Quote Originally Posted by liza View Post
Pitching over the handlebars can be easily avoided by proper weighting/locking your arms when you use your front brake. People who advocate using the back brake only/first in an emergency have apparently never experienced the pleasure of a back brake skid and associated fishtailing, which is not nearly as easy to prevent as an endo. Fun stuff. If you have steady nerves you can usually get out of it and avoid a crash, but for a newbie or someone who is prone to freaking out, it can certainly cause loss of control.

So I say front brake is the one to reach for in an emergency. But of course, you still need to know which is which.
But if you ONLY reach for the front one in an emergency you are GOING to crash (that is, if your brakes are set up to actually stop your bike in reasonable time). Sorry, if it's an "emergency" then I'm going fast enough that no amount of locking my arms is going to compensate for locking the front wheel up and I'm not likely to have time to lock my body out behind the seat (and if you have that much skill and time you are going to be grabbing both brakes anyway!). You MIGHT crash if you grab just the rear. Also the crash resulting from a fishtail is much less painful than an endo the majority of the time (I'd rather slide out and get some road rash any day if the alternative is flipping over the bars onto my collarbone or head...)

Of course the answer is to grab both and learn not to lock the wheels down (if you manage that you won't fishtail or endo). I tend to grab my rear a fraction of a second sooner, just to be sure.

And that's coming from someone who routinely uses just the front brake as appropriate for non-emergency slowing and stopping. I rarely if ever use just the rear. So I'm plenty comfortable with my front brake. No way in heck I'm "slamming on the brakes" with just the front though.