Another one in the teach-junior-to-pedal department, an industrial design team at Purdue has come up with a bike design that encourages children to learn balancing as they begin to ride bikes.
The concept above sure looks cool and the basic action of the bike is to widen the pair of rear wheels at slow speeds (providing support similar to training wheels) and then at faster speeds the wheels angle in, requiring the rider to balance the bike just as they would a two-wheeler.
The group won the first place design award in the 9th International Bicycle Design Competition in Taiwan. They are waiting to see if any bicycle manufacturers show interest.
This kind of innovation promises to add new science to the somewhat stale approach of training wheels. While it isn’t clear what their design would cost to produce I hope one of the companies out there steps up to the plate.
