs than me?

I'll simplify it:

if you think you can stop faster/just as fast as brakes, you're wrong.

if you think you can stop faster with brakes than you can without brakes, you're right. You win the grand prize, knowing your IQ isn't as low as SOME brakeless riders.

Flame me all you want, I know you brakeless riders will defend your decisions to the death, and that I respect. I also understand the aesthetic point of it, brakeless bikes are awesome looking. In fact, I know people go brakeless because they KNOW how to handle their bike, which I have no problem with, I am not your mother, it's not my job to tell you what to do.
But to say that you ride brakeless for ANY reason beyond "having the look" is absolutely ludicrous. You're only lying to yourself. I wish more people would just come out and say it: "I ride brakeless because I like the way it looks." Rant off.

There was only a single mention of the word knees in this entire thread. And while I understand that with proper technique you can probably ride safely without injury to your knees.

To me this is unneccsary wear on the meniscus, why put the extra strain on it. A fluid stop without a brake can be achieved, but at what cost, is all the additional grinding neccessary. I love my fixed gear, its a great ride and i enjoy the benefits, but i am not so sure i want to add to potentially cripling list of geriatric ailments.

I think its being overlooked that folks with front hand brakes can ride just as fluidly and minimize slowing just as much (if not more) than those without. That a component of what makes a good racer.

Al

I finally understood what you are saying! You are right!

Let me sum it up:
There is nothing that a fixie with no handbrake can do that one with handbrake can't, but the one with the handbrake can stop faster which is an advantage at times. If there is a need for frequent fast stopping the handbraked one will win given equal riders. Of course if there is no need for stopping the brake won't help and the riders will tie. I was looking at it backwards.

Thanks for your patience and apologies for being so thick about this.

That's exactly it! I tend to be a persistent little bugger when I feel like someone isn't hearing what I'm saying, I'm glad to hear it was useful.

yup, that's what I was trying to say.

Again thanks and apologies to both of you!

now we just need to rid you of that nasty toeclip fetish :D

I'm happy to be of help, and I have to say, that sticking with it and making sure you're understanding what's been said and apologizing are really awesome things to be able to do. Not everyone can/does do so. I know I don't always do so.

Oh yes the toeclip fetish. We'll talk about that some other day.
Getting really tired here.

I think the main confusion I had was that I was trying to say that a brake does not mean that you will be faster regardless.

But, what you two were saying is that a brake won't slow you down or be a disadvantage and if anything will only help you to go faster under certain circumstances.

Anyway, glad we worked it out!

certainly, the physics are such that brakes will slow you down more quickly. this is especially true in an academic sense. sure, the same person can go faster on a closed course with brakes than without. whatever. but, i'm still not convinced of their increased efficacy (over brakeless) in most urban traffic situations - in terms of safety, and, for the most part, overall speed. most people who ride brakeless are in urban/city environments. it really makes sense in such settings because of the nature of the traffic, the closely spaced intersections, etc. if you're going to be intelligent, you're going to want to slow down in advance of a questionable intersection just to see what the **** is going on. you're going to be controlling your deceleration and don't really need much other than slowing your pedaling with some resistence. the nature of most crashes in the city are also such that a few extra feet aren't going to save your ass -- unless you were just being careless in the first place. when you need to stop relatively quickly, you're going to be able to do it whether brakeless or not.

hell, after i became comfortable riding brakeless, i still had a brake on for a few months. ultimately, though, i never used it. i never needed to use it, despite several close call situations and a lot of aggressive city riding. i took it off because there was no tangible benefit -- and i ride pretty fast (so long as my balls aren't ultra-chafed) -- and, moreover, because it got in the way.

i ultimately took the brake off because it had proven to be totally unnecessary for the riding that i do and interfered with my hand positions on the handlebars (i even used a cross lever). yes, it also looks a lot better. it's also a **** of a lot more fun, too. i'd throw the brake back on if i were racing on a closed course or, possibly, if i were in a city with gruesome hills, but i, and i'm sure others will agree, don't find any practical advantage to having one.

i was unaware that this was going to devolve into a common sense academic discussion about braking. it seems like such isn't really even worth having. the answers are extremely obvious. the particularities, though, of city riding, require different considerations. that said, if you want to ride with a brake, have fun and be safe, just like everyone else.

perhaps this is why i tore my ligimintus miniscus

Hey shants man, I respect you a lot on these forums. I know how you feel on the matter, and surely you're one of the brakeless riders who clearly knows what he's doing. There's no beef here =P In my post i tried to make it clear that I'm not targeting all, but some.