"Actually you are the first person to bring up this issue"

Tim McNamara wrote in message ...
"Doug Taylor" writes:

wrote in message
...

My bicycle, of which you have surely seen pictures, is my MTB, my
touring bicycle, and formerly my racing bicycle, although my legs
and arms are my suspension. I keep meeting MTB riders who tell me
that I can't ride "rough stuff" with that bicycle, completely
missing that we are out in the rough and I am riding "that
bicycle".

Sorry, Jobst, but this comment reveals that that you are out of
touch, which sheds doubt on the relevance of any of your
observations as they concern mountain biking.

I too have been told by mountain bikers "dude, you've got no business
being out here on that road bike" on trails that are easily negotiated
on a "road" bike (alhough the bike in question was a cyclo-cross
bike), especially evidence by the fact that I was passing some of
them. Many mountain bikers have an exaggerated view of what equipment
is necessary to ride through a given terrain.

A "rider suspended" bicycle, even if that suspension is supplied by
an experienced bicycle god like yourself, is an utterly inadequate
tool in this new age of freeriding over what is currently considered
"rough stuff." If you don't believe or understand this, ask a 20 or
30 -something freerider to give you a guided tour over some real
"rough stuff" and maybe you'll get a glimpse. I personally WON'T go
along for the ride; I'll just watch and be ready to dial 911 on my
cell phone.

Unless you've seen Jobst ride and have knowledge about his skills as
a rider, you can't make this judgment.

As my pappy used to say, the right tool for the right job. Long
travel dual suspension + disc brakes + rider experience + rider
skill = ability to ride in "rough stuff."

And more profits for the bike companies.

Dear Tim,

I suspect that no rider on a solid frame can match
his own speeds on a suspension frame on long, ugly
downhills, as opposed to much smoother and more
pleasant trails. I may be unduly influenced by my
motorcycling background, where we abandoned solid
rear frames over fifty years ago.

Here's an example of famously ugly downhill:

http://www.ssdt.org/2002/photos/lagg...s/IMG_0330.JPG

or

http://tinyurl.com/32z8v

Just go down this sort of stuff instead of up.
Suspension proves to be terribly useful. On
smoother terrain, rigid frame bicycles can do
well, but I doubt that anyone rides much of
this stuff on a rigid frame. There's no picture
available, but the Greenhorn Mountain trail
here in Colorado has a long stretch of similar
terrain running across the face of a steep
slope--I used to ride trials machines there
before it was closed and turned into a wilderness
area.

Riding this kind of terrain on bicycles may well
entitle people like Doug to make judgements.
You and he and Jobst may simply have very different
ideas of what rough off-road riding is. One rule
of thumb might be that if you can pedal up it,
it's not likely to be a rough downhill.

To extend your argument, the fellows with suspension
whom you passed on your solid frame bike may not
be very fast riders on any kind of bike.

Carl Fogel

Chris B. wrote:


As my pappy used to say, the right tool for the right job. Long travel dual
suspension + disc brakes + rider experience + rider skill = ability to ride
in "rough stuff."

You certainly are a tool. While having gobs of suspension travel can
be an advantage and can allow higher speeds in many cases, it is by no
means an absolute necessity. You'd have us believe that a Marzocchi
Super Monster is a prerequisite for riding across the neighbour's
lawn! The most impressive cases of riding up, onto, over and off
difficult terrain that I've seen have been experienced by watching
skilled trials riders and yes, this includes large drops 'to flat' and
'to transition' (dude). Of course the irony here is that suspension
is often (not always, often) used as a crutch to allow someone with
less than fantastic skills to tackle very difficult terrain and then
out come the equipment junkies who are the first to insist that x is a
neccessity for y, x being something new and expensive and y being just
about anything other than breathing.

Excuse me, O brilliant one. Where in what I wrote do I discount the
import of skill and experience over equipment?. Little problem with
reading comprehension, maybe?

The purpose of my post was to point out that it is fatuous for some
50+ year old roadie like Jobst, or his sock puppet McNamara, to
suggest THEY can ride their cross bikes or whatever they consider
off-road equipment in "rough stuff." No, I've never seen either one
of these blowhards ride a bike, but I'm willing to bet a brand new set
of disc brakes mounted on forks with open dropouts that they CAN'T
ride the "rough stuff" my kids ride (I'm a 50+ year old, dood; my kids
are dewbies) on their freeride bikes. No way, no how. Neither Jobst
nor McNamara are "mountain bikers;" both are out of touch with that
aspect of cycling; neither has any credibility on the subject.

I'll say again, asshole: "The right tool for the right job." An
intuitively obvious proposition for anyone with an I.Q. above room
temperature.

--dt

"Tony Raven" wrote in message ...
James Annan wrote:
Mark Hickey wrote:

As far as the industry as a whole is concerned, there *is* a threshold
at which the potential cost of failures exceeds the cost of fixing a
problem. If the problem is at the 1/1,000,000 fork level a
manufacturer might conclude that they'd be better off ignoring the
problem since the redesign would likely cost more than the potential
liability.

