Braking and Turning Your Bicycle (opens in new tab)

general note, sheldon brown's site is one of the ultra-authentic genuine sites of the web. practically deserving a historical society award, utterly trustable.

figuring out wherr & how far to trust your front brake is a very real topic for bicyclists to figure out. i try to leave a little bit of balance for my back wheel to do some work with but yeah, it's really about that front brake. for a while i was riding these continental lugos that came with my (used) bike- pretty low end tires not sure what to say for them, what they are for, but thise things were skid city all over the place, and made both wheel skidding out much more regular & well known. but since getting back to decent tires (my grand prix 5000's are about toast) i've remembered: all about those front tires!!

>A front wheel skid almost always leads to a fall, so if there is a high risk of skidding, you're better off controlling your speed with the rear brake.

I came off my bike and broke my arm a couple of years ago. I was riding a European spec bike and I hadn't internalised the fact the levers were on the opposite side to the UK. I barely touched the front brake coming up to a corner and went down very hard.