Mostly Harmless

Fringe benefits of the smoking ban

After confidently asserting to a colleague yesterday that it would be a "dry crisp night for cycling" I walked out to the cycle lockers in a thin drizzle. "Well," I thought, "at least it's not snowing."

As I left the woods near Lake Guillemont it began to sleet steadily and I lost contact with my finger ends. I got these back some miles later by making alternate fists on the handle bars as I went along (old trick). Then the sleet became heavy rain and in the darkest part of my journey, about eleven miles out, I heard a rhythmical tsk tsk tsk from the rear wheel as it began jetting its precious cargo of compressed air into the surface water.

It was flat inside a minute. This is the closest I have come to calling for backup on one of these commutes and I had this strongly in mind as I carried the bike to the nearest easily recognizable junction. But just then a pub came into view. And, of course, like most pubs these days it had a large, well lit awning outside for the use of those who are conscientiously hardening their lungs against the possibility of environmental catastrophe in the shape of huge tobacco volcanoes.

So I snuck in right under that welcome protection - it even had heating! - and started fishing out my spare inners. From time to time an old buffer would emerge from the pub for a bit of lung-hardening and give a sort of running commentary on my progress. "Ah! I see you've partially inflated (puff) the inner tube (wheeze gasp) - I don't do that. Mind you I ride a Vincent Rapide 500cc... (wistful sigh)." In my haste to get home I bust the first inner with a tyre lever - never done that before... So I put the second one on with thumbs only. "Ah! I see you've set the tyre without the use of levers (pant). Make sure you wash your hands before you leave (long drag) as dirt inside the gloves may compromise their thermal properties..."

On some more clement evening I may stop off their for a pint. But as I pulled away last night it began at last to snow heavily and I lost contact with my finger ends again. But it has been a useful lesson. Even out of season, pub patios can join the list of impromptu repair shops for waylaid cyclists.

Posted at 10:32AM Oct 29, 2008 by John Alderson in Get on yer Bike  |  Comments[0]

Robo-Cropper

How many accidents are caused, or made worse, by a mis-ordered unconscious list of priorities?

You are standing on a new carpet in your neighbour's sitting room, holding a cup of hot coffee. Through the sitting room door you are horrified to see that an ambitious early toddler has managed to open a stairgate and is wobbling giddily on the top step of a long staircase. The right thing to do is to drop the coffee and skip up the stairs as fast as possible (mere shouting often destabilizes toddlers). But a significant minority of people will waste a precious half second attempting to put the coffee down carefully. Not spilling our drinks (especially if we are guests) is a habit of almost instinctive strength; overriding it takes conscious effort, or practice.

I've had a bad week for drivers (of both sexes) on four wheels attempting to run me over on my two. In today's sorry case I had made good eye contact with one bent on entering from a side road and I knew that she had seen me. But still she kept coming, so that I was pushed into the other lane (which, luckily, was empty) as she shouldered her way onto the road. I waved (in a manner of speaking) and was acknowledged. Then she continued - not especially quickly - on her way.

I've been pondering her state of mind at the point when she should have stopped but didn't and I think the story of the toddler on the staircase sheds some light on it. I don't think she bore me any ill will. I'd guess she was following the simple rule-of -thumb "don't get behind a cyclist". Probably she's never hit a cyclist but she's been miserably stuck behind one plenty of times.  The weight of experience unconsciously favoured her trying to squeeze in front of me, before she had time to consciously evaluate the safety aspects. Avoiding a known minor hazard (the coffee / the delay) seems to take priority over an obscure major one (the fall / the collision).

So, in the spirit of The Off-Bike I propose "Robo-Cropper". The Off-Bike attempted to safely familiarize cyclists with ghastly mechanical mishaps by conditioning their reflexes. Robo-Cropper uses the same approach with motorists. Robo-Cropper is a convincing humanoid form (say, one of those crash test dummies but with lycra, nostrils, headgear and good hair) mounted on a semi-autonomous bicycle powered by a discreet motor in the dummy's torso and a novel hidden transmission through the saddle and seat-post.

An operator behind a hedge steers and brakes the bike by remote control. The dummy can give signals, turn its head and wail pitifully, but is otherwise passive and of good temperament.

