In 20 years of riding (and not owning a car during that time) I never encountered a bike endoing, though lifting the rear is inevitable under very hard braking. No-one I know has high or lowsided on roads (track is something else) due to braking, though people I know have lowsided due to gravel or other shit on the road. I locked up the front accidentally twice (long time ago), and only escaped falling on account of having the muscle memory to release the brake as soon as it locked. I have locked the rear periodically, sometimes on purpose. Neither I, nor anyone else who is a competent rider, brakes while cranked over given any other choice.
The issue isn’t endo-ing, it’s that locking the front (especially in a corner) is a recipe for disaster. However, if you are upright you should be using a lot more front than rear brake. Even in this case locking the front is worse than locking the rear, but it’s rare, and using the front is the only way to get maximum braking.
Tell you what - go out, give it some berries around a corner, and then give it a hearty dose of either brake. Write back with your experiences from the hospital…
I think you’re misunderstanding me. I’m simply saying that high-siding is more common and more dangerous than endoing. I completely agree that almost all the braking comes from the front, and that you shouldn’t be braking hard in a corner. Of course nobody does that “given any other choice”; but the two main causes of accidents are rider error and not having any other choice (and we both know alcohol increases these causes exponentially).
I’d rather lock the front wheel while upright than the rear wheel while leaned over, in any case.
Well, my experiences differ. I used to have jolly good fun locking the rear wheel of my R6 by downshifting hard which caused the rear to fishtail, like this guy is doing on this video: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=CgFxQ_mpm14 eg. on 0:37 or 1:13
I think you’re misunderstanding him. Locking the front brake does not necessarily result in an endo. Sometimes it just ends up in you falling down because a slippery front wheel is hard to control (that’s the way I did my own helmet test; the front wheel locked and slid sideways real fast, and my face went down. I did not endo). Thus, locking the rear is not necessarily always worse than locking the front. In general, you want to brake in a straight line, in which case locking the rear wheel isn’t really that big a deal and the high-siding you talk about isn’t an issue.
Well, hell, the MSF course used to require an upright rear wheel skid-to-controlled stop. Locking your rear wheel when upright isn’t that bad, you can balance it roughly the same amount of time as you can balance a bike that’s completely still.
Your original assertion was that locking your rear wheel is much more dangerous than locking your front wheel, period. That is what is being disputed. Now you’re saying something completely different by qualifying your statement to only include lockups that cause accidents. You’re disregarding the common case of a locked rear wheel causing no problem at all.
Fact is, you put me on a highway at 60mph and give me a choice as to which wheel to lock up, there is no contest: the back wheel is no problem (this happened to a friend of mine whose engine siezed while he was on the freeway. He skidded to a stop and put his foot down) unless I’m turning, and if I’m turning, either one is disastrous.