[trailgumby]

Maybe with a suspension-corrected fork the saddle-to-bar drop would be more manageable? Of course, then the head angle changes…

[trailgumby]

These things popped up on the radar a couple of years ago in Australia, causing a lot of emotion and opposition sentiment from mtbers, myself included.

There were one or two spotted around the place, riding on mtb trails. It was made pretty clear to those who had them that if they were seen on approved singletrack they would be detained under citizen’s arrest until the police arrived, for riding unlicensed on an unregistered and uninsured motorbike. (The power limit for electric assist here in Oz is 250w, a tiny fraction of the 3,000 or so they brag about in their marketing crapola.)

That never happened, since they’ve pretty much sunk without a trace.

Those bogans preferring motos will spend approximately the same money on a moto, and get much better performance. Those preferring to get some exercise will buy a pedal bike.

A solution in search of a problem. I doubt you have much to worry about.

[trailgumby]

A shorter stem will also make descending more confident, as you’ll be less at risk of going over the bars.

[trailgumby]

I agree helmets = good, but compulsory helmets as law and social policy = very very bad.

Not sure where the thread is heading but thought it might be relevant to share some experience from the land where the use of helmets is mandated by law.

The Australian "experiment" with mandatory helmet laws saw cycling participation drop by 35-40%, and exercise rates plummet accordingly, and never recover. On some credible estimates, at least a million more people would be cycling and exercising regularly if helmet laws were repealed in Oz.

Even the promotion of them can have unintended adverse consequences, as the Danes have recently found, when cycle commuting participation dropped from 37% of trips to 35% in Copenhagen in the wake of a helmet promotion campaign. The suspected mechanism is the implication in the campaign that cycling is dangerous.

While I always wear one when trail riding and commuting, and insist my son does the same, I think on the basis of physics alone we need to be realistic about the amount of protection a half-inch thick piece of foam coffee cup* can provide.

It frustrates me when trauma surgeons come out supporting helmet use saying "a helmet would have saved this man" when they have no idea of the forces involved in the impact, how fast the vehicle that struck him or her was travelling, and so on. They simply can’t and don’t have enough information beyond gut feel to support the claim authoritatively and is an abuse of the credibility they have in the community, in my view.

Further, they are only seeing what’s directly in front of them without considering the wider community health issues. Is the prevention of a few tens of head injury cases a year, at the much greater cost to the community of a million or more people not exercising and suffering obesity-related illnesses such as heart attack, diabetes, infertility and more, a sound trade-off?

My cousin, whom I greatly admired, had a clipstack last year when he hit a pine cone at walking pace with his road bike, for some reason couldn’t get his hands out, struck his head on the road and was killed instantly. He was wearing his AS/NZS 2063-compliant helmet correctly.

While they are very important pieces of safety equipment that I personally would not be without, it’s equally important to avoid placing too much reliance on helmets for the prevention of head injury.

* yes, I’m being controversial, but it is what it is.

[trailgumby]

One of the cheapest and most effective upgrades is to get rid of your tubes, if you haven;t already, and go tubeless.

Lighter where it counts most (rotating mass at the circumference), better puncture protection, and improved grip. You can run lower pressures without pinch-flatting.

I’ve been running tubeless for 5 years now and I wouldn’t use anything else on my mtb.

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