muddled up hands

tompsk73

heres a stupid question! I cant remember which hand controls which brake! Im putting some new levers on the bike and I was raised using the rear on a specific side, but I cant remember which? Ive been living in france for a few years and They use the wrong method; so now Im all muddled. Is the traditional method (may sometimes be called moto?) right hand rear brake or left hand rear brake? Ive lost my intuiition!

adb1006

Left hand rear, right hand front is the traditional (English) method i believe. Then the shifters are the reverse of that.

RealMan

Thats the english way of doing it, everyone else does it different. Easiest way of finding out what youre used to is just try to skid and throw the back end round instinctivly. If you do an endo and go over the bars, you know youve got them the wrong way round.

tompsk73

I think you are right with left hand rear, other way to the shifters. I will wire it up that way and relearn thirty five years of lost instinct! Cheers chaps

Daz555

Right hand front brake is also standard on motorcycles.

cee

set em up with your most controllable hand for the front brake.

left handies would probably prefer the front brake on the left, as they could feather the front brake with more control.....

of course....after using brakes one way around for long enough would make it difficult to unlearn that way and learn another.

mhuk

The usual system is to have the rear brake controlled by the lever on the side of the bicycle that corresponds to the side of the road that it will be driven on, i.e., right in most of the world; left in the British Isles, Japan, and other places where they drive on the left.

Nobody knows exactly why this is. My theory is that it is based on the reasonable idea that you should be able to have your primary braking hand on the handlebars while making a turn signal with the appropriate hand--coupled with the erroneous idea that the rear brake is the primary brake.

I prefer to set my own bicycles up with the front brake controlled by the right lever. This allows me to signal and stop at the same time, and also lets me use my stronger, more skillful hand for the more critical front brake. (I rarely use my rear brake.)

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/brakturn.html

Daz555

cee wrote:

set em up with your most controllable hand for the front brake.

left handies would probably prefer the front brake on the left, as they could feather the front brake with more control.....

of course....after using brakes one way around for long enough would make it difficult to unlearn that way and learn another.

Handedness is not really related to ability to coordinate, just a preference. Just look at a right-handed guitar player and the dexterity required in the left hand.

Much better I think to stick to standards where possible as it makes life easier - and also makes hopping on other people's bikes a lot safer. Would be a bit of a pain if you moved to another country with a different standard, you'd either have to re-learn or put up with the inconvenience of having a non-standard setup.

It is of course strange that motorcycles have standard controls worldwide and bicycles do not.