Which brake on your bike is safer to use – front or rear? A lot of new riders intuitively tend
to use rear brake more than front, because they think it’s safer. Why is that so – let’s discuss
in this video. We’ll talk about braking on a straight line, braking in curve,
combined braking, braking with front and rear brake separately, with and without ABS,
etc. And most importantly – we’ll discuss the most common mistakes with front and rear brake,
see how they play out and how to avoid them. This is pretty important video especially for
new riders, so don’t forget to put a like right now and hit the subscribe button. Let’s go!
First of all, lets see why the rear brake is widely considered a safer option? First - a lot of
people have unpleasant experience on bicycle, when they grabbed the front brake once and flipped over
the handlebars. So now intuitively they think the same thing can happen on a motorcycle too. Though
it is indeed possible, it is not as easy to do on a motorcycle as on a bicycle. On bicycle we have
really high center of mass, because bicycle itself is pretty lightweight and we sit on top of it.
With motorcycles it’s an opposite situation – it’s pretty heavy and it is located underneath
our body, so on any motorcycle we will have much lower center of mass. On some bikes like cruisers
or heavy tourers we can’t flip over the handlebars even if we want to, regardless of how much we pull
the brake. On lighter and higher bikes we still can do a stoppie if the conditions are right – if
we have good, clean, dry pavement and good sticky tires. But it is really not that easy to do,
and it doesn’t happen as fast as on bicycle. If you have practiced braking even a little – you’ll
easily avoid an unintended stoppie. So you shouldn’t really worry about flipping over
the handlebars, it’s not very easy to do, and you can easily prevent it even if you have a minimal
training. But there is a second, much more common scenario. When people just grab the front brake
on a motorcycle, very often they lose traction on front tire, which results in a lowside like this.
Why this happens? When we brake on a motorcycle, no matter how, with front brake,
rear brake or even engine braking – the part of our combined weight transfers to the front
wheel. The faster we brake, and the higher and shorter our bike is – the more weight transfers
to the front wheel. The more weight we have on a tire, the more traction we have on that tire.
That’s all very nice, but there is a catch – this weight transfer doesn’t happen instantly,
it takes some time. That means if we just grab the front brake with all our force right away,
without waiting for the weight transfer to compete – this way
we exceed the maximal braking force which front tire can handle at the given moment.
Then front wheel locks up, and when it is locked – it can no longer stabilize our bike,
and it ends up falling onto its side. Usually, once we lock up the front wheel we have less than
1 second to release the brake and stabilize the bike. An average reaction time of a human when it
is not prepared is about 1 second too. That’s why people say – it happened so fast, my bike
just suddenly dropped on its side. Therefore front brake is perceived as unpredictable and dangerous.
These are 2 main reasons why people think that front brake is dangerous and prefer to use rear
brake more. Let’s look at what can happen with rear brake! If we just use the rear brake only,
we end up with very poor braking performance. As we discussed earlier, under braking the weight
goes to the front wheel. Initially, at first moment when we start braking, the weight is
distributed more or less even between the front and the rear wheel, so both the front and rear
brake have somewhere around 50% of stopping power. However, as soon as we start braking,
the weight starts to shift forward, and now the rear brake has less and less stopping power. If we
just brake with only the rear brake it will have only around 30% of stopping power, so our stopping
distance will be about 2 to 3 times longer if we use rear brake only, instead of both brakes.
So, that’s the first problem with rear brake – if we need to stop really fast,
we can’t possibly do it with rear brake only, our stopping distance inevitably will be very long.
Second problem is that rear brake locks up much easier than the front , again – because the weight
transfers to the front, we have less tire traction on rear, which means we can exceed the maximum
braking force easier, which results in skidding the rear tire. On a straight line, when our bike
is completely upright it is not a big deal really – yes, we further increase the braking distance,
but at least we don’t fall down. But as soon as our bike leans just a bit – it starts to drift.
If our bike drifts too much – we have 2 possible outcomes – we either keep the
brake locked and lay the bike down – so we get a lowside, or if we suddenly release the brake,
rear tire will violently regain traction and bike will flip to another side, catapulting our body.
This is called highside. Highside is usually considered more dangerous than lowside, because
with lowside we just deal with abrasive wear, unless we hit something in the process of sliding,
so if we have decent gear – we will probably be ok. With highside we obviously now have to land
somehow, and on top of good gear we need some luck as well. So, all in all, locking up the
rear brake is not only easier than front, it also can possibly end up in a nastier crash as well.
