Re: Extensive article on Rivendell and Grant Petersen

Am Fri, 27 Sep 2024 15:22:17 -0400 schrieb Frank Krygowski
<frkrygow@sbcglobal.net>:

About "a moment to clear the rim" on road brakes: Yes, that happens.
It's almost never a significant problem. Road riders don't generally
require absolutely perfect braking to stop at exactly the right spot.
And brake failure of any kind is way, way down the list of causes of
bike crashes.

My experience from long time commuting is different.  Of course,
significant problems are rare, when you mostly ride during daylight,
when weather is dry or not overly cold, or when you mostly ride on paved
roads. Unfortunately, my commute sometimes had most of these features in
common.  I vividly remember more than one situation when riding home
late, on cold and dark winter day, when easy stopping wasn't possible,
anymore, because water or snow froze on the rim faster than the pads
could remove it.  Now imagine that when needing to ride down a steep
descent in the dark.  Handling those situations is difficult enough with
perfect brakes.   

I didn't have any oportunity or need for riding in such situations
anymore, for much more than a decade now.  In fact, I mostly avoided any
single of these possible hazards, rain, snow, cold weather, darkness
during that time. When looking at people who do group rides or club
rides, these people mostly avoid those situations, too.  So I have no
doubt that there are many people, most of them probably better riders
than me, who never had to handle anything like that.  And I agree with
them! Like myself nowadays, they wouldn't need disc brakes and their
complications.

Looking back at my commuting days, I think that offroad-riding for
leisure and for pleasure is a piece of cake, compared to what you
experience when commuting under conditions that aren't inviting and
mostly not under your control.

Again, I still don't believe that disc brakes are a necessity or
generally better than rim brakes, discs still have some notable
downsides, I'm not disputing that. In addition, I like choice. I did
easily with rim brakes over the last decade and and probably would have
used these for the bikes I built in early 2023, if that wouldn't have
complicated the build.  But I deny that rim brakes don't have any
serious disadvantages. They do. 

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