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i ran a red going through noho tonight in front of a cop. i didn't realize until it was too late. they just stopped at the light and kept going when it turned green. it was fucking surreal.
are you guys being serious? riding with no brake should be $1000 fine. ....every bike should have at the very least a front brake...doesn't mean you HAVE to use it.....wait till that one day you absolutely NEED to use a brake and a skid just doesn't cut it....
Please don't ride near me on a ride with no brake.
This is getting out of hand. The cops are just using anything to harass us. While people are getting robbed, rapped, and murdered - what do the police focus on?? petty tickets. What a waste of our taxes.
i was talking to some kid at crank mob (claming to be a messenger, though he looked no more than 16) who was making fun of me for not having a brake.
he said: "you've got to take the training wheels off sometime."
i responded that you need a brake to be street legal, while my friend pointed out that 80% of your stopping power comes from the front. he told us that if you use the front brake, you'll flip over your handlebars. we told him that wasnt true, at which point he got nervous and said "well, you know it's illegal to have a fixie anyway, so youre fucked even with a brake."
as some of you know, i've made educating cyclists and cops of our laws a personal crusade. it just so happened the person standing next to me was an attorney. i was speechless. i could have sworn i saw him crash into the back of someone on labrea and santa monica. at least i hope so, because if it wasnt him, it may have been a less deserving person, and this guy is still out there, convinced that he's right.
im sorry, that was mean. i do hope you guys are all safe out there. that's why i encourage everyone to get a brake. and if you do crash, i hope you're not hurt.
i had a brake. he had shiny soma handlebars with nothing on them. he referred to my brake as training wheels. because as we all know, fixed brakeless is the only correct way to ride a bicycle. everything else is a cheap substitute.
true, but on that note, dont believe what that citation book says. read the law. the citation book is so abbreviated that it causes officers to write citations in error.
Concerning handlebar height, that is a state law, and it pertains to motorcycles too. It may not be widely enforced, but you can be cited for that anywhere, it may just be long beach is looking for these things more.
brakeless bmx is one thing. they have super tiny chainrings and like, 1x1 ratios. those bikes are made for tricks, not for riding in traffic. no brake cable and no wasted money on something as silly as a gyro, and you can barspin for days.
+1 on riding with no breaks! I do it all the time. Well, all except when I was riding my mtb (rip) at the end. :-(
For all those above quoting this or that about the CVC, and you know who you are ;-) , did you ever see this part?
21201. (a) No person shall operate a bicycle on a roadway unless it is equipped with a brake which will enable the operator to make one braked wheel skid on dry, level, clean pavement.
Now is the crank arm a brake? I would say it is, since it isn't defined anywhere in the CVC.
exactly, allan. a woman in portland (or some place up north near it) was cited for riding a brakeless track bike. she made a video on youtube explaining how to skid and i think she got the ticket thrown out.
I would disagree that crank arms count as brakes. This is saying that putting a car in reverse is an okay thing to do instead of having a brake pedal. And how is not having brakes a sign that your bike is in good working order?
Please dolls, it's a "brake." If you're riding "breakless" then give yourself a pat on the back for a bike in working order and/or being in such good shape you needn't stop and rest.
Personally, I am fond of my brakes.
I don't get people who ride with headphones on. You'd get mad at a driver for doing likewise, wouldn't you? It's really not safe and those damn ear buds are going to make a generation young and deaf.
Vehicles with overly-modified exhausts will make me deaf before my iPod ever will.
I swear to God, those fucking monstrosities get louder every day!!!
As far as the brake thing goes, brakes are relatively simple equipment to keep on a bike.
I'm still proposing ditching gears and going with a flip-flop with both brakes.
The desert sand and a shit bike shop up here are making derailleurs more trouble than they're worth.
Get a break end of story... Breaks arent bad for your health just to remind you guys but riding breakless can really fuck your day up if an accident occurs that a simple break could have saved you from...
thats true stilline but then there are those idiots who take of breaks of road bikes.
i saw this yesterday and noticed it when some dumb kid was breaking with his foot...ON A NICE GEARED bike.
To the comments about crank arms not being brakes, etc, or even "brakeless" fixies (which aren't really brakeless, it's a misnomer).
If you must have a hand brake, according to that logic, that would mean all coaster brake bikes, you know like they ones they sell at wal-mart covered in reflectors (just to be legal, corps hate lawsuits n
all), not pass muster...
A fixed gear with no hand brakes has the same if not greater (back-pedaling adds further friction to a skidding wheel) breaking power than a coaster brake bike, and man, you can skid all the way through a tire on a fixed if you need to, a coaster brake will overheat and either seize or fail by that point...
According to the law, which User1 kindly posted above, you only need the bicycle to be equipped with a device which makes one wheel skid on clean dry pavement.
In every situation I can stop quicker, and more safely with the use of my front brake AND slowing my back wheel.
I learned how to skid and I was skidding all over the place. Its really fun and sometimes very efficient way to slow/stop. But burning through tires is kind of a waste. I like my brake. i've never once considered removing it.
I think the only I can think that i would ever not have a front brake is if I had some fancy track bike with no place for a brake. Otherwise I'd feel like a total poser having no front brake.
I've seen the accidents and I've crashed into a few. Nothing is worse than rolling up on a red light doing 20 and a fixies rear wheel( that was on the left) is all of a sudden sliding right into your line. Yeah don't act like you've never seen it. Rule of thumb...HOLD YOUR LINE, If you can't then Get a brake.
