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news
Fixed gear bike running brakeless © Simon MacMichael.jpgCalifornia county bans brakeless fixies
California’s Ventura County has banned fixed-wheel bikes from trails and bike paths.
A hit-and-run crash between two riders on the Ojai Valley Trail in September left one with severe injuries. The other fled the scene but was reported by parks director Ron Van Dyck to be riding a bike with no brakes at high speed.
Park officials therefore pushed for a ban on fixed-wheel bikes, which are sometimes ridden without brakes.
The Ventura County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the ban on Tuesday, according to the Ventura County Star.
It’s not the first time brakeless fixies have been a target of local law. In 2006 Portland, Oregon bike messenger Ayla Holland was stopped for riding a brakeless fixie, and subsequently fined.
In a similar later case in Portland, the rider managed to argue that the transmission constituted a braking mechanism and escaped a fine, but for a while some Portland police were believed to be deliberately targetting riders of brakeless fixies.
In 2010, Australian bike shops were threatened with fines of up to AUD1.1 million for selling fixies without two brakes.
In the UK, the law is straightforward. The Pedal Cycles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1983 say that a fixed wheel bike has to have a front brake, and regular bikes with freewheels have to have two independent braking systems, one of which operates on the front wheel.
We haven’t been able to find any cases of someone being fined in the UK for riding a brakeless fixie.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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46 comments
The issue that everyone seems to forget is that if you unship or snap your chain, whether you're using a fixed gear or a coaster brake, you then have no brakes at all.
Obviously they have never seen premium rush!
On a serious note, any idea where I can mount the lever on my unicycle?
**middle aged comment alert**
Can't wait for this hipster fad to die off, its seriously cutting down on the number of jeans I can actually fit my ass and thighs into without having a super baggy waist. And who wants their junk that tightly packaged anyway?
i say ban them as well, the bikes are fine, its just the hipster riders with their ironic hair and dangerously skinny jeans we need rid of.
the most ignorant riders on the road
MASSIVE biased generalisation alert!!
Next thing I know, I'll be reading comments on here that all people of a certain ethnic background cycle in a certain way. Some of the comments on here sound as biased as the LTDA filming we were reading about the other week. Calm down.
Ban ALL fixies, Ban anyone who rides a fixie!
If they call a fixed wheeled bike a 'Fixie' then they are,clearly, beyond the pale!
Did someone on a fixed gear bike finger your missus or something? You've got a right bee in your bonnet about them.
Ban bearded cyclists as well?
Absolutely not, people who ride fixed wheeled bike are first class chaps (& chapesses) even the ones with beards (although not many of the chapesses have beards).
No, no, it is those who ride FIXIES who are beyond the pale! the difference is subtle but important.:-)
Do try to keep up, or you'll be accepting terms like sew-up tire next.
Ahem.
Hang on Grizzerly. I read it again after posting and I think we do agree. Apologies there.
I too run my fixed without a rear brake, but with a front - and far from being dangerous, I'm positive that I can outbrake most of my other bikes with that combination, especially in the wet.
This makes no sense. It's a massive assumption that the accident was caused by anyone's braking capability. Much more likely somebody was just riding like a tw@t.
How many car accidents are caused by cars having faulty brakes, and how many are caused by the drivers? I just don't see how banning fixies is a rational reaction.
That said, I don't really get them myself and think it's reasonable to expect that bikes should have 2 proper brakes.
Nitpicking, under UK law a fixed-gear bike doesn't need a separate front brake if the pedals "act on any wheel or on the axle of any wheel without the interposition of any gearing or chain". So a penny-farthing doesn't need brakes.
(There's also an exemption for bikes with saddles lower than 635mm (intended for childrens' bikes but which might or might not exempt some recumbents depending whether a seat back is part of a "saddle"), and for small wheeled bikes built before 1984, again intended for childrens' bikes but would cover old Bromptons or Moultons. Which does not, of course, make it a good idea to use such a bike without the usual brakes.)
As long as I have been aware, it has been illegal to ride a bike without a front brake on UK roads. A rear brake becomes necessary if the bike has a freewheel. Nevertheless, trendy bike manufacturers market 'Fixies' without brakes as commuter bikes and cycling publications review them ecstatically.
Two things strike me about this:
1. Anyone who rides a bike without a front brake is a Twat.
2. Anyone who markets a bike without a front brake for road use is a shyster.
The latter is true no matter how wonderful his brazing and paintwork is!
