I’m only a passive yet very interested observer of aviation but am also a fairly avid cyclist. I think the equivalent analog for bikes is that it’s much easier to track a straight line when doing 50 kph than at 5 kph. Just like airspeed is needed for rudder surfaces to work, cyclists need speed to maintain horizontal balance and manoruverability.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 days ago
Dude… I’ve gone pretty fast down some hills. It feels way safer to be going real slow and fall over than going 50 mph downhill on a road bike in a nice straight line.
TheRealKuni@lemmy.world 5 days ago
FWIW, 50kph is 31mph, not 50mph.
I frequently bike around 28mph (45kph), cause that’s where my eBike maxes out its pedal assist. It’s not so bad, assuming your gearing is set up so that you aren’t pedaling so hard it destabilizes the bike (I had to swap in a larger chainring to safely maintain those speeds).
But also the comparison isn’t whether it’s safer, it’s whether it’s more stable. A bike going fast is more stable than a bike going slow because the motion of the bike keeps itself upright. It’s not a perfect analogy for gliding, but it’s similar enough to help understand. What may seem to someone inexperienced to be the less-ideal condition is actually more ideal.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
31 mph is not too bad, but at higher speeds you start facing safety risks and instabilities of different kinds besides just falling over. Going downhill very fast on a road bike is not a super stable configuration. You can slip on turns, lose control on bumps, hit something you didn’t have reaction time for, etc.
I think planes have this too where they’re safer at higher altitudes, except not too high beyond what they’re rated for and have other instabilities from that