Oh... and more precisely... about your original question. If all you really wanted to know was:





I believe, based upon the data presented in this thread, that the answer is an unequivocal (so far as this thread is concerned): YES.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDjCqjzbvJY

I can't think why this thread reminds me of the MP sketch.

Hand brakes are not dangerous and neither are coaster brakes, as long as you don't exceed their limitations. Millions of people ride millions of miles on them without a problem. Ride what you like and don't bother trying to convince others what is best for them.

Makeinu, I hope your recovery from your recent accident is coming along well.

This is BS. If it were true, then a bike wouldn't be steerable, nor even controllable, when riding with no hands.

Except at very slow speeds, a bike steers by leaning into the turn. You don't need to grip the 'bars at all to do that. In fact it's easier to do with a relaxed grip, or even open hands, rather than gripping the bar tightly. Not trying to muscle a bike through a turn produces smoother and tighter turns.

More likely, not far enough down (and right next to the grips, so grabbing them with index and middle finger alone does nothing since you're grabbing nearly the end of the lever). That's how they are set up in department stores, and that's how most newbies end up riding them.

That's only one of the problems with them.

Better make the best of it while you can. Once you have tons of experience, by your own theory you'll be posting mostly wrong info there. If I were you I'd try my hardest to not ever learn anything, so you won't get stupid.

Well, partially. You really need both. You can steer by just leaning but it's not as effective as using both. You can't make rapid manuvers by just leaning. The reason is that in order to lean, you need to move the bike FIRST. If you just lean, all you're doing is pushing the bottom half of your body one way and the top half the other. By definition you can't change your center of gravity without an outside influence. You get that outside influence by countersteering the bike in the direction away from the turn, so that the line that the tires are following is now outside of your center of gravity. YOU aren't really leaning, you are moving the bike the OTHER way, so that now the you+bike system is now leaning into the turn.

Therefore the steering is what CAUSES the lean. You want to turn right, you actually steer left a touch, which causes you to lean right, then you move the steering back right so that your total acceleration (sideways turning acceleration plus the 1G downward force) is directly in line from your CG through the tires into the pavement. That's what's necessary to not fall over. Riding a bike, just like walking, is a constant exercise in falling and catching yourself.

This is why learning to ride a bike is a bit difficult; it's hard to teach your muscles to turn the opposite way from where you want to go.

edit: upon further contemplation...

But... planet earth does have wolves, stones, and lighters. What planet earth does not have is bikes that stop by special butt-magic.

Something else it has is this:

https://www.spring.org.uk/2007/10/how...-ourselves.php

Not a response at all was just curious as to what the definition of makeinu was https://www.speakrealjapanese.com/words/words3.htm
No responce needed

i'm way to dumb to argue with some of you.

Huh? There's a difference between 'real science' and 'some of the things scientists do'? Science is studying the natural world, applying the scientific method and trying to discover new ways of looking at the world. It isn't reinventing the wheel each time you go into the lab. Do you start each day trying to figure out atomic theory based on the models of the ancient Greece? If you do, tell me how much progress you make by the end of the day.

Everyone that does real science (not your variety) builds on the work of others. It's just not cricket to redo other people's work even if you discovered it independently...unless you happen to be doing it at the same time. If you were to say that you had discovered a new way of doing something that is obviously more difficult, more elaborate and gave a worse result, you'd be laughed off any podium in the world.


Millions of bicycles have been made with hand brakes and millions of people use them everyday. They seem to be able to steer, brake and still manage not to run into cars, building, people, busses and other objects hundreds of times per day. And, since you seemed to have missed the boat, take a look at my thoughts on braking here. You could say that I've thought about it a whole lot.

As for chains and working on bikes, I've tried your method (yes, I've seen your silliness before) long ago. There are better, easier, quicker, less elaborate ways of doing it. If someone comes up with a better method then the current chain tools, I have an open enough mind to adopt those methods. Here's a hint: your method ain't it!

Nah. You could probably do circles around some of us

It's easy if you are like the OP and looking for a way to avoid using a hammer (or a crowbar, chainsaw or the appropriate tool for any job.)

Let's step back. The problem is hand brakes. We've all focused on the brakes. Maybe the issue is hands. Perhaps we should be using our brakes, but not using our hands.

There is general agreement about the inadequacy of coaster brakes, so lets reject that as a non-viable solution.

Shimano has introduced electronic shifting. Can electronic braking be far behind? Once that hits the market it's only a matter of time until thought controlled braking makes a .... should I say break through?

This advance will free us to use our hands as the gods intended: To throw rocks at each other.

Until then, I will use my three fold system: Drag sneaker on road, put other sneaker heal on back wheel while I back pedal the coaster brake and use my "quad brake lever" that activates both front and rear calipers and disc brakes.

This leaves me one hand still free to flip off the crazy people who won't see things exactly the same way I do.

