Uncontrollability of a bricycle (2014) [video]
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[0]: A fixie is a bike with no freewheel. So the pedals follow the back wheel, and the other way. So if I pedal backwards, the bike goes the other way.
(1) In Germany we do this in clubs and proper sports halls as seen in the video with elastic flooring. Don't attempt tarmac until you definitely know what you're doing.
It's also very safe to try out and do, which is counterintuitive to most people who haven't tried. Overwhelmingly the most common failure mode on a unicycle is that you just stop riding it, and then it either gets ahead of you or behind you, and you hop onto the ground.
Your body's also always approximately vertical no matter what they incline you're riding up/down is. So e.g. riding down stairs on a unicycle is much safer than on a bike, if you screw it up you just let it roll ahead of you and you're standing on the steps.
I'll do that without hesitation on a unicycle, but on a bicycle there's no way I'm doing that on on anything except a mountain bike I trust.
Ha. My experience with a unicycle was the exact same as my experience with Segway and Hoverboard: flat on my back, knocked-out cold, with back-sprain that lasted months.
But then there are 36 inch unicycles, which can go quite fast. I started with a 24' (< 10 km/h), then I bought a 29' (< 18 km/h). The 29' does feel fast. One day, I'd like to buy a 36', which would be a bit slower than a bicycle, but still quite fast. Some people ride them around the world [42].
Maybe not as elegant as the artistic cyclists, but that almost incidental level of control is insane.
note to self knock up wife.. get child fixie bike.. take bike for self when kid is at school xD I'm sure the experiment will be worth the college debt.
I tried to learn riding backwards last summer, too. Eventually I stopped because I needed the bike for actual riding and my knees preferred having a freewheel. A ridiculously low gear seemed to help, I tried 40x20 (on a 622 with 165mm cranks) for a while.
Off topic: I didn’t do it for speed though, I did it for typing comfort, and as someone who has had RSI scares, I’m really happy with my decision (and with my decision to get a Kinesis Advantage ergonomic keyboard). My two main activities these days are hand-intensive: typing and sleight-of-hand card magic. I need my hands to be in good shape! Honestly, I’m a little baffled by how few programmers use ergonomic keyboards, since their hands are so important to what they do, but only a little, since it took me years before I finally bought one myself despite thinking about it for a long time (I regret not doing so sooner).
> Pity I work on the road a lot and have to still use laptop keyboards a lot of the time.
Yeah, I use laptops and an iPad too and its obviously not very comfortable in comparison. Luckily I've managed to avoid it a lot lately, but its not always possible. It really sucks when I have to use an ordinary keyboard though and I definitely feel the discomfort :/
If you're thinking of switching (or not) to a product or service because of the inventor's personality, you're already "not cool".
If people based their use of Linux on Linus's personality, it'd still be a hobbyist OS.
I would occasionally lose the muscle memory too, for about a week at a time.
But taking the headset off, now everything was upside down.
Interesting dude. Experiments seem to have been about a century ago.
(I thought I'd read that this had been done earlier, but Stratton comes up when looking for "glasses that turned everything upside down" as mentioned)
But try this: Try following a straight marker on the road on your bike. It's very hard. When you start going too much to the right, you will find it impossible to actually nudge the bike back to the left, unless you accept that you have to go further to the right first.
This also happens when driving close to a curb. It feels like it's sucking you in.
So I think it is correct to say that countersteering is always required.
Only on a motorbike.
The same applies to a bicycle.
Only above a certain speed, at low speeds countersteering will not work
Similarly above a certain speed on a bicycle countersteering is the only way you can turn
The only time you steer left to go left is if you're going so slowly that the only reason the bike doesn't fall over is because of your near-superhuman balance. That is to say, when you're practically at a standstill. Anywhere approaching walking pace or above, if you try to turn left by steering left, you'll fall off the right hand side before you make any appreciable turn.
Well, if you're leaning left when steering left, I don't see how you'll fall to the right
Or perhaps I'm doing it unconsciously?
You are. I proved this to myself once by applying pressure to the handlebars using only the palm of my hands on the backside of each handle. Even at very slow speeds, I could not for the life of me turn left by applying pressure only to the right bar (to turn the front wheel to the left). No amount of leaning helped. To lean the bike, I needed to create some external force to push it over. Leaning my own body to the left just made the bike lean to the right.
This is counterintuitive to me as a regular cyclist, but I realize that most of my cycling skills are completely unconscious, so I don't have a lot of confidence in my ability to describe exactly what I'm doing on my bike.
At first I was having a hard time turning, because this whole counter-steering thing didn't come naturally to me and I would try to turn the handlebars to the left if I wanted to go left, but the bike would go the other way witch was pretty scary.
