[prisoner6]

Brakes on a bike? wimps. In the days when I rode, my bikes rarely had brakes...if the did I rarely used them and that's in the hills of Pittsburgh. The hot back then was to wear gloves with pads on the palms, reach over the handle bar and slow the bike by rubbing the pad on the tire.

I'm terribly sorry if someone got hurt, however I put a lot of the blame on people forgetting how to do things that we all knew how to do decades ago.

prisoner6

[Rebelbase]

"The hot back then was to wear gloves with pads on the palms, reach over the handle bar and slow the bike by rubbing the pad on the tire"

Was that after you walked to and from school in 6' of snow, uphill both ways?

[ChefKeith]

The hot back then was to wear gloves with pads on the palms, reach over the handle bar and slow the bike by rubbing the pad on the tire.

LOL, maybe you should be using the screen name Fred Flintstone.

[PleaseNoMore]

I remember the "no brakes" days. We used our feet if our brakes didn't work and they often didn't. I also remember my brakes failing and sliding on the pavement after riding fast downhill in front of my house. The pavement took the skin off the right side from the shoulder to the ankle. My brother broke his collar bone after his brakes "failed". Shoot, looks like we could have been rich. Of course, we didn't play "in traffic" as we had better sense as did our parents who taught us not to.

[Melas]

Brakes on a bike? wimps. In the days when I rode, my bikes rarely had brakes...if the did I rarely used them and that's in the hills of Pittsburgh. The hot back then was to wear gloves with pads on the palms, reach over the handle bar and slow the bike by rubbing the pad on the tire.

You have got to be kidding. I can't imagine that providing much stopping power. My full-suspension mountain bike has hydrolic disc-brakes with 6" rotors. Even GOOD v-brakes that cost more than any Wal-Mart bicycle by themselves aren't sufficient for some applications.