A week ago, I wrote about the measure l'Assemblee Nationale approved. It would give a 2500 Euro (almost 3000 USD) grant for an electric bicycle to anyone who turns in an old, highy-polluting car, which would be used for scrap.
Although I dream, to this day, of people giving up, not only two wheels for four, but also petrol power for muscle juice, I understand why some people can't or won't ride bicycles that require their own input in order to move. Some are elderly and frail; others have illnesses and disabilities--including balance issues.
Of course, that last problem is also a reason why someone wouldn't ride an electric or otherwise-assisted bicycle. Jiaming Xiong and his colleagues at China's Beijing University recognized as much. So, they created what they describe as a self-balancing electric bicycle.
What look like training wheels are attached to the rear stay. It also looks like they're mounted just above ground level so that one of them touches when the bike wobbles, or is turned.
More important, and revolutionary, though are the gyroscopic sensors. They detect when the bike starts to lean and trigger it to steer into the direction of the potential fall in order to stabilize the bike.
Another benefit I can see is that it's less cumbersome than an adult tricycle. (Are there electric or motorized adult trikes?) It would take up less space and, perhaps most important, would probably be more maneuverable and visible in traffic.
If there are positive side-effects to the pandemic, one of them just might be efforts to make bicycling, in whatever form, more inclusive and practical for more people. This self-balancing electric bike, like the French scheme, are two examples of that.
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