Equipment doesnt make you safe. it just makes you feel safe. what are you gonna do when your brake cable snaps at a busy intersection.
I would just slam that shoe on the back wheel and stop no problem. I learned that riding no brakes and you should know how to do it too...even if you have brakes.
Paying attention is the deciding factor in most crashes, not equipment. get over it.
stillline -
Equipment doesnt make you safe. it just makes you feel safe. what are you gonna do when your brake cable snaps at a busy intersection.
Me -
This sounds so daff, I can't believe this came out of you Matt. You're are implying that having a brake doesn't make you safe, it's just an illusion? huuuhhhhhhhh??????????? Feel free to correct me if this is not what you're implying here.
The rest of your statement is equally absurd. Brake cables don't snap. The only way they snap is if just about every strand has broken and it's still functioning with just a few strands. The rider should have replaced the $2 cable long before with the first sign of the first strand braking. I could ride three life times and never experience a cable failing like you're suggesting.
In that three life times you'll experience countless lock ring failures riding fix gear. You tell me what's safer to be riding?
And the safest way to be riding is with TWO brakes. Period!
Junu had a brake cable snap just a few weeks ago on his way to work. So did Krista, just a couple weeks ago. It definitely happens, I hear about it all the time. What Matt's saying is totally valid- for him. There are only a few people who I'd trust to ride that well, however. most people should have 3 braking systems minimum, and wheels that can't go over 15 mph.
I was not implying that brakes make you less safe. I was only trying to point out that they are also prone to failure and when riding freewheel especially on singlespeed bike with only a front brake this poses a real danger.
If you are riding downhill with a front brake-only and the cable snaps you are gonna either learn to put your foot on the tire or eat asphalt.
A bike chain breaks far less than a brake cable. I'd rather rely on a bike chain and the bottom of my shoe than a bunch of cheap metal brakes made in china with a bunch of cable and housing that will rust and break just when you need it most.
I've also seen 2 of my friends go to the hospital when they panicked and pulled the front brake way too hard and ended up going over the bars.
Maybe all you pussies should go back to coaster brakes and training wheels.
Umm, I've been riding the same tire on my brakeless fixed gear since last September... so, almost 7 months on one back tire, and it's still got tread left... it's about how you ride.
This actually goes for this whole argument, it's about how you ride. SO some people feel perfectly safe with just their drivetrain, THE WAY THE LAW IS WRITTEN, that's perfectly legal, the bike can cause one wheel to skid on clean dry pavement.
Some prefer to have a front brake, or more, that's fine, but just because you feel the need for one, doesn't mean everyone else does.
You learn to judge how long it takes you to stop with a single brake, sure, a front brake can stop you faster, it's physics, but if you only have one braked wheel (fixed drivetrain, coaster brake, one brake, whatever) you just know how much space you need to brake or get out of the way. It's like driving a car, you know how long they take to stop, so you handle it accordingly.
Oh and User1, I've never had a lockring fail.
One of my fixed gears doesnt have a lockring, it has a splined system, so it's impossible to strip, and the other one, well, if you buy decent quality parts, those things don't happen... I wore down my last cog, until it was pointed, and TJ at orange twenty and I had a HELL of a time getting it off, and yes it took two of us.
stillline -
A bike chain breaks far less than a brake cable. I'd rather rely on a bike chain and the bottom of my shoe than a bunch of cheap metal brakes made in china with a bunch of cable and housing that will rust and break just when you need it most.
Me -
Nawwww, I bet if you surveyed bike mechanics, they would tell you that a chain breaks more often than a brake cable. The brake cable gets inspected far more often. It shows signs of wear. It's a part that less than $5 to replace front and back. There's no reason to use a cable to the point of failure. I already pointed out that cables don't cause of all the strands that they are made up of. There's alot of fail safe built into the cable. Chains on the other hand tend to get run into the ground. It doesn't get replaced. There's not signs that can be easily seen that it needs replacement. So you have failures happening. So chains brake far more than cables.
Another thing, when you compare the two braking systems, you should be comparing all the parts involved. You conveniently forgot to mention the cheap rusted metal parts from China used to stop a fixed wheel. That being the crank, the lockring, and the pedal. Considering all these parts, and the maintenance you guys go through, a front and rear brake is the most practical and best for getting you across town.
I've had lots o brake cables fail and seen a lot of broken ones on rides, not to mention poorly adjusted brakes made from shitty materials that aren't much better than nothing at all.
Only one of my chains has ever broken and that was because it fell off and got wrapped up on the hub.
A good fixie chain (not the geared bike chain off the bike you made your conversion from) will be way more reliable than a bunch of cables and springs you have to constantly maintain.
if you have gotten a ticket or been harassed by the LAPD for riding a brakeless fixed gear or otherwise brakeless bike that you could skillfully stop by making one wheel skid on dry, level, clean pavement PLEASE CONTACT ME (http://bit.ly/8Z1aB7)
the "no brakes" ticket is a common citation and I am working on the LAPD Cyclist Task Force to help LAPD Operations better interpret this law (CVC 21201a) so that riders of brakeless bikes are not targeted unjustly by officers that do not understand the mechanics of such a bike. We have a long way for education; but, we are getting there.
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Ridazz Roulette!
Great tip, Mr. Kim.