Which way round do you have your brakes.

[Stick Legs]

Front right. Right.

US bikes have the brake the other way round for the same reason a lot of stuff they do is backward. Because they can!

EXAMPLE: Region B Buoyage for instance, the rest of the world have green buoys on the right going into port, green is a triangle shape, red is a can shape.
The Americans have a red triangle and a green can, red on the right entering port. WHY???

EXAMPLE 2: Imperial measurments that are wrong. Why not just use metric like the rest of the world?

Rant over... Actually a lot of American stuff is great, Boeing, Corvette, Bud, landing on the moon, mountain bikes, Greg LeMond, winning WW1 and WW2 for us...

 

[BoyBurning]

^^^ @ Kestonian

Bet you didn't make the same mistake twice...!

 

[dbmtb]

Only cyclocrossers have front brake fitted on right side lever in my part of the world. (So you can pull the cable on the frame while jumping off).

 

[Mr X]

Continental is front left, but not only. In the other hand UK / Australia / Japan / NZ are inverted.

Now, I wonder why all the Trek bikes sold here are inverted while the bike is sold in France from a US company ???

For your records, Japanese are like britts, however when time came to design V-Brakes, Shimano surveived their distributors and the huge majority requested "front left".

Then they routed the cable 90° to avoid too much cornering and less friction.

But they had to cope with "front right" users and designed a 120° pipe, cosmetically less attractive.

 

[Corduroyboy]

Funny how no-one takes into account their 'handedness' in all of this. To me, on a bike, be it ridden on or off road, it makes more sense to have the most powerful (i.e. front) brake controlled by your most powerful hand which will be right or left depending. (Ambidextrousness aside!)

 

[crankhead]

front brake on the left?! rear on the right?! garlic? bread? i went to germany years ago and had a go on my cousins bmx. i slammed on the anchors (back brake) to attempt a royal skid in front of his mates - and it turned out to be the front brake. it was sharpish. needless to say i went ass over t1t and was laughed at. a lot.

gits..