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Comment by pgreenwood | Hacker News Reader

Almost every bicycle. Our noblest invention.

Agreed. Even a cheapish bike is a miracle of modern engineering, and a great force multiplier even for poor folks or folks too young to drive. I love my bike (a 20 year old Giant mountain bike that I bought to ride to college and have put thousands of miles on since).

I recently had to buy a new bike and for the first time sprung for a new one instead used, and was impressed by the equipment even on the entry-level bike I got. I'm used to bike lamps with those side clip-on dynamos, but these days even the cheapest bikes they sold had automatic light sensing bright LED lamps with hub dynamos where you couldn't even tell the extra resistance. Just feels like magic.

Yep, whenever my car needs something repaired I am going to need to pay for someone else to do it. With my bikes I have fixed almost every by myself (except for servicing the forks on my decent mountain bike).

A bicycle is also the most efficient form of single-person transportation by a huge margin (even if you generously include the calories burned).

Don't get me started...there's always someone (many someones, usually) arguing that cities shouldn't spend money on more bike lanes, when the auto traffic is so bad and there should be more car lanes. The cost of bike lanes is a rounding error compared to auto lanes; literally, foregoing adding a couple miles of additional highway lanes would pay for a whole small city to get bike lanes crisscrossing it, and could support more people.

And, I definitely attribute my good health (well into middle age) at least partially to biking so much throughout my life. Getting a few percent more people out of cars and onto bikes would help save the world in all sorts of ways, IMHO.

From mass market brand road bikes I'm quite partial to Giant. I just bought a Defy Advanced 2. Truly an excellently designed and engineered machine.

From custom builders my bros Black Sheep Bikes Road Rage Downhill custom was and is the best bicycle I've ever had the pleasure of riding.

Link for the curious: http://www.spoke.ie/2011/10/red-bull-road-rage-janos-kohler-...

Giant contract manufacturers a large portion of the world's bikes, including high end Italian brands. They definitely know what they're doing.

I'd say the real key to bicycle ergonomics is the iterative work that Shimano and its competitors have put into the groupsets. Most people don't realize the amount of ergonomic improvement that hyperglide cassettes/chains, better indexed shifters, and better brakes have brought to their bicycles.

Hyperglide was such a massive step forward when it first came out.

great answer--had think think about it for a moment to realize this.

and still it seems it's potential is largely unrealized--eg, i wonder what would be happen to the incidence of leading chronic disease (obesity, diabetes) if the fraction of bicycle riders went up by let's say 10%.

Absolutely, even the cheapest second hand bike provides immense value.

Specifically: my Xtracycle Edgerunner. Beatiful, handles like a normal bicycle but carries my wife and kids and/or groceries like a truck. I'd marry it if I were available.

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