Is your front brake setup for left lever or right?

[anthony]

Which side, left or right, is your front brake lever?

Which brake is your left brake lever?

• Front brake
• Rear brake

Turns out your answer likely depends on where in the world you are and possibly your dominant hand or personal preference.

If you’re like a lot of people, you get a bike built by a bike shop and ride it that way. How they set it up appears to be consistent with which side of road your country drives on. It seems if you drive on the left side (like in the U.K. or Australia), the front brake is on the right hand of the handlebars, and if you drive on the right side (like in the U.S.), the front brake is on the left hand side.

I’ve seen some lefties swap positions, as have some people who just like it the other way. Maybe they grew up in a different country that drove on the other side of the road?

[Knobbyo]

One key missing reason for having your bicycle set up with left side rear and right side front, is because the rider comes from a motorcycle background. Swapping to make them the same, saves that potential, split second delay by the rider to consider which two wheeler they are riding before pulling the brake lever.

[Jayne_Rutter]

Yes, down under in Australia most people have the front brake on the right hand side. But, people with a BMX background tend to have it on the left. I’m not a BMXer, but maybe it is standard for BMXs to just have the one brake (back brake) on the right.
I hired a bike in Canada once, and almost went over the bars a few times because I grabbed a handful of front brake. whoops.