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Four Design Principles to Change Car Drivers to Bike Riders
I appreciate that you design bikes, but I think the bigger design challenge here is the urban environment, not bicycles themselves. Granted it's political, but isn't all design? There's more to bike friendly cities than bike lanes - although they are probably number one concern - it's also bike parking, lights & signals, intermodal (using bikes + public transport), bike sharing schemes, fewer parking spots for cars and more showers in offices, etc.
Yes, proprietary tools complicate stuff. You don’t need to build for those though. I agree, you can’t avoid repairing anything mechanical, but you can diminish the need for it.
While in principle I agree with #4, there is one caveat. Have some standards to the components. Repair is inevitable, no matter how much you wish it away. And with a bike being so simple, home repair will be likely. But needing proprietary tools for every single bike will kill demand.
I know many get annoyed by reckless driving by cyclists. And behaviour can and should be improved. Statistics however show that car drivers have more traffic offenses than cyclists on average. Anyway, in the bigger picture annoyances should not be the decisive factor in saving cities and the planet
I've been hit by bikes while walking in a crosswalk over a dozen times. I've never been hit by a car just because the driver didn't want to have to take their stupid little clicky shoe off of the pedal at the stop sign.
Yes, it is a complex ecosystem, but the bike itself has been forgotten in that system. The cars are not effective in cities, but their lifestyle still makes them desirable in cities. That needs to happen for bikes too. Copenhagen & Amsterdam became huge bike cities before they got their bike lanes. And the revival & accelation of bike uptake in Copenhagen coinicedes with a lot of cool bike designs being brought to market.