Good use for squealing brakes

My cantilever brakes squeal like a freshman girl.

I'm holding out for February when I'll have a tax return. I don't want to replace the brake pads. I want to put in V-brakes.

But squealing brakes have a use. Yesterday, riding through an area with heavy vehicle & ped traffic, in the middle of the lane with bright orange road vest and bright yellow fenders, an oncoming driver still failed to see me and turned left in front of me.

The sound of my squealing brakes alerted him to my presence and he stopped.

I am not actually sure I could have stopped soon enough before getting hit, if he had not seen me.

On the other hand, the damage would not have been much, so perhaps it would have been a good time & place to get hit. I might have gotten a new bike out of the insurance money!

By the way, I think they are toed ok, they only squeal in the coldest weather. The pads are awfully worn but my bikeshop friend adjusts them occassionally, and they stop fine. He did suggest I think about replacing them before long.

I've had similar experiences with squealy brakes. Sometimes helpful when you're trying to pass pedestrians or other cyclist that they are alerted to your presence without any yelling of "on your left" required.

What kind of bike do you have? I ask because I just went the opposite way, from V brakes to cantis on my cross bike. If you have road type levers V brakes don't work very well unless you put a "travel agent" in line with the brake and a travel agent costs about as much as a set of cantis.... (about $20). The brakes on my cross bike were so mushy it was scary to descend... V's work well with flat bar levers, like on hybrids or mt bikes.

Glad you did not get hurt! Squeely brakes also work in races. If you come up behind someone and need to pass, you come in hot and squeel your brakes on a single track, it tends to intimidate the racer in front of you and they will often yield a lot easier than if you sneak up behind them. (i'm talking mountain bike racing here, not road racing)!

Sometimes you can reduce the squeal by just adjusting the toe-in. While you have them apart to do that take a fine bit of sandpaper and take a small layer off the pad to expose new rubber. Not sure if it works on all types of brakes, but that's always my quick fix.