I confess...

Assuming skidding the rear wheel is the fastest way to stop with only a rear braking mechanism (which it may or may not be - paging Tester), they'd only be able to stop as quickly as the rider with a brake, and it'd probably be harder. With a decent rear brake you should be able to lock up the rear wheel with as much weight as possible over the rear axle pretty easily, whereas skidding in that position would be rather difficult.

It isn't; sliding friction is less than the friction of a wheel just the other side of the skid threshold.

As for front / rear braking, braking with either brake or a combination thereof will shift momentum forward to the point at which no weight is on the rear wheel and it's contributing nothing to the stopping process. So why, in normal circumstances, use the brake which gets less effective the more you use it? The bike doesn't know whether you're spreading out the braking over two rims or one, it's all just forces. Rim overheating etc. might play a role in some situations, and there are other pragmatic concerns. Like if it's very icy, or if you're going slowly down a steep decline and can't get off the back of the saddle, or if your front brake grabs, you might wish to use the back brake more by preference.

**BUT **I only wanted to know a) so I look cool and can actually DAS if someone challenges me, and b) so that I have another option for long descents of the sort IR mentions where resisting is not terribly helpful. I have a front brake and have never found a combination of resisting and front brake to be inadequate. But it'd be nice to know, right?

Anyway, this is boring and I feel a terrible responsibility for having a) brought it up and b) downloading the dull speech above which I normally reserve for nodders who are terrified about endoing off the front of their bikes if they use the front brake more than the rear. New confession >