Bunk! Bunk, I say!

Sure, the biggest advantage to fixie is that it is more difficult. This can take a booring ride (my ride to work) and make it more interesting. It also gives you a bigger workout a shorter amount of distance (as stated, a century on a fixed gear is significantly more work than on a bike that can coast).

It does demand more awareness of your surroundings as you can't just slam on the front and rear brakes for a quick stop. I ride fixie different than SS or any bike that can coast. I have to.

Yes you can.

Agreed .... you can slam on the front and rear brakes, but you might end up going ass over teakettle because a fixed gear makes suddenly and rapidly shifting your weight behind the saddle a much bigger challenge. So in that sense, you cannot just slam on the brakes for a quick stop unless going over the bars is an option, which I think everyone will agree is totally not ideal.

Riding safely on a fixed gear demands more awareness—I agree; whether that demand gets met is another matter altogether. Paying attention while riding fixed *is wise* because your ability to stop is somewhat compromised. Not everyone is wise, so riding fixed will not naturally result in greater attention paid. No bicycle *makes you* a more attentive rider.

This incentive to be more cautious may not be enough to alter the riders behavior. That the rider chose to ride a bike with reduced braking power indicates that safety concerns may not actually be a strong motivating incentive for the rider. If safety were a capital incentive for the rider s/he would choose a bike that provides uncompromised braking power - so the incentive to ride more cautiously may not be an effective incentive for riders choosing fixed gears.

A similar example: large SUV's reduce the ability to see nearby pedestrians, and have a harder time braking quickly due to increased/elevated mass—the same mass which makes it far more likely that the SUV will kill someone if it hits them. When you consider these facts alone, they create the incentive for SUV drivers to drive more carefully ... but I think most people would agree that SUV drivers are by far some of the most dangerous, irresponsible people on the road. I would imagine that this has a lot to do with the incentive that (many though not all) drivers have for driving SUVs in the first place: a self-interested need to make some kind of "look-at-me, I'm special" statement that doesn't generally indicate any kind of empathy or concern for other people.

I'm not comparing fixed riders to SUV drivers ... uhh, obviously :-P - I'm just demonstrating another situation where one potentially strong incentive fails to provide effective motivation in the face of other more fundamental incentives that *do* motivate.

So yeah, it might be a smart idea to pay attention while riding fixed, but that doesn't mean that people are going to do it. My feeling is: if you're riding around in traffic on a bike, you'd better be paying attention regardless of what kind of bike you're on, be it fixed, free, recumbent, folding ... whatever. If you aren't acutely aware of the consequences you will endure if you make a mistake or can't protect yourself from the mistakes of others, you probably don't belong on a bike to begin with.

If you are the kind of person inclined to ride safely and pay attention, you're going to do that. If you're not inclined to pay attention and ride safely, you wont. Fixed or free, it doesn't matter ... a person's gonna do what a person's gonna do.

Except that they go out and get neon deep v's and candy-paint their parts random garish colors. I have a rather quiet-looking black FG. Unless they really find something aesthetically appealing about riding on something that looks like it belongs in a circus, I'd have to assume they are trying to look cool and follow a trend that's already played out. To the casual observer, I really don't look that cool on my bike, and at the least I'm not trying so hard to look cool as the kids I'm talking about. But what I'm saying is the people I'm talking about just have SS because they like the "style" of it, and want something that just looks cool. I'm sure they don't even care about SS or Fixed as far as the actual ride goes, they jus tryin ta floss it, know what I mean bruh?

That assumes you have front brakes. ;-)

Yeah true for people that have more ego than brains, at least until they break a fork, or a rib, or a collar bone. Then most people might actually learn something. I guess its a bad assumption to presume people have brains and use them.

I commuted with my track bike (brakeless) this morning. Its nice to let it out of the velodrome every once and a while. I ride it a lot different than my fixed commuter (front/rear brakes).