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Aneirin -> Health and dwindling fuel, the solution ? (4/9/2009 7:35:38 AM)
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With a recent re interest in cycling, I have come to the conclusion that if cycling were taken up en masse, a solution might be found that tackles the unfit/overweight issue and the rising cost of fossil fuels, at least for short distance travel for the majority. With more people taking to human powered vehicles, there will of course be a reduction in consumer created green house gases and other pollution, that should shut the politicians up, (we aren't to blame, look at your pals in industry and stop taxing us for nothing etc).
Cycles have moved on, even in the fifteen years of so I have been away from the sport, what is available now is staggering, no longer that rickety, noisy lump of rusty metal with a seat that felt like a razor blade after a short while. There are now and have been for a long time cycles called recumbrants, more comfortable and more efficient cycles where one more or less lies down or at least lounges to power the cycle. In fact I think one of these recumbrants holds the land speed record for a human powered vehicle, something like 70 miles per hour. There are also part time electric cycles, bikes where the pedalling motion not only powers the cycle but charges a battery so that an electric motor can be switched on to assist in pedalling, or allow motion without predalling.
The weather, always a problem, cycles are being produced with full weather casings, particularly the recumbrant class, casings which offer weather protection and streamlining and in some experimental machines, solar cell technology to assist with battery charging for the electric option.
Of course for the moving of heavier loads or travelling long distance, traditional travel means are necessary, but for the private user, some kind of HPV could offer health benefits and a cheap reliable means of personal transport.
Interesting view for those in the US, but it applies to all
check out the video and as it says, share it with your statesman, a use for suffering auto manufacture industry, save the planet and health for all.......maybe.
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