1 handed with handlebars – bad plan

Tl;dr: If you have to emergency, stop with one hand on the bars you’re in for a bad time

Earlier today I saw a guy riding an electric scooter down the road while holding his phone to his face. One hand on the bars. I’ve been riding bicycles for a long time and the truth is I ride without hands on the bars or with one hand on the bars. Plenty of times. But I know from experience that having two hands on the bar when stopping is incredibly important and I suspect that some people underestimate how big a deal this is.

It’s pretty intuitive to think that it’s more difficult to steer with one hand on the bar. I find this to mostly be true. You have a little bit more control with two hands, but in general it’s not that big a deal.

What is a huge deal is that if you have to stop and you have one hand on the bars, your One hand will steer your vehicle in the opposite direction of the hand you have on the handlebars. Sharply! And the downside of this is that you are almost certainly going over the handlebars. Goodbye teeth.

When your wheel changes direction sharply, it’s very common to have the width of the wheel act as a break rather than as a steering mechanism. Your inertia on the bicycle will push against the tire which will now be resisting the road and will cause the wheel to stop moving forward and the vehicle to rotate around the wheels axle. This can happen at really low speeds. Ask me how I know.

So while that written explanation of this may not make much sense, trust me when I say whenever you feel like you might need to stop get both hands on the bars.