It takes a lot to skid a bike on the road (going by my mountain bike) - usually you'll go over the handlebars rather than skid the front wheel, even in the wet.

I can stop from 15-20mph in about 4 metres (although add maybe an extra 2 metres for thinking time). Going off this chart, that would seem to be less than a car.

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

I bet you could speed in Russia on a bicycle without getting fined........

You can't actually get fined for speeding on a bicycle in the UK (probably because it is not a requirement for bicycles to have speedometers).

However, you can be done for 'wanton and furious cycling'... something I may have been guilty of when doing 42mph in a 40 zone whilst at the extreme limits of both my body and my bike

Quote from JO53PHS :

whilst at the extreme limits of my body

canada has speed limits on bikes too, pedal, motor (duh), or electric.

i've actually never seen it enforced though. where i live is a perfect candidate for it too... my city is situated on an escarpment, so there are several roads connecting the up with the down. long roads, some twisting around the curvature of the escarpment, but one of them is part bridge, and is at a constant angle for quite some distance. on top of that, at the bottom of that section, the ground elevation continues to drop for quite a few blocks. if traffic is light enough, you could theoretically pick up a lot of speed. how much, i don't know, but i know i wouldn't drive a car at those speeds down that same stretch of road.

No way a bicycle brakes harder than a car. Weight transfer limits braking force, all the available weight ends up on the front wheel, braking harder does work but is unsustainable because your rear wheel lifts off the ground.

Don't worry about the mass of the vehicle, or the size of the brakes. Both are entirely irrelevant. All other things being equal, a heavier vehicle will have a lower coefficient of friction, increasing stopping distance, but things are very much not equal. It's all down to tyres. Put super soft slicks on a truck and it would outbrake a sports car on a set of old economy tyres.

The size of the brakes only affects two things; 1) the amount of pressure you have to apply in order to generate the same braking force, so with smaller brakes, you just have to push/squeeze harder 2) how long you can brake for before the braking components overheat and become ineffective. This is why racing cars have larger brakes than road cars, despite weighing less. It's not because road car brakes can't stop a car as quickly as the tyres allow, they just can't do it over and over again.

Crashgate3 - stopping from 20mph in 4m requires a little over 1g of braking. I think your estimate is a bit off there. I'd guess it being at least double that.

Quote from hyntty :

a man is fined 1500 kr (=166 eur) for speeding. On a ****ing bicycle.

Bloody stupid pigs (police). @ 35mph if he hits anything or crashes the only person that will get hurt is himself. Why dont they go catch some real criminals. Absolute **ing joke.

Quote from anttt69 :

Bloody stupid pigs (police). @ 35mph if he hits anything or crashes the only person that will get hurt is himself. Why dont they go catch some real criminals. Absolute **ing joke.

Or the pedestrian he hits, of course.

If someone steps in front of a speeding cyclist who's fault is it?

Sorry to crash the party but this is actually fake.

Somehow the newspapers found out about this and blowed it up into huge proportions. :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzE-IMaegzQ

omg i can't stop laughing.

quality