I then internalised this and the next time I rode a bike I tried this out, and indeed, this is how it works. If I turned the handlebars left at any considerable speed, the bike would lean to the right and start turning right, with the handlebars going right. It would go a slight bit left at the very beginning, but then it would go all the way right.
When I think about it, at slow speeds (say below 25 km/h - 15 mph) I only turn the handlebars and lean the bike. However, I can lean the bike at those speeds, so no counter-steering is required. I first lean the bike and then turn the bars. However, it's very difficult to have it lean any useful amount at speed. And this is where counter-steering is useful.
Here's a video where this is all explained, complete with fixed handlebars (that don't steer the wheel) to show how just leaning doesn't do much : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_5Z3jyO2pA&feature=youtu.be...
Granted, this is way more noticeable on a motorbike that on a bicycle. Maybe the weight of the wheels and of the whole bike has something to do with it. If I lean a 10 kg bike but stay upright on it, the centre of gravity doesn't move much. However, on a 300 kg motorcycle, it moves quite a bit more.
PS: Picture how a car turns, the wheels are vertical and you can you can turn without counter steering just fine but the weight externally offset. The difference with a bike / motorcycle is just how difficult it is to balance.
I am not sure. If you lean left, then the handle bar ll slightly turn left automatically.
In actual countersteering, it greatly helps only because it helps to quickly initiate a tilt in the required direction. For example, if you want to go to left, then turn the handle bar to the right, which causes the front wheel to slight start to offset in the right, which in turn causes the whole bike to tilt to left, and once it start to tilt to the left, then the normal process of turning is applied...
When you lean to (your) left, the center of mass of you+bike goes left of the plane of the wheels, this causes the front wheel to rotate away (i.e. right) from the motion slightly which causes you to bank left and the front wheel comes around to meet it until you are in equilibrium again.
Countersteering doesn't "help", it's just unavoidable. Being aware of it helps you have better control. At very low velocities the effect is so minor you probably can't notice (and steering angles are large).
This does not seem correct. Why does it cause the front wheel to rotate away (right) ?
If you lean a stationary cycle to the left, the front wheel will turn left.
With counter steering, it can be made much quicker and in a much responsive fashion.
There is nothing magical about countersteering, it’s just the way cornering works with bikes.
Don’t believe me? Set up an angle indicator and video it.
In context this was clear but I should have been more explicit.
If I'm in contact with the top of my bike and not steering the bars, I can either push the top of the bike left or right. I push the top of the bike to the left. The bike and I have separate moments of intertia around longitudinal axis. Without any other forces involved (just my bum and the top of the bike pushing each other), the bottom of the bike i.e. the contact patch would move to the right. However, there's friction between the tyres and the ground meaning that doesn't happen. Instead, the ground pushes the bottom of the wheels to the left. This means the only external force on the union of rider and bike is from the ground pointing leftwards. This pushes the COG to the left.
While the motion of the top of the bike may cause some countersteering in the front wheel if left free, you can resist this by pushing the right side of the handlebars i.e. steering left. So we now have a bike tilting to the left, with the front wheel pointing forwards, and the COG to the left of the contact patches. The front wheel can be gently pushed to point left.
No countersteering involved.
Why does it cause the front wheel to rotate away (right) ?
Agree. But this is not what the other person is saying.
If you just turn the handlebars (which would cause the bike to lean in the direction of the turn), you will end up creating a force at the top of the wheel in the opposite direction of your tilt. (e.g. the force will be at 12 o'clock)
If you just lean in the direction you'd like to turn, the wheel will turn in the opposite direction of the lean. (e.g. there will be an opposite force at 9 o'clock)
In order to turn you must always briefly steer in the opposite direction you'd like to turn, so that you may lean in the direction you'd like to turn, which will allow you to turn the wheel in the direction of the turn without upsetting the bike.
I learned this fact about 2 years ago and I've been hyper-aware of the fact ever since. Try as I might, it's literally impossible to steer a bike without counter-steering.
The fact that you absolutely must counter-steer to turn is one of the reason why inexperienced bike riders tend to fall over when they need to steer in an emergency, because they just twist the handlebars, which catapults them off the other side.
Knowing this also helped me finally learn to ride a bike with no handlebars, since you have to lean opposite the direction you'd like the wheel to go.
Countersteering moves the bike to one side which means you're no longer balanced and so rapidly fall the other way initiating the turn.
Picking gravel out of my arm for hours after.
And I even drive at night, without light on forrest roads without hands ;)
So maybe I push my luck too much, but I am also confident in my skills and reflexes ...