I am shocked that a manufacturer could be so wholly ignorant of the law.
Obviously this explains your attitude, but it does not excuse it. I
suggest you take a look at the CPSC web site and the CPSA:


I think you are over-reacting to what Mark said and misintepreting what the
CPSC are requiring - and I speak as someone who has spent a good portion of
their life under the oversight of the far more rigourous Food and Drug
Administration working in their highest risk category as the person where the
buck stopped. You can calculate the probablility of a loss of all engines on
a commercial airliner - it is finite and it has happened. It does not mean
that you need to add more and more engines (the probability still remains
finite). The certification of twin engine jets for transatlantic flights was
based on showing the probability of twin engine failure was acceptably low,
not that it was zero. A lower level of risk could have been achieved by
denying their certification and continuing to allow only four engine jets
(which have had incidents of four engine failuires). CSPC, FDA, FAA etc are
all about risk management - risk can never be reduced to zero so its always
about minimising risk as far as is reasonably possible.

Tony

Agreed, it's about risk management. Why should this risk be tolerated
given the fact that it's so easily fixed? And even if it were
prohibitively expensive to fix, don't you agree that the consumer
should be warned so that he or she can make the decision about whether
the risk is worthwhile? Were not talking about the death of bicycling
here. At worst, we'd use through-axles or go back to rim brakes.

Here's a case where I think the CPSC probably got things right:

http://www.cpsc.gov/library/foia/foi...barendspt1.pdf

A group of doctors urged the agency to require children's bicycles to
have retractable handlebars. The agency denied the request because
there wasn't sufficient proof that the proposed design would reduce
injuries and there were worries that it would interfere with control
of the bicycle. I would add that a further drawback is that making
bicycles prohibitively expensive for kids would tend to increase an
ever greater danger -- childhood obesity.

But when I look at the disc brake situation, the only significant
drawback to changing things that I can see is that it would hurt the
pocketbooks of fork makers (and maybe brake makers). Frankly, I don't
think that's necessarily a bad thing. One of the ways you get people
to think twice before releasing dangerous products is to make them pay
for their mistakes (and why should the innocent consumer have to
pay?).

Would that cost be passed on to the consumer? I think it probably
depends on whether there are competitors not effected who could step
into the breach.

Furthermore, it's pretty obvious to everyone (including the parents of
young children) that handlebars can cause injury in a crash. The
defect that we're talking about is not obvious. At the very least, the
fork makers have a duty to inform their customers of this problem. (Of
course if they did so, they would probably have to fix the problem,
and that's probably why they're acting like rats now.)

Simon Brooke wrote:


But I do know that I can stop shorter - a
lot shorter - on my hill bike than on my road bike, on the same road
and braking from the same speed.

If you can't lift your rear wheel by braking hard on the front with a
good road surface, your brakes are poor. If you can lift your back
wheel, you are limited by geometry, and this ultimate limiting factor
kicks in around 0.6g. I'm sure that there are many bikes around where
the rider cannot lift the rear wheel, but that is a matter of crappy
brakes and poor set-up and maintenance rather than an inherent
limitation to rim brakes.

James

Gary Young wrote:

But when I look at the disc brake situation, the only significant
drawback to changing things that I can see is that it would hurt the
pocketbooks of fork makers (and maybe brake makers). Frankly, I don't
think that's necessarily a bad thing. One of the ways you get people
to think twice before releasing dangerous products is to make them pay
for their mistakes (and why should the innocent consumer have to
pay?).


I suspect the reason nothing has happened is because the manufacturers are
obliged to report to CPSC serious accidents or near accidents that are
reported to them and there is not a pile of accident reports sitting on CPSC's
desk on this one. If you Google on "CPSC bicycle forks " you will find plenty
of expensive recalls either because of faults identified by the manufacturer
with no reported field problems or as a result of a small number of injury
reports. Its hard to look at this track record and then think that all the
fork manufacturers out there have suddenly conspired together to not report
anything. Does anyone here know anyone that has reported a serious accident
or near accident to the manufacturer or CPSC from this cause?

Tony

(Dave Kahn) writes:

Tim McNamara wrote in message
...
Mark Thompson writes:

perhaps pumice or slickrock might equal or exceed cement
pavement.

ahem pavement? :-)

Hmm. Some attempt at humor that's escaping the American? :-)

In British English "pavement" is usually used to mean "sidewalk",
hence the derogatory term "pavement cyclist".

Well, I wondered if it was something like that (I was aware of the
terminology, being a hostage of public television), but the poster's
e-mail address gives no indication of nationality.

Tony Raven wrote:

I suspect the reason nothing has happened is because the manufacturers are
obliged to report to CPSC serious accidents or near accidents that are
reported to them and there is not a pile of accident reports sitting on CPSC's
desk on this one.

I did explain all this last year, but the journalists did their
nudge-nudge-wink-wink routine and assured everyone that there was no
need to kick up a fuss because the manuacturers would do the decent
thing and solve the problem all on their own. You can see how right they
were...

Does anyone here know anyone that has reported a serious accident
or near accident to the manufacturer or CPSC from this cause?

Does a slipping QR constitute a serious fault? Avid thought so, but the
fork manufacturers brushed it off wih "no-one round here has that problem".

