Yeah. I think I am riding sans brake tomorrow by default. I am going to take it slow.

I have read many posts on this, talked to folks, etc. But some questions I have include:

Would you ride harder if you had one?
How often do you actually skip/skid to stop, as opposed to for fun?


I don't know, fill me in if you get the gist. I'm not trying to spark debate, just looking for fresh insight. I've been riding fixed for a year or so, feel comfortable, but there is still a pause when I consider the lack of a fallback. I know this discussion is a bit tired here, so just chime in if so inclined.

well...what i do is i just ride like i'm brakeless. I have a front brake on my bike. I just never touch it except in case of emergency. During normal riding i'm usually able to slow down fast enough without skipping or skidding. When i do need to stop faster, i usually go with skipping. I just skid for fun really.

i think brakeless is safe if you're conditioned to riding without using your handbrake. decelerating appropriately becomes automatic after a short while. barrell assing through red lights and traffic is great for alleycats, but i'm fine with navigating through intersections at a more moderate pace for my day to day riding.

the only time i would ride harder is on downhills since I could go as hard as i wanted and still have control

I rarely skip. Never skid for fun.....its all about seeing and planning acceleration and deceleration

I used my brake for the first time since September last weekend. I was glad I had it.

That is all.

on my 2 mile (brakeless) commute, i never really *have* to skid or skip. i ride in fairly sparse, small-city traffic, so it's easy to see what's coming. even when i'm bombing down my empty straightaway with the wind at my back, i just coast/lightly resist my way to the busy, red-light intersection.

it really is all about planning, and it's all about knowing what will present itself--what you'll have to react to--so you know how to ride, ready to react to that. often it means going slower, which is hard sometimes in cities--when i ride in nyc i find myself rushing rushing rushing a lot, because of the intensity of the traffic, which would be problematic if i were brakeless there, because things happen fast, and change fast, and i'd be going a bit to fast to react safely, w/o emergency/panic maneuvers.

brakeless is all about control. it's about knowing when to ride smart, and when you can ride fast, and knowing ahead of time when you need to stop riding fast.

I just tried out brakeless this week. Observations:

If you want to go as fast as you do with a brake, it is harder. Stopping takes SERIOUS leg work, so I just tend to keep a solid flow going. With a brake, I'm more likely to charge a long green, but brakeless I will approach it at only about 10mph, lest it turn red.

Also, brakeless looks far, far cooler.

I think I would ride harder if I had a brake, but I feel like I would be asleep at the wheel because I would always have my fall back stopping option of the brake. So going faster with less concentration is not any safer then riding brakeless IMO. I skip all the time when I need to ditch some speed, but rarely skid. Skidding is not really effective for fast decelerations unless you are doing some type of hockey style skidding. I find myself skidding more for fun then for function. My preferred way of speed management is looking ahead down the rode and managing my speed with back pedaling.

I recently put a brake on my bike after many years of riding without one. I definitely ride harder with it on but I also descend mountains too which was not possible before or just ridiculously slow. Even in flat traffic I can now just race right up to stop lights as opposed to timing it. I put the brake on because of an injury and then found out I kind of like it. Still though if I am cruising and some one or thing jumps out in front of me my first instinct is to stop brakeless and or avoid the situation. The brake is really just a long descending tool.

i ride brakeless and i think that if i had a brake i might go a bit
faster/harder sometimes. when i'm riding with my friend (he rides
single speed) i let him go first sometimes, because he will approach
an intersection with more speed than me. it sucks though when he
goes first because he can slow down faster, or stop as to where i
would just find another way through. i do skip some, but rarely skid.

I've only ever ridden brakeless down to a Prospect Park race, and only then because I swapped my bullhorns for drops and flipped my stem down. Riding brakeless is traffic definately made me go slower than I normally would, but it was sorta fun. If I had a dedicated brakeless street bike (which I wouldn't), I'd give it an easy ratio.

i ride as hard as i did when i had a brake, if not harder. i've always been extremely cognizant of what's going on around me, and don't feel like i need to have some sort of "oh ****, i made a poor decision" lever to keep myself safe. even with a brake, i've always slowed down before potentially dicey intersections to get an idea of the traffic pattern and to look for ways to get through without problems. personally, i think it's better to come up to a busy (i still bomb the **** out of most intersections) intersection slower and able to take in the scene than to blast right up to the line, hit the brake, and then check and calculate. i've seen this particular thing a lot in alleycats and it really puts such people at a disadvantage.

this all said, you can ride intelligently with a brake, but the brake isn't going to help you out much. i can agree, though, that a brake will probably allow you to negotiate larger hills more aggressively.

