UCI Suspends Disc Brakes After Paris-Roubaix
Stacked on top of this UCI disc brake shitshow, are all the marketers and PR this industry employs that couldn’t muster up the right messaging on discs, so we get idiotic tweets like this
And, now the race on is to develop the Safety Rotor at 1.8mm — 2mm compared to the extremely sharp 0.9mm — 1mm. How sharp? Meat slicer sharp.
Perhaps there was an engineer who sat in a room and raised their hand to say, “Those rotor edges are too sharp.” Would love to hear from him or her. Discs brakes haven’t cut anyone in mountain bike or cross racing because those racers don’t crash into each other in a mass pile, as violently or at those high speeds.
If the media’s expected role is to cheerlead the constant product churn from Taiwan’s factories, discs that slice open road racer’s legs deserve an abrupt about face, and all the destructive criticism coming their way.
The media forgave hydro recalls, but this, this is downright negligent design, in the theater of a World Tour race. The issue isn’t disc brakes, but how exposed drivetrains are. Probably, could’ve, should’ve put cowlings over the rotors right? The even bigger issue is the lack of a riders union that would’ve never let them into races because of the likelihood of injury; but there is absolutely no safety culture in bike racing. Where other speed sports market their safety, ours eschews it because of the century-old, suffering-hero, hardman narrative. The lack of tech leadership with a defining vision of what a next-generation racing bike would be is the overriding issue. Tire contact patches the size of dimes don’t help either….
If you’ve followed along and read what I publish here, our blog, and magazine, I was early adopter of disc, and will continue to ride them, almost daily. I think you should as well, unless you’re lining up for a mass start road race. My current rotation of bikes are all discs, like this one, this one, and this one too. Adding insult to injury, when asked, Shimano said, “wasn’t me.” SRAM hasn’t responded yet.
Finally, for now, 0n this use case — transporting beer — road disc brakes caused no harm, worked great, and were a very low risk.