James

Tony Raven wrote:


I
look forward to reading what you receive in due course on the web site

I'm not a performing bear, and I am tired of jumping through hoops for
the sake of it. Plenty of people have professed a genuine interest in
solving this problem, let's see if any of them put in a request. I have
already asked twice, Carlton Reid (bikebiz) also asked and was rebuffed.




[space left for embarrassed silence, in which various readers shuffle
around looking at their shoes]




FWIW, I already know that the report is a whitewash, it would perhaps be
a little embarrassing to LaPlante to seee how inefffectually he
investigated the problem but I do not believe that viewing it would
really further the matter materially. I merely pointed out that it was a
whitewash that was being concealed from public view. As I said last
year, this problem will be rapidly solved when a handful of ordinary
riders report their problems. One person with a slipping front wheel has
kicked up more of a fuss than anything I have done in the last several
months.

James

James Annan wrote:


I
look forward to reading what you receive in due course on the web
site

I'm not a performing bear, and I am tired of jumping through hoops for
the sake of it. Plenty of people have professed a genuine interest in
solving this problem, let's see if any of them put in a request. I
have already asked twice, Carlton Reid (bikebiz) also asked and was
rebuffed.

You ****ing hypocritical little weasel. You heap disdain upon the CPSC for
not answering to your whims and then can't step up when some one gives you
the tools to get the information you claim is being withheld. The guy won't
answer your email so you throw in the towel and spend your days on USENET
preaching your anti-disk gospel? That's just bull****. Your little
"performing bear" retort is nothing but a friggin' dodge. If you spent one
tenth the time typing up a FOIA request you have playing around on USENET
you could have obtained everything in the CPSC files at this stage. Rather
than sit back and concoct theories, now's your chance to get some real
information. You feign shock and frustration that people are skeptical of
your position, but then refuse to ask for the very information you claim is
being withheld? What the hell is that? You either want the full truth or
you don't. At this point it's apparent you don't. Your mind's made up and
so you don't need the facts, is that it?

Now I'd like to know what your're afraid of! You've made lots of
accusations and innuendo regarding specific people at the CPSC and various
manufacturers. You've posted a bunch of ancedotal cases (non-controled, no
way to account for intervening variables BTW), suggested a conspiricy to
withold the tructh and now you choose remove yourself from the debate to
avoid jumping through hoops? Jeez, they're hoops of your own making.
You're the one claiming the CPSC is stonewalling you. Here's your chance to
breech the wall.

I suggest several days ago to submit a FOIA request, and you steadfastly
avoided the question. Why don't you submit the request, James? Or will
that cause your whole house of cards to crumble? If you spent one tenth the
time typing up a FOIA request you have playing around on USENET you could
have obtained everything in the CPSC files at this stage. I agree with you
there, it might be an interesting read. You might not want to be a
"performing bear", but for now that's exactly what you are. You're just a
little internet sideshow act for now. Rather than someone with substance,
your refusal to engage in the real world just another suggest you're just
another tinny voice of doom in the internet ether.

Submit the request of just STFU. It's your chance to lend some creedence to
what you so vociferously argue. Put up or shut up time, true colors coming
out, showing the true nature of the man. All that good stuff......

Maybe you and Mickey V should join forces....

Tom

"tcmedara" writes:

James Annan wrote:

I look forward to reading what you receive in due course on the
web site

I'm not a performing bear, and I am tired of jumping through hoops
for the sake of it. Plenty of people have professed a genuine
interest in solving this problem, let's see if any of them put in a
request. I have already asked twice, Carlton Reid (bikebiz) also
asked and was rebuffed.

You ****ing hypocritical little weasel.

Easy there, Buckwheat. It's obvious that James Annan's research into
the design flaw of disk brakes and forks has threatened your world
dramatically, and that you must lash out at him to regain your sense
of order and control. It's pathetic to watch.

You and everyone else who thinks that Annan should set up some kind of
research laboratory should stop hiding your heads in the sand, and
step up to the plate yourselves. Stop being a lazy ****** taking
potshots at the guy who pointed out the problem, and turn your
attentions instead to the people who *created* the problem- and have
possibly put your lives and health at risk. Perhaps, while you're at
it, you should read Ibsen's "Enemy of the People" or watch the movie.

This is not some ersatz court where the onus is on the accuser. Stop
treating it like one, since that doesn't further the discussion or
the remediation of the problem. Instead, hold accountable the makers
of the brakes and the forks since they have the ethical obligation to
ensure that their products are not inherently flawed or dangerous.

Annan has identified the problem, has gathered evidence and has done
the math. Several mechanical engineers with decades of experience
with bicycle design have verified Annan's analysis of the primary
problem- the existence of the ejection force. The other problem
identified by Annan, that of loosening nuts, was identified and
verified long before Annan ever raised this issue. This too has been
verified by several mechanical engineers. The problem has been
presented and the next step now lies with the manufacturers and the
various regulatory bodies.

Name calling doesn't change the facts, BTW. Neither does your anger
nor your emotional reasoning. Everybody that has disk brakes may
just have been hoodwinked by the companies that made them- those are
the people you should be challenging.