Try turning on a 200kg motorcycle going at 100km/h by simply leaning on it, you'll be disappointed... See for instance https://youtu.be/8_5Z3jyO2pA?t=2m24s . Later on the video they show that letting go of the handles and leaning with your body also works but only because it actually causes the bike to countersteer "on its own".
You will be physically pushing the left hand and pulling your right to set the bike up for a left turn, not just "thinking" it - so as to speak. Of course it is entirely intuitive, until perhaps you stop to think about what actions you are taking, and then realise yeah that's countersteering all right.
#) It's been a few years for me now and I only got a few ride days in after also completing Superbike Cornering School lessons, but I found the art of riding my (then) 600cc GSXR motorcycle on a high speed circuit (Phillip Island) extremely meditative - and exhilarating, especially after learning the function of the knee sliders to assist with controlling lean.
Sounds like you've never ridden a motorcycle? It's obvious on a motorcycle that you counter-steer all the way through a turn.
If you analyze bike steering more carefully, you will also find that you're always counter-steering. But the definition of counter-steering might be different than you think.
You have to think about the front wheel's turn angle in relation to your turning radius. If you're riding in a right turn circle, then your wheel position will be turned right and not changing. In order to change that turning radius, you will always steer in the opposite direction of your desired direction relative to where your steering is at steady state.
So counter steering doesn't mean that if you are turning right your wheel is left of center. Counter steering means that to turn more right, you need to steer left of where you were. When making small adjustments, your steer might be right of center at all times even though you go from a right turn to a sharper right turn.
In other words, it's the delta of your steering angle that is always counter, not the position of your steering angle.
Does that make sense?
One easy way to understand why you're always counter-steering was given in the video: a bike is physically equivalent to an inverted pendulum. In order to move the pendulum in a given direction, you always have to move the base the other way, at all times. This is true on a bike too.
Once the turn has been initiated and you are in the turn, I don't believe you continue to counter-steer.
I think instead that once in a turn you feel a force trying to continue the front wheel deeper into the turn and you must maintain a counter force to prevent that. It seems unlikely that the front wheel is actually angled out away from the turn.
Sounds like you haven't ridden a motorcycle? In a hard right turn, you will need to keep constant pushing pressure on the right handle (steering left) in order to stay in the turn.
And maybe you didn't follow the rest of my comment? Counter-steering doesn't mean your wheel is left of center during a right turn. It's referring to a change in turning radius. At all times. Yes, your wheel might be turned right during the stable lean angle of a right turn (or it might not) but "counter steering" is referring to when you change your turning radius. You always steer the opposite direction that you were steering before. If you're in a right turn and want to turn sharper, you steer the wheel left of wherever it is. If you're in a right turn and want to straighten out, you steer the wheel right of wherever it is. It doesn't matter where the wheel is, all that matters is which direction the change happens.
If you're in a stable lean with a constant turning radius, then your steering isn't changing, so I guess perhaps technically you're not counter-steering, because you're not steering? This is more confusing than clarifying, and not always true anyway. It's better to realize that the "counter" in counter steering is referring to the derivative, not the absolute value. It's referring to the change in steering, not the angle the wheel is turned.
> It seems unlikely that the front wheel is actually angled out away from the turn.
You might want to google gp moto pictures before making claims, you can find tons of images of racers in the middle of the turn with the wheel angled outward. For example: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dtCD63fKw58/maxresdefault.jpg
Repeating this is so unnecessarily condescending.
> In a hard right turn, you will need to keep constant pushing pressure on the right handle (steering left) in order to stay in the turn.
This is not usually true (though sometimes is at slower speeds.) Bike geometry and speed changes how this works a good bit [1][2]. Tracking my old 600cc, I'd need positive at slower speeds, but would need to steer into the turn once I had a good lean angle at anything 60mph+.
> You might want to google gp moto pictures before making claims, you can find tons of images of racers in the middle of the turn with the wheel angled outward. For example: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dtCD63fKw58/maxresdefault.jpg
This is really uneccessarily condescending again. Also, that really looks a rider deepening lean as he rounds the apex. I'm thinking that wheel's not staying at that angle for long.
I encourage you to check the tone of your comments. Being rude to folks, especially while being wrong while doing it really brings down a community, and I hate seeing that happen on HN.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/Countersteering#Stable_lean [2] https://www.cycleworld.com/2013/10/25/know-how-to-counterste...
I didn't mean it to be condescending, it's an honest question. People commenting don't seem to have the experience to back up their comments. I know for a fact that a hard turn on a motorcycle sometimes requires obvious counter-steering even during the stable middle of a turn, because I've done a lot of riding. I agree that bike geometry and speed changes things, but you've just validated what I said with your experience.
> I'm thinking that wheel's not staying at that angle for long.
Your assumption is incorrect, you can see it more clearly if you watch videos