“I honestly believe Gary would have stopped before the red light if he had used more front brake.”
I agree with that. I even said that I could have used more front brake (if I really needed to), but there’s more to it. In that specific stop, it was in the beginning of the ride, I was going a little too fast (going about 50 mph with a 40 mph speed limit), got surprised by the light turning yellow, became indecisive whether to go or stop, so I eneded up needing to brake more heavily than I normally do, wet or dry. I knew the painted area (arrows, cross-walk, etc.) was coming up in the intersection, didn’t want to risk a slide out with heavy front braking on the painted surfaces, so I started with both brakes but reduced the front braking pressure as I got close to the intersection, knowing if I overshot the cross-walk it wouldn’t be by that much, given that there was no pedestrian, I had a clear view of the wide open intersection and cars on the cross-street have not started moving yet. So I overshot the intersection by about 6 feet, used that extra distance to buy some braking margin, but still in a (kind of) controlled manner. I’m not disputing that this wasn’t a rider error, started with going too fast.
By the way, about 2 hours later toward the end of the ride, almost the same situation occured again (I was still going too fast and I just continued thru the intersection.
To me, the whole business of riding the street safely is not about having the ultimate skills or squeezing the last ounce of physical performance out of the equiment. I work on improving my skills continuously to increase my safety margin, but safety is more about judgment, knowing what I can get away with, and knowing where I got to slow the hell down and not take any chances even if I had the skills to.