Now let’s have a look at the combined braking technique. It is considered the most effective
one, and rightfully so, however it also has a downside, which is worth mentioning.
In combined braking we use both brakes for braking with maximum effectiveness, the front brake we
squeeze gradually more and more, as the front tire loads more and more, and the rear brake we
apply and then gradually release as the rear tire unloads. The trick is that there is a lot of stuff
going on simultaneously – we have to control the front brake and apply it effectively, but not too
much or too fast. And at the same time we have to deal with rear brake, which is extremely easy to
lock up, since we are breaking fast and almost all weight now is on the front wheel. That’s a
really hard thing to pull off, and it requires a lot of practice. And more important – we have
to practice on a regular basis. Luckily now we have ABS systems on our bikes, which is really
a gamechanger. Now even people who don’t practice combined braking much can use it without fear of
locking up any brakes. Practicing emergency braking is still important because we still
need to teach our brain on how fast we can brake, without that we often can’t correctly choose the
proper speed on the road. For students who don’t have ABS on their bike I personally recommend to
practice combined braking a lot, and until you really master that – you can restrict to using
only the front brake. You will still have the most of braking force, like about 80-90% of
your total braking effectiveness, but there will be almost no chance for you to highside and you
will have much more attention on the front brake, so you will have less chance of lowsiding as well.
All right! Now let’s look at corner braking. What’s going on there? Basically, all the stuff
from braking on a straight line also applies in corners too. We still have weight transfer,
so the front brake is still more effective than rear. Also, now if we lock up the rear wheel we
are guaranteed to go drifting, and if we don’t manage to release the rear brake correctly in
time – this will end up either in a lowside or a highside. And with front brake we still
have to use progressive braking technique, but now we have to be even more slow and careful,
since part of our traction already goes to cornering forces. Obviously, the more we lean, the
less we can brake. Fortunately, due to friction circle, which we’ll conveniently skip because
it’s boring even for my channel, we can brake rather hard even when we have decent lean angles.
Additional concern about braking in corner is how our bike behaves under braking. When our
bike is leaned, the contact patch of a tire is no longer on a center line directly below the bike,
it’s offset now. When we apply a front brake, because the contact patch is offset it makes the
front wheel turn inside more than necessary, which produces the effect similar to countersteering.
As the result – our bike tends to stand up and go wide. On the other hand, when we brake – we
lose speed, which makes our bike go tighter. Normally these two processes roughly cancel each
other out – our bike simultaneously slows down and stands up and our trajectory remains more or less
the same. This effect is more pronounced on bigger lean angles. On casual, everyday angles bike
really don’t tend to stand up that much. But if we try to squeeze the front brake too fast – our bike
can indeed stand up and go wider than we wanted. So, the key here is usual – we need to apply front
brake in a smooth and controlled way and keep our arms as loose and relaxed as its possible.
This way we can effectively brake mid corner, despite a lot of people are scared to do that.
As front and rear brake goes – again, front brake has more stopping power, and if used
incorrectly can end up in lowside. Rear brake has just a fraction of stopping power, it’s much
easier to lock up, and when locked up can either lead to lowside or a highside. Just like with
braking on a straight line, ABS system saves us from locking up wheels, which is a massive
insurance for braking mid-corner. New bikes with cornering ABS even prevent our bike from
standing up even if we squeeze the front brake too fast. So I again, can’t recommend Anti-lock
systems enough for street riding, they really can have our back in case we make a mistake.
So, let’s make a conclusion. Despite the popular opinion, that the rear brake is much safer to
use than front, that’s not really the case. When used incorrectly, both brakes can lead to a crash,
rear brake can even be more dangerous, because often it can lead to a highside.
More so, rear brake doesn’t really have much stopping power, so we just have to master the
front brake if we want to be able to stop fast. Ideally, we should be able to use combined braking
effectively – yes, it can be a bit tricky and requires a lot of practice, but really it always
pays off sooner or later. In this regard an ABS system can be massive help. It doesn’t spare us
from training completely, but it massively reduces the cost of our mistakes, which is pretty nice.
Here I will leave a video on proper braking technique with exercises, so watch it if you
haven’t it’s pretty important! If you like this video – please put a thumbs up and
click the subscribe button. Thank you for watching, and hope to see you soon! Bye!