terrymorse 

The emergency reaction needs to be practiced, I addressed that above:

tomato coupe

So, the rear brake can be effective in an emergency stop if the rider has practiced the proper technique?

terrymorse 

No, the rear brake is not "effective" in an emergency stop, as it will do almost nothing to slow the bicycle.

An emergency stop brings the bicycle to a halt as quickly as possible. In that situation, the rear brake is "effectively" useless. As has been explained multiple times by several people.

tomato coupe

And again, you're overlooking the fact that the rear brake can contribute braking force until the rear wheel is completely unweighted.

livedarklions

You're missing the sufficient to cause a skid part. I don't know if it's easy to produce a skid with a rear wheel because I haven't done so intentionally. I do know it's never happened to me inadvertently.

terrymorse 

You must think the elapsed time from hard front braking and unweighted rear wheel is substantial.

Its not. It’s essentially instantaneous.

terrymorse 

I don’t believe you.

tomato coupe

Nothing is instantaneous. Even if the rear wheel is weighted for a fraction of the time required to complete an emergency stop, that is time that the rear brake can be effective. And, in an emergency stop, any extra braking is a good thing.

livedarklions

I don't have any reason to care.

terrymorse 

You are mistaken. The instant the front brake is grabbed for maximum effect, the force between rear tire and the road surface changes. There is no delay.

Kapusta

This is nonsense. Just stop.

Kapusta

If that is the case, then that means it is hard to brake hard enough with the front to fully unweight the rear wheel. And if the rear wheel is not fully unweighted, then it can be used to apply braking force.

Maelochs

This is actually the quintessence of all the arguments here.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own."

This is the text version of sticking one's fingers in one's ears and chanting to avoid hearing unpleasant facts.

Then there is this: "Almost nothing" is more than zero, so by your own admission, even if someone is so inept as to be unable to brake properly, the rear brake is still helping slow the bicycle ... you counter all your own arguments right there.

Yeah, but @terrymorse just told me it does have some effect ......


And then there is this gem:Yes folks, @terrymorse did indeed completely negate all his arguments in this post. Yes, he freely admitted that the rear brake played a role in stopping, and that a rider could learn to brake properly using both brakes.

The funniest part is that he ignored his own post and went on to argue against what he said here in several more posts.

livedarklions

I find the idea of practicing emergency stopping pretty funny. The biggest variable in coming out of a sudden stop is your position on the bike, far more important than anything you're actually doing with the brakes, and by its very nature, you don't know ahead of time what position you'll be on the bike when you have to slam the brake(s). I don't think anyone is capable of disregarding the knowledge that they're about to slam the brakes during a practice run. Your body is going to make all sort of adjustments prior to this slam that you won't even be aware of.

I also don't think that practicing slamming the brakes is a good idea for another reason--it's almost never the best reaction to a real-world situation and I suspect you're just conditioning yourself to commit to it too easily. I can think of literally dozens of near-misses where I would have definitely gotten hurt if my first reaction was to hit the brake, evasion is almost always the better strategy and braking interferes with that in real time.

beng1

I grew up riding motorcycles on and off the road, I was riding a motorcycle before I had a bicycle with a front brake. Now I often set my bikes up so the front brake is on the right handlebar, the rear on the left. Reflexively, I will always push my butt back at the same time I have to brake hard, just as if you are riding a MTB down a steep hill. It is easier to brake really hard when your arms are straight, which works out because that means your weight and butt is hopefully far back too. When I was in my 20s I could bring the rear wheel of my 73' 850 Norton Commando off the ground braking hard on pavement. On pavement if I have to brake fast I just throw my weight back at the same time I am grabbing the front brake, on dirt, especially going down steep hills that may be muddy or have loose gravel, you have to grab the back brake first then feed the front brake in the instant it is working to 100%, which means it is starting to slide. With a motorcycle it is possible to lock the front wheel up on dry pavement if you snap it on so quickly it locks before weight transfers to the front of the bike. Same goes for automobiles. A good driver or rider, and this applies to bicycles on pavement too, will have a feel for how hard to increase braking as the weight is transferring, You can feel the weight going forward. Drivers/riders without the education squeeze the brakes too hard and lock up the wheels, this is why ABS has been put onto most automobiles and even a lot of motorcycles, because getting a driver's license is considered a right in the USA and not a privilege to be earned. When I was young I was reading books on driving and riding by the likes of Bob Bondurant and Keith Code, Jackie Stewart etc.. Those guys don't need ABS for sure, their braking computer is in their heads.

big john

No human can out think and out react a computer.

terrymorse 

The arguing for arguing’s sake exhibited here provides no illumination, and is quite boring.

A thoughtful reader will understand what I wrote.

njkayaker

@terrymorse is saying what the experts say how it works.

It's you and livedarklions who are rejecting reality.

livedarklions

I don't believe you.

DonkeyShow

Top car racers can stop faster without abs than abs can using threshold braking in the dry. Computer schools em in the wet tho.

big john

I'd have to see evidence before I believe that. Even if it's true, surely some tweaking to the programming would allow the computer to do it better.

I read that F1 cars do not have ABS. I suppose an experienced race driver could get good results without ABS. I know years ago it was thought the fastest way to stop a car was to lock up the brakes and the primary reason for ABS is to allow steering control when braking. It just seems as good as the passenger car stuff is, there must be prototype or top level systems that are much better, with the sophisticated sensors and high baud rate computers there are now. In other words, a system which could get closer to that threshold than a driver could alone. Maybe in the future?

It also seems there are no ABS systems in NASCAR or Indy cars or LeMans racing, although some of the sophisticated cars have brake by wire with adjustable bias on the fly. I don't know how much input the computer has to the bias adjustment but that seems like an ideal place for the digitals.

genejockey 

Wait, what? I gotta say, this is completely contrary to my experience. Skidding the rear wheel is very easy. Most recently I did it while practicing hard braking coming down a hill approaching a stop sign at 35 mph. At maximum braking force, I heard a *FFFFF* sound and could feel the rear of the bike slide to the left just a hair, so I let up on the rear brake slightly, the sound stopped and the rear end slipped back in line again,

beng1

Sure they can, because computers can do nothing better than the program they are running. A lot of the aircraft crashes in recent years, USA airliners and fighter jets both, are from poor computer programming. All ABS braking does is give people who are poor or average drivers a false sense of security. A well-trained driver will always be better off than the soccer-moms in their ABS equipped SUV's that are rolling over and killing themselves every day. Computers are not a superior intelligence, they can do nothing unless a human writes the instructions for them to carry out, and human computer programmers are just like any other human, most of them are full of ****.

big john

You are full of it.

beng1

I never excluded myself from anything. But I did have my own computer business for a while, building computers from scratch, doing IT work for people, and recompiling Linux operating systems to remove and add features, hardware drivers etc......