gerald.hughes wrote on 05/16/09 at 14:04:39:Locking up the rear brake is not necessarily a bad thing. Letting off the brake once it is locked up is. In the MSF Advanced rider training, they make you lock up the rear wheel at a moderate speed, and then ride the bike to a stop. Not a single rider in my class went down, though some did complain about the rubber that was wasted in the exercise.
Locking the rear brake is a very dangerous thing. The fallacy with MSF is that they don't have the rider use the front brake at the same time as we'd do in a real situation. When the front is braked the bike's weight shifts to the front. This lightens the rear and makes it skid more readily. The lightened rear, while skidding, has less traction than the front, so the rear tries to get in front. If there is any left/right imbalance in the bike's load, or any camber of the road, or any amount of turn in the front, you've lowsided. If you release the rear brake while going sideways, you've highsided. Either way, you're both down and sliding faster than if you'd stayed upright with neither brake locked but braking at the max. If you hit something, you're moving faster and hit harder if you're sliding than if you're on rubber tires braking at their max without skidding. Leather, denim, steel, plastic, bloody skin all slide faster on pavement than rubber.
bill67 wrote on 05/16/09 at 18:08:47: I use the rear brake most of the time,then the front brake,I know everyone says its wrong but it seems right to me,I do the same thing on my 21 speed bicycle that I ride 5 miles every day unless its raining,But I don't lock it up and neither do I lock up car brakes. I'm 70 years young but on my grandkids wii game I come out 35 years old,Thats less than my 4 kids do.
Very wrong. On both the bicycle and the motorcycle you have much more braking effort available from the front. The old tale getting thrown over the handlebars has more validity on a bicycle with its light weight and high center of gravity, but even there the weight transfer to the front combined with modern tire rubber gives much more
safe braking capacity on the front rather than the rear.
There is no doubt with motorcycles. The combination of the cycle's low center of gravity and weight makes getting thrown over the handlebars (a stoppie) almost impossible unless one gets the bike bouncing on purpose first. Use the front brake hard, as hard as needed. Use the rear brake moderately hard at first and ease off it as the bike slows and the rear tire gets easier to skid.
On slippery surfaces we want to use both brakes about 50-50 (however we'd judge that???) and just ride more cautiously in the first place.