Originally Posted by
Andrew R Stewart
Early on my first tandem used a brake lever with both ft and rr calipers controlled by it, two cables entered the lever. With the different cable lengths and different "power" that a ft and rr brake have getting the balance between the two cables was impossible. Oh, one could set up the balance to work OK at slow speeds but than it would be poor at higher speeds.
The only time I've seen this done with any "success" was on a bike set up for a rider with one severely deformed hand. That hand was unable to operate a brake lever so his other hand had to do both. It worked in a manner of speaking but certainly wasn't ideal.