Re:Why did bar ends go away from mountain bikes?
by hinkley on Monday May 24, 2021 @04:02PM
(#27269029)
Road bike handlebars have the same problems due to the brake hoods. That got a little safer when cables started routing under the handlebar tape instead of sticking up and slightly out.
The consequences of entangling might be a little higher on a mountain bike, but that depends on the situation. Mountain bikers aren't being crowded by semi trailers as often as road bikes, but road bikes aren't flying off embankments into trees very often.
I see that there are more than a couple of models of MTB bar-ends that look like brake hoods. That's probably pretty close to the best compromise you can do, without staging a major educational campaign about how human grip strength works (middle, ring and thumb do nearly all of the work)
I think GP's point about hooking another rider might be about the bar end acting as a hook and getting caught in something, as opposed to just hitting.
So yeah, of course behind the bar end there's the rest of the bike and the rider, but what could be just two riders "touching" (and, granted, possibly falling), can turn into a worse situation if the bars of one bike catch something on the other bike (say a backpack strap) causing the first bike to steer abruptly and bringing both bikes down together.
Not sure how often this happens, but I wouldn't be surprised of this possibly happening when I see the way people ride bikes around my city, bunching up one against the other, turning unpredictably, etc.