Hmmm, and you are assuming that I never question (I'm questioning you right now actually)? I didn't say that experts weren't wrong sometimes. When someone has done a proper study with the proper sample size, or proper amount of observations then I am willing to accept what they have to offer. I also find that personal experience and common sense account for quite a bit. I am smart enough to know that a bicycle chain and a motorcycle chain are two different animals and require seperate tools. I also know that taking good advice makes life a lot easier more often than not. The trick is being wise enough to acknowledge and take good advice. If one truly questioned everything they would be growing everything they ate or eating pre WWII army rations (don't ya know the government didn't start trying to control us until post WWII), living in a bunker detached from the grid with solar energy with their own private cache of firearms suspicious of everyone and everything that came into contact with them. I believe the scientific term for this is paranoia, but perhaps since you question science and 90% of what it has found to be "fact" perhaps you call it being careful or something else like that.

I would submit to you that if someone could not control their bowel reflex in an emergency situation that neither hand nor foot would be able to do anything either nor would our cleverly thought out butt tension brake since that area would be relaxed in such a scenario. This thread finds new heights each day and for this I Thank you.

Incidentally, breaking a chain the wrong way and saying it worked for you is a sample size of 1. Just because it worked once doesn't mean it will do that again. I suggest you perform a scientific study getting a numerous amount of people to try your nail and hammer method of chain repair and document your findings.

After all, a man who wins the lottery can not expect to repeat the act on his next ticket or even a thousand more.

Lastly, why don't you make a similar post to this one and make it a poll. I would be fascinated to see what information we get from a somewhat objective sampling of the opinions/experiences on this forum.

And the majority of them thinks they are smarter than the experts since they have never been hit by a car yet.

Fixed.

Responding to specific questions about the drawbacks presented by hand brakes with nonsense such as suggesting I have my handlebars on backwards is offtopic blather that has absolutely nothing to do with my hypothesis. When having a conversation one is supposed to respond by addressing the specifics of the topic, not drifting off into la la land.

Absolutely not. When riding with no hands your hands are no longer bearing any weight. This is completely different from the typical riding position where your hands bear a significant portion of the weight. You're comparing apples and oranges. One has nothing to do with the other. Furthermore, I think it goes without saying that riding with no hands is not the safest way to ride in traffic. So your post completely irrelevant.

The strangest thing though, is that people like you keep bring up whether or not a cyclist "needs" to grip the bars. Is it not painfully obvious that need has almost nothing to do with safety? Have not the old pennyfartherings demonstrated quite convincingly that you don't even need any brakes at all and has not the unicycling community demonstrated that you don't even need handlebars or more than one wheel? Need is obviously a completely separate issue from safety. Do you need a helmet to ride a bicycle? Do you need reflective gear or lights? Do you need to ride in the same direction as other traffic? No, no, and no. All answers which have absolutely nothing to do with safety.

Obviously, it's not the experience that signals their stupidity. It's the fact that they authoritatively trumpet that experience to others.

I'm not worried about learning and, trust me, if you think that's the conclusion of what I've said then the problem isn't me: "ItsJust[You]".

Not this part of planet earth.

I can only imagine what you're like at work. Your boss asks you to analyze a case study and, instead of doing so, you decide to tell him about wolves in the himalayas and psychological tendencies.

Get real.

Here's a tip from a real scientist, you might want to look up what the term "peer review" means.

Get a clue.

To be completely honest I'm getting quite tired of putting this same argument to rest over and over and over and over again.

Yes, plenty of people are able to steer, brake, and manage with hand brakes. I'm one of them. Plenty of people also manage riding without helmets, riding on brakeless fixies, unicycles, etc, etc. So what? What does it have to do with danger and safety? Absolutely nothing.

Really, you've tried my method? You must be a psychic because I didn't even tell you the materials I'm working with, much less the goal of my endeavor.

Stop making a fool of yourself and assuming you know things which you don't have a clue about.

Hello? Despite the army of buffoons too daft to see it, that has been the topic of this thread from the very beginning.

Thank you for bringing some sanity to this thread.

Don't get me wrong. I'm also willing to accept what they have to offer. The problem is that what they have to offer is often misunderstood, misapplied, and misrepresented.

In my experience it takes a rare individual to take the same amount of care with something that I personally take....especially when it's something that affects me in ways that it doesn't affect them.

Best piece of advice I've ever read: "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself."

I don't question science nor do I question good advice. What I question is the authenticity of claims of science and good advice.

I'm confident in that my method was the best solution to my specific problem and I am 100% confident that given the circumstances it would work again. If I were trying to convince you of some kind of general method then I'd do exactly what you've suggested, but I have no intention of trying to convince you of anything, so I'm quite content telling you to bugger off because you have no idea about the specific requirements I had that made my method the best for the job at hand.

Yup, definitely reminds me of the MP sketch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDjCqjzbvJY

The only way you're going to get it, makeinu, is to have a brake-off. You and your coaster verses someone with hand-operated rim or disc brakes. Any decent cyclist is going to stop in a shorter distance and keep their bike under control. Why? Most people don't need a death grip to steer and brake at the same time. I'd say you're in the small minority of cyclists who can't manage such a "feat".

The coaster brake wheel will just slide. A front wheel with a hand brake has more effective braking action due to simple physics....it's called inertial transfer of weight. The other aspect is that it's better braking with 2 wheels than just one.

REPORTED AS TROLLING


Now I KNOW you're trolling. Get the heck out of here dude. Come back when you want to have a reasonable discussion without the harassment, name calling, argumentativeness and general ad hominem nature that your posts have had throughout the bulk of this thread.

That's enough hostility for the day.......

This thread is obviously going nowhere fast.