I alway try to ride my 16mile rt commute with no brakes
but to me the brake is like a helmet........
Like, lets say you unclipped to ride home in 4" of snow that
fell while you were in work and you started to go down an
icy hill and one of yer feets slipped off the pedals that are now
spinning too fast to put back on......this never happened to me
last thursday, of course, just using it as a scenerio
Yeah, you dont want the added complication but on
the rare time you need it, you are really, really glad
its there !

i ride like i have a break and im starting to think its no better than riding breakless. if i ever get into a jam my first instinct is to sort of skid while turning away from the danger. if i ever had to reach for the break, i probably wouldnt no where it is, or jam so hard on it that i endo. im just not used to using it. as for skids, i skid all the time. when weaving through traffic, and making sharp turns, i find that a little 0.5skid/slide is much more fluid than decelerating and accelerating, and it takes less effort.

i roll in the land of the hills, ride breakless, bomb hills, and skip and skid a lot...
i would not ride harder if I had one...I ride Smoooooth

Another thing that really bothers me is
my bike has severe toe strike....Im scared to
do the stuff on it that I would on my other bikes.....
Im looking for another frame on E-Bay nitely. Hopefully
confidence will rise commensurately.

I think the only thing that would change if I had a brake would be that I would draft and skitch more. Drafting large vehicles or skitching in the city without a brake is not my thing. They can stop alot faster than you can w/o a brake, especially if they are pulling you at 30 MPH. I know there are ways to ride the edge of the draft and watch in front of the vehicle, but once you are going fast enough, if they brake check you are kinda screwed. That is really the only thing I miss with out a brake.

They can stop faster than you even if you have a front brake, but you are right, they can stop even fasterer if you don't have a front hand brake.

Al

Riding brakeless to me means trying never to stop and a much smoother ride.

The main reasons I would ditch my brake would be for style and to learn how to spin my bars around like Bacon in Quicksilver.

Check.

i just started riding brakeless this week to get ready for monstertrack. it's weird, part of me likes it better, part of me thinks it's needlessly more dangerous. like i almost got hit by a huge truck this morning who decided to turn right, when i was right next to him on the right, but i managed to turn right with him, startle the driver with my "OH SH1T!" and then he saw me and stopped and i weaved around him and back onto the road i was going straight on. brakeless makes me feel more connected to the whole bob and weave, jedi with his lightsaber thing, but also kind of scares the crap out of me as i realize that means all the times i actually had to use my e-brake before, i will just end up eating it now.

For the most part the key is to always know where you can go without having to stop.

However, today some Jacka** decided to pull over right in front of me to pick some people up at the curb... without any warning... no turn signal... nothing. I actually shocked myself at how quickly I was able to stop. I am fairly certain that I couldn't have done much better with a brake.

if you have to ride brakeless (when you say by default, i'm assuming you're getting a brakeless bike and have no money/parts for a brake. same way i started sans brakes), then...well...you just kind of have to do it. keep yor eyes open. pay attention to your peripheral vision, use your ears like they're eyes in the back of your head. look through car windows to see drivers inside getting out, or when you're in traffic to see other cars and what they're doing. use other cars and some buildings and storefronts as mirrors to see places you can't see. if it rains, use the streets to look for the headlights of cars as they come around corners.

at first i took it slow and learned what to watch for, and spent a lot of time in a park at night, skipping, skidding, trackstanding, doing tight, slow circles, all the stuff you do just to practice control of the bike. work on control first, speed second. you can rock a brakeless bike damn fast, i know i do. but when you're just getting used to it...speed can get you hurt if you don't know how to counteract it.

So the iPod is a bad idea, huh? Just kidding. Yeah, thats how i am taking it. I just did a little ride around the hood. Took a decent descent like a super slow champion. I feel good, plan to pay my parking lot dues with the skip/skid training as much as possible.