Arse sideways
2 March 2007Michael Killian, an inventor featured in the BBC Magazine proves once and for all with his “Sideways Bike” that necessity is very rarely, if ever, the mother of invention.
The Sideways Bike has a steerable wheel with a set of handlebars at either end. The cyclist sits sideways and operates a wheel with each hand, and pedalling makes the whole bike travel sideways.
Excuse me? What exactly was so wrong with travelling forwards in the first place? And isn’t it a bit dangerous to have your back to one side of your line of travel? Why do you have to use both hands to steer? What happens if you need one hand to signal, or adjust something, or carry your shopping?
It’s not even very well designed – I mean, just look at it, for pete’s sake.
The bar slung across the lap would probably do you a nasty injury and trap you should you be involved in an accident, and the arrangement of three chains is not only decidedly ugly but introduces multiple points of failure and creates a maintenance headache. And as for its usability…
After testing it on volunteers, he estimates only about six out of 10 people are able to master it. And he recommends getting a cyclist’s helmet with a rear-view mirror attached.
So basically he’s designed something that’s unintuitive, unusable, requires specialist equipment to work, and even then is still probably downright dangerous. And he thinks he’s a genius who’s come up with “the first major development in bicycle design for 150 years”. No you’re not, mate. You are that most dangerous of people: a well-intentioned fool who is convinced he’s clever.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that when he’s not engaged in ridiculous follies, he works a software engineer. And you can tell from looking at his barmpot contraption what kind of software engineer he is – the kind that all programmers dread. They insist on reinventing the wheel when it’s not needed, coming up with ridiculously unnecessary architectures, ignoring the problem at hand while creating five new problems with their “solution”. We’ve all been there. As Worse Than Failure puts it:
Let’s hope we never have to work on his code.
James
Not fair! The guy’s clearly a genius. I think he should be made to do the London-Brighton on his super-contraption – it would be great to see him up on the pedals zig-zagging his way up Ditchling Beacon. His sideways stance would give everyone else plenty of time to give him a full Nelson Muntz style “Ha-ha!” while overtaking.
I look forward to his patent light-bulb polish.
Zamyatin
I think if you see the original problem description for this design it all becomes clear. The problem is I find that cycling in the city is not dangerous enough.
As someone who cycles I take comfort in the fact that if I become unstable at low speed I have a choice of feet to put down -the right or left. This bicycle now allows us to use other parts of the body when we become unstable. When you wobble one way you can firmly plant both feet securely on the tarmac. When the wobble foes the other way you can be safely assured the you can stop the wobble by embedding the back of our head in the tarmac or embedding it in car instead.
I also like the fact that the bike seat is an upturned crescent. This of course means that you are secure and also meaning that should you stop abruptly (say when the bike hits something non-bouncy) you could easily tear off an arse cheek.
Yes I have worked with people like this. Didn’t people like this write some of the Enterprise Java stuff?