It's as easy as riding a bike, right? And riding is something you never forget how to do once you've learned? Well, maybe not. Learn to ride a bike steers the wrong way and you may forget how to ride a normal bike.
Science video-blogger Destin Sandlin spent eight months learning to a ride a bike with backwards steering. No, not a bike that goes backwards, but one where turning the handlebars left makes the wheel turn right, thanks to a pair of cogs between stem and steerer tube.
Such bikes are fiendishly hard to ride, especially if you already know how to ride a bike. As you lean a regular bike, you slightly turn the handlebar and front wheel. But with the handlebar geared to turn the wheel the wrong way it all goes pear-shaped.
After much perseverance Sandlin managed to learn to ride the bike. After a lot less perseverance, his three-year-old son learned to ride one too, which shows that a) it's much easier for kids to learn new skills and b) a trip to Australia is a great incentive.

11 thoughts on “Video: As easy as riding a bike — with reversed steering?”
Be interesting to see if it
Be interesting to see if it is harder to learn than a ‘normal’ cycle for someone who can’t cycle? 8>
SteveSlow wrote:Be
Well one of the things he shows in that this young son picks it up in the space of a couple of weeks, whereas it takes him months of practise.
I suspect that someone who had *never* ridden a bike, and so never laid down those neural pathways, would find learning to ride a reversed bike comparable to learning to ride a normal bike.
Really interesting video!
Really interesting video!
Hehe, a school friend’s dad
Hehe, a school friend’s dad built one of these about 25 years ago, and used it as a fund raiser at school fetes – people would pay a pound to have a try with a promise of £100 if they could ride it a certain distance. Don’t think he ever had to pay out!
The guy is a natural; very
The guy is a natural; very entertaining.
That was cool. Now all we
That was cool. Now all we need to do is mass produce the bikes and plant them at bike theft hotspots and sit back and watch the fun unfold.
Also, are road.cc combing the
Also, are road.cc combing the Singletrack forums for stories these days?
This video is six days old, but I mention it on a Singletrack thread and it appears on road.cc within an hour. 😕
I sometimes get a similar
I sometimes get a similar thing when I switch from my about-town fixie to my proper road bike or vise-versa. Trying to free-wheel on the fixie can result in a rather nasty ‘kick’ that causes the bike the lurch. But it doesn’t happen often, and after I’m properly aware of which bike I’m riding, the mental switch is pretty much taken care of.
It’s a very interesting project, although I’m not sure how much I want to read into the ‘plasticity’ argument from this one study, as I believe that that whole ‘adults are about as flexible as a brick’ thing has come under scrutiny in recent years.
I think I tried one of these bikes at a festivally thing. The person in charge had mastered it and made a big deal of riding it with ease. I think it was a ‘pay £1, ride 10m and win £10’ affair. Needless to say, everyone failed, and I expect the organisers made a tidy sum, but the experience was certainly worth the entry fee. I’d like to own one and see how long it took to get a get a handle on it…
I wonder if it wheelie the
I wonder if it wheelie the same way 😕
If you cross your arms,
If you cross your arms, putting your right hand on the left grip, and your left hand on the right grip, you can ride these just fine.. Won many £20 notes as a kid doing this at church fêtes..
M3NDEREZ wrote:If you cross
Did you watch the video? 🙂