Bicycles
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Background: In the years before the invention of the car, the only way to design a city was with walking (or at least public transit) in mind. However, once cars became widespread, cities started being designed with wide roads and large areas set aside for parking. The Issue: This style of design made driving very…
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Background: Cars, trucks, motorcycles, and bicycles all share the roadways.However, drivers often entirely fail to notice bicyclists and motorcyclists. One study even suggests that drivers may often literally tune them out entirely: https://www.google.com/search?q=car+drivers+don%27t+notice+bicycles+study. For this particular idea, let’s focus on motorcycles, although the same general principle will also apply to bicycles. The Issue: At night,…
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The issue: One ever-present hazard for bicyclists is the possibility of being “doored”—hit by a suddenly-opened driver’s side door of a parked car. A similar issue confounds carpool passengers: when exiting a full vehicle, the driver’s-side passenger must open the door directly into traffic (since they cannot exit on the curb side). This presents the…
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![Easily win the Tour de France every year thanks to this bicycle secret: there’s no law that says you CAN’T enter the race with multiple people on a bike! [*]](https://worstplans.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/1-bikes-all.png?w=1024)
[*] But you would be disqualified from the race. Background: Bicycle races have stagnated due to their archaic one-rider-per-bike format. Proposal: To usher in a new era of bicycle-based excitement add variety to bicycle races, an “entrant” to the race could be re-defined as a single bicycle, rather than a single person. Then, participants would…
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Background: When a driver comes to a stop sign, they don’t intuitively know whether it is a two-way or an all-way stop. The difference is important, because a lot more diligence is required at an intersection where cross traffic does not stop. The issue: See Figure 1: if you add a bunch of trees,…
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Background: It can be hard to motivate yourself to exercise—especially since you know you can always put it off until later. Proposal: But what if we could set up a situation where you would have to exercise? Specifically: You purchase (1) a stationary bicycle and (2) a special type of heavy-duty safe (Figure 1). You…
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Background: A person can generate on the order of ~100W on a stationary bicycle for a half hour or so, for a total of 0.05kWh. This would be enough to power a space heater for about 3 minutes, or a low-draw 10 watt LED light for 5 hours. There are already various electrical contraptions with…
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