[CalChris]

I'm a road biker and not a mountain biker but I do have bar ends on my urban bikes and bar ends are great for control and leverage, at least for me. But I don't get that. How is it any more likely to catch a bar end on a branch than it would be for wider, riser bars?

[dahart]

The issue isn't whether it'll hit a branch, it's whether it will let go once it happens. Get a branch inside your bar ends, and you're going down no matter what. Smack it with your regular bars, and you have a decent chance of recovering.

[hunter2_]

And the recovery is basically to turn your bars in the direction that helps the branch slide off the end, which would be steering toward the brush except that a quick torque at speed will counter-steer, taking you away from the brush.

[dev_tty01]

No, at a minimum the bar has to be moved farther than the bar end length to get the branch loose. That leads to a much larger deviation in the wheel. Now add in that you are moving forward while this is happening. It all combines to make it much, much harder to come off the branch.

If you catch a branch with a bar end while moving you are going to eat some dirt.

[hunter2_]

I should've made it more explicit, but I was expanding on the case of not having bar ends.