heaviest braking: front wheel or rear?

apart from how terribly aligned these brake pads must have been (oh the shame!)

the wear of the rear pad on the right shows how much more heavily I brake with the rear wheel.

safest I reckon.

back in the day...
I was told by Dad that I should brake more with the rear and less with the front.
as a result I have a deeply ingrained preference for braking with the left hand
(that's the rear brake lever in my country).
the rationale was that you don't want to go AOT
over the bars.
nowadays I believe the orthodoxy is reversed, and one should
brake more strongly with the front as this gives most stopping power.
well apart from still feeling there is great potential for AOTage,
I remain unconvinced.
consider this.
recently in my town it has been very, very wet.
more rain than we've seen in at least 10 years
(which frankly isn't saying much).
suffice to say everyone is re-attaching mudguards and really checking their brakes.
I have also checked my braking technique in light of aforementioned new orthodoxy.
however a number of times on my one-and-one-eighth inch tyres I have had to brake
a little harder than usual
not much
but enough in these wet conditions that the rear wheel has broken loose.
and I shudder to think
if I was not a rear-wheel braker
how the front wheel would have behaved in such a situation.
because a rear-wheel skid I can control
so long as I've got traction on the front wheel.
but a front wheel skid...
well, even the great Danny MegaSkill would be fucked.