I am honestly not picking on you as we had a disagreement about bike sizing the other day. My experience in various clubs over the last 40+ years has been that a fixie needs a front brake only. This was handed down knowledge but that is usually accurate. Anyway I looked it up because if you were right there have been an awful lot of people riding illegally in the UK over the last half century I know of. Whole club runs I was on in the seventies virtually all had 66" fixies with a front brake only. There was some vogue that riding a 66" fixie was good for training. I digress. I looked it up and this is the law.
http://ukcyclerules.com/2011/05/04/the-rules-of-bike-brakes/
As a general rule, if you ride a normal bike, you have to have two independent braking systems: one “which operates on the front wheel”, and one which operates on the back. (PCCUR r. 7(1)(b)(ii))
Alternatively, if you ride certain special kinds of bike, the rules can be different:
By law, fixed-wheel bikes (i.e. bikes where “one or more of the wheels is incapable of rotating independently of the pedals”) have to have a front brake. (PCCUR r. 7(1)(b)(i))
Tricycles which aren’t adapted for carrying goods still need to have two independent braking systems, but it’s acceptable to have both brakes operating on the single wheel (whether it’s at the back or the front). (PCCUR r. 9(2))
Other bikes with more than two wheels (i.e. tricycles which are adapted for carrying goods, or bikes with more than three wheels): if there are two or more wheels on the front, the front brake has to operate on at least two of the front wheels. If there are multiple wheels at the back, the back brake has to operate on at least two of the back wheels. (PCCUR r. 7(1)(b)(ii))
Children’s bikes: the two-brake rule only applies to bikes where the saddle is 635mm or more above the ground (when the bike is upright, the saddle is raised to the fullest extent compatible with safety and the tyres are fully inflated). A child’s bike where the saddle is lower than 635mm only needs one braking system (which can be on either wheel). (PCCUR r. 7(1)(a) and (b), (2))
Penny farthings etc: where the bike is constructed so that “the pedals act on any wheel or on the axle of any wheel without the interposition of any gearing or chain”, none of the braking requirements apply – so it seems that they can be ridden without brakes. (PCCUR r. 9(1)(a))
This means that fixies with no front brake are technically illegal. So are adult dutch-style bikes which have ‘pedal backwards’ brakes on the rear wheel, but no separate brake on the front wheel.
Hopefully Grizzerly we'll find something we agree about on another topic.
all the best Oozaveared,
I think if you reread what I wrote, you will find that we're already agreed on the need for a front brake with a fixed wheel. It is those who use and/or promote the use of fixed wheel bikes without a front brake with whom I have a problem.
I will defend to the death your right to use the term 'fixie', but it still places you firmly beyond the pale!
I used fixed bike (with two breaks) for one year because it was fashionable and my friends said that I will love it once I try it. They were, so wrong! At first it was fun as a learning process, but then it became plain annoying that you have to pedal when going down hill. Stupid idea
P.S. Actually, it was not all bad... I was quite happy to ride it on mini-drome.
Sorry, am I missing something here? I don't see any mention of the hit and run rider actually riding a fixie.
Would seem pretty senseless to ride a bike with no means of stopping..... but you can never tell.
Maybe the dude who got hit saw it was a brakeless bike?
thanks all for the "coaster brake" references. Last time I used them I was 8. It was in 1968. A couple of American kids lived round the corner (can't remember why that was now) anyhoo they had these and i used to enjoy getting up to full speed and then locking the brakes up. They seemsed to work pretty good for me but I must have been a bit lighter or something.....
Maybe the rider involved could just fess up and tell them "It's not about the bike but rather about me being an irresponsible f**ktard."
With regard to coaster brakes, almost all 'cruiser' bikes sold here in the US use them. I bought a $100 Walmart cruiser last year with this system and it works very well (can even skid). I'm just not sure about the life of the pads, but at $100 a throw you probably just get a whole new bike!
"You can stop a car or (4 stroke) motorcycle on engine braking if you are skilful, but I'd prefer not to share the roads with unbraked vee-hickles"
Maybe eventually you can but not in an emergency stop...get real.
Bike should comply with whatever rules apply. Period.
Two cars crashed quite recently on a road in Ventura county, one of the drivers was seriously injured. When do you think they'll pass the law banning cars then?...
Fixed (ho hum)
They are not banning bikes per say just the idiotic bikes without brakes. I would imagine that will be policed as all bikes with no brakes at some point. All good stuff really.
There seems to be a gross assumption on whether the cyclist was using fixed. All that was seen was the cyclist taking off at speed on a brake less bicycle. I mean to say, how many people actually take a fixed wheel on to a country trail or horse trail not many I can bet.
I used to borrow the old club bike must have been from the 40s for a Friday track night (we are talking fenced path around the boundary of a cricket pitch here) back in the seventies. It had a front brake with the lever on a jubilee clip. The whole brake mech and lever could be removed or put back on in say 30 seconds. I rode it home once without investing the 30 seconds and frankly did not adjust my mindset or riding style either. I came a right cropper. I would have to agree that a fixie without a front brake is not road sensible and ought not to be road legal.
Funnily enough though some old American bikes used to have a freewheel with a brake that came on of you pedalled backwards. I rode one once back in the 60s. Quite a good system I thought. Anyone know if they are still around or what they are called?
Yep, they're still around. Mainly on kids bikes though. My friends youngster has this set up on his and takes great joy in locking the rear wheel to show his prowess on braking. Can't think what they're called right now
Coaster brakes, I think.
No brakes=no brain (metaphorically) = sooner or later, no brain (literally).
Back brake better than no brake
Front brake better than rear brake (more friction under braking)
Two brakes better than one brake
Nobody looks hip with 2 tons of car resting on the remains of their brains.
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