Originally Posted by
Miele Man
Drilling the handlebar for aero brake levers used to be somewhat popular too but drilling a handlelbar often resulted in a handlebar breaking at a very inopportune time. A suddenly breaking handlebar can dump you into traffic or just cause you to crash. I strongly recommend to NOT drill your handlebar.
Cheers
Not to worry, I am off of the idea of drilling the bars to pass thru the cable housing.
Your point about not wanting to have handlebar break and then crash into traffic is a good one. In fact, after my long touring hiatus (30+ years) I am now terrified of riding on a shoulderless road. I did literally thousands of miles on shoulderless roads, counting on the cars to see and avoid me and never got hit (only time I ever got hit was when I was 10-11 years old and it was my fault).
Now with everyone texting and otherwise driving distracted, the likelihood of getting creamed seems inevitable.
From now on, I am only riding in bike lanes, wide shoulders (Austin has lots of roads with 6-10' shoulders) or bike trails. I am done with sharing a lane with cars. I made it this far (including that ride in Africa, where people don't even have licenses), so why tempt fate any further.