The operator repeatedly sends robo-cropper across the same junctions at busy periods. Robo-cropper cycles responsibly but does not take evasive action and is eventually mown down by a driver with a mis-ordered set of unconscious priorities (or maybe just by a vindictive swine - which is less interesting...) The hope (wishful) is that the shock of believing (if only for a moment) that they have actually caused injury will initiate a rewiring of complacent safety reflexes in the driver's mind.

Obviously the more likely outcome is that all the cars will crash into each other leading to a national scandal similar to the one we'd get if some celebrity were injured exercising the more advanced options of the Off-Bike. Oh well...

Cycle safely and Noli nothis permittere te terere.

Posted at 03:33PM Jun 06, 2008 by John Alderson in Get on yer Bike  |  Comments[0]

Off-bike plugins

More training modules for the Off-bike.

Thanks are due to the helpful commentator who supplied the following suggestions:

• A car door opening unexpectedly
• A dog - particularly one attached to one of those stretchy-but-almost-invisible-cable-driven leads stretched across the cycle path (hilarity ensues)
• Riding a SWB recumbent bike and trying to do virtually anything at very low speed.

These are all good - although I have passed them on to the simulator arm of the Off-bike Project (possibly to be coupled with the haptic jacket of VR fable).

Some I have thought of since, which could reasonably be added to the bike itself, are:

• A sudden very loud noise (from a generous catalogue of loud noises)
• Brake failure - but I think this is a distinct competence
• Catastophic flat
• Seizure of the rear wheel (an option to seize the front wheel could attract high insurance premiums and get us on to the wrong sort of chat-shows etc.)
• Exploding goggles (simulates flying grit). Actually all it needs is a blanking mechanism over one or both eyes synchronized with a suitable sound effect from the loud-noise generator.
• Wasp-o-matic helmet or bike-cap (the de-luxe version will administer a mild sting-like electric shock while buzzing like crazy)

It would seem quite easy to build these in.

I was once startled by a truck driver who thought it was a neat idea to play the sound of a horse whinnying at extreme volume as he went past. I have a recurring fantasy of his trying this out on a real horse and pleading most pitiably with his insurance company after the horse has demolished his cab. (I didn't fall off but I failed to respond appropriately: i.e. to catch up long enough to read his licence plate).

I was once thrown off when my front tyre went bang while I was whizzing down a hill. I don't know if one can learn to cope with this as I have never repeated the experiment. I do now know that it is possible to bounce more than once on your knees...

Posted at 09:20AM Jul 24, 2007 by John Alderson in Get on yer Bike  |  Comments[0]

The "Off-bike"

Yesterday I was half-way up Whitchurch Hill (Reading, RG8) in a bit of a dream and accidentally changed up instead of down. As my small store of momentum dribbled away I rather savagely changed down again and knocked the chain off. This presented my cerebellum with a set of circumstances it had hitherto not encountered and I promptly fell over.

I always come up laughing from toe-clip-related accidents because they are such good slapstick - but my right knee is not laughing with me. These things are all over-and-done-with before the conscious mind can intervene sensibly (at least, at my age...) but low-level management (the cerebellum) seems to have to learn about them on a case-by-case basis.

I think my legs assumed I had discovered some new and most excellently low gear and they pedaled heartily while I was, in fact, moving gently backwards.

Hence this modest proposal:

The Off-bike

Related to the bolt-on skid pan favoured by advanced driving schools I propose a training bike with built-in radio controlled sabotage:

1. A device which disengages the cranks - simulating a chain outage
2. A spring-bolt which suddenly liberates the handlebars
3. An "unstabilizer" which can be silently primed to actuate next time the rider brakes hard and which causes the bike to tilt in the rider's non-preferred direction. This tilt could be generated by a third wheel which juts out to order.
4. ...other suggestions...

The trainee rides around a traffic-free circuit (with hills) while the operator remotely triggers random disasters giving the rider ample opportunity to train his or her reflexes in a safe environment (with kneepads). I'd be particularly impressed with someone who learns to stop gracefully when the handlebar option is triggered without warning. I guess you could build a bike simulator for this but it wouldn't be half as much fun - and "no pain, no gain" is not an empty mantra for these particular feedback loops. I remember the first time I successfully, unconsciously, yanked my right foot out in time when I was tipping the wrong way. There was, immediately to my right, a large and chilly-looking puddle...

Posted at 10:27AM Jul 09, 2007 by John Alderson in Get on yer Bike  |  Comments[1]