From my experience of riding motorcycles, the best way to stop is to use both brakes progressively increasing pressure on the front and a steady pressure on the rear. As you brake you hold the clutch in and shift all the way down coming to a dead stop and putting your left foot down on the ground.
You can use only the front but if you do it with progressive pressure it will not stop as fast as with both, the only way is to apply pressure hard to the front but then you risk the chance of locking up the wheel and doing a stoppie. Many novice riders do not have the reaction time to undo a lock wheel hence the reason for using both brakes.
If you brake with the front only make sure you have an ABS equipped bike.
It all basically boils down to this. If you are riding on the track, Front brake use is ideal because locking the rear at high speeds will make you high side. For the streets its pretty hard to lift the rear up unless you do it intentionally or you are not using progressive pressure on the front, if the rear is on the the ground no matter if even 1% of the weight is only on it, that is 1% braking you just lost if you dont use the rear.
Keith Code and most racing schools like the yamaha Championship school here in NJMP teaches you to use the front only for braking, but thats for track racing. MSF and other saftey classes teaches you to brake using both for the street.
See, to me, a lot of track riding is not any different from the street. You use a lot of your track skills on the street. Proper cornering, braking, etc... the bike isn't going to know the difference between a track and the street (barring bad road conditions, like potholes and such). Yes, you are usually going a lot faster on the track than on the road, but on the freeway, I (among many others) regularly travel 80+mph, which is track-level speed...
But then again, when it rains and I am alone on the road, I become a hooligan. I sometimes lock the rear up for fun and fish tail side to side lol
I need to try that sometime
Unfortunately I live in NYC, so I'm never really alone on the road.
Rear brake isnt totally useless, many people including me use it to scrub off speed mid turn instead of the front.
Never said it was. That and slow-speed maneuvers is exactly what I use it for.
All-in-all, I think this is also dependent on the bike you ride. If you're on a sportbike, rear brake for slowing down is largely useless, and arguably dangerous. For a big, heavy cruiser, the rear brake in conjunction with the front is probably a good idea.