Posted 09.28.2009 at 11:29 am
5 Comments
Did you use training wheels when you learned to ride a bicycle? My dad was convinced they slowed down the learning process and taught bad habits, so he just held on to the back of the seat and ran down the street with me while I pedaled. Then he let go and I fell over. Rinse knees, repeat, until I caught on to the trick of keeping my balance.
At the Interbike show this weekend, Gyrobike demonstrated its battery-powered bicycle wheel, which has an internal flywheel. The gyroscopic effect of the spinning flywheel keeps the bike erect under even the wobbliest little kid, without training wheels. The speed of the gyroscope can be adjusted, to provide less and less stabilization over time until finally the student is balancing all by himself.
The wheel will be available in December via thegyrobike.com.
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thats cool. what about both wheels?
When we are all driving our fussion powered future bikes on our future roads made of titanium then we will need bigger versions of this to stay up.
HA! cyberpunk futures!
While this is cool, it doesn't seem to offer any advantage over training wheels -- which were not part of my bike experience either.
However, IIRC, they were adjustable. You could raise them a bit at a time to provide a 'gap' before they would hit the ground.
I don't know that either option is all that essential to learning how to ride. Neither my kids nor I are especially athletic, and we managed to learn without a lot of fuss.
this would be awsome in cars to keep them from tipping over when drunks take a corner too fast.