>>1683712>previous shop set it up wrongly because it's an "european bike"US front brake = left hand
Europe front brake = right hand
this is what you think right? Well like, why is that?
the classical reasoning is some sort of convoluted logic around hand signals and which side of the road you drive on, but nobody even understands classical hand signals. The thing to do is just point in the direction you might turn so which hand you have free is meaningless.
The reason then becomes which brake you think is the primary brake. Because of forward weight transfer under braking, the front brake on a bicycle is several times more effective than the rear brake. That is your primary brake. Inexperienced cyclists are frightened of going over the bars (really caused by not bracing your arms or knowing your braking limits) so consider the rear brake the primary brake. That's wrong and unsafe. The logic of having your primary hand (probably right) be on your primary brake (front) makes absolute sense.
The reason to have it the other way, imo, is if you want to reserve your primary hand mostly for shifting. This makes most sense on a downtube or barend shifter bike, where you take a hand of the bars to shift, but also sort of makes sense for modern integrated shifters where the rear shifting, always on the right, is still what you do most of, and maybe it's still easier to have your main brake on the other side so you can brake and downshift at the same time.
I have bikes setup both ways.
