Agreed! That's why I buy my work boots width wider than normal to make room for my toes. I want maximum protection, they have to be CSA approved in order to be deemed suitable for the jobsite. Company policy.
That's smart of you; although it's not as ideal as a proper-fitting shoe with an anatomical toebox, I'm sure buying the boots wider must help a lot!
I ride almost daily and wear cycling sandals year round (with socks when below about 60 degrees).
Adequate protection, reasonably stiff, good airflow and saves on sock washing!
I wish I could ride barefoot, but fast moving metal parts and pavement makes it a bad idea.
Cycling sandals would definitely allow for better airflow, but don't cycling sandals still have arch support as well as a heel and narrower toebox?
I destroyed 100% of the cartilage at the most important foot joint (1'st metatarso-phangial) bilaterally from decades of regular cycling in rigid narrow Italian tight fitting expensive shoes cleated in. Joints were in an unatural position and undergoing exact same repetitive motion. Along with the Hallux Limitis came bone spurring. Now I sacrifice crash protection and some peddling efficiency and ride exclusively barefoot on Pyramid Barefoot Pedals. With more than a dozen bikes in the family fleet and one that has 10 crank arms it's fine that these pedals are as crummy as they come bearing wise since I've purchased a few dozen pair at less than $10 per unit. Diane and I rode to breakfast, lunch, dinner, dance bar, and late night snack barefoot yesterday. It's nice to be on vacation! She rides 300 miles in three days every summer and several additional centuries in sandals since they ride in packs and crashes are common . I don't ride like that anymore, and also eliminated the large chainring on several of my bikes so that the chain is always protecting my feet from the teeth. I realized that too often the big ring's teeth were just waiting for action , now I'm forced to spin better as a result. Off to ride barefoot to breakfast again! We ran three times barefoot yesterday as well.
I think it's all about personal risk management. As I said, with cycling shoes, a stiff sole can really be useful. But by no means does that make it mandatory for every cycler. I find it much akin to whether you cycle with a helmet. There are pros and cons to both, and ultimately it is up to the cycler himself to weigh all the options and possible risks in order to make an educated decision about what is most beneficial for him.
I think that although cycling barefoot may be the best thing for you and some others, I also would like to see cycling shoes on the market that are zero drop without arch support that have an anatomical toebox. I think that having more choices available to the consumer will benefit everyone in the long run, even if one chooses to go without cycling footwear entirely. As you said yourself, part of the problem with your Italian cycling shoes is that they were narrow and tight fitting, which definitely aided in putting joints in an unnatural position. Having a cycling shoe where the toes are free to wiggle and splay certainly wouldn't reduce much risk for repetitive use injuries, but it also wouldn't deform the foot in the same way as a narrow, tight fitting cycling shoe would. It would give cyclers who wish to use the entire foot for push-off the option to wear stiffer shoes that won't totally maim their feet, and at the same time it also wouldn't prevent you from choosing to cycle barefoot either. I really can't see any cons to it, to be honest.
I definitely can see many cases where foot coverings could be useful tools. For example, traditional bowling shoes have one shoe with grip and one shoe that is slippery. Bare feet have way too much grip on bowling floors to be slippery, so for a more competitive bowler I bet socks would be a good alternative. You could wear one sock
without treads for slip, and one sock
with treads for grip! Or you could even just wear a non-treaded sock on one foot for slip, and leave the other foot bare for grip! Now, this certainly does not mean one
cannot bowl barefoot, but merely that in this case foot coverings might provide an advantage to the more competitive bowler that is compelling enough for them to want to utilize said foot coverings, even if they typically prefer to be bare. And more casual bowlers who don't mind a slight loss of efficiency could choose to bowl bare if they wished. (This is, of course, in an ideal situation where the bowling ally manager isn't a rampant member of the shoe police...
) I think having options is really the best possible situation, because it allows more people to find a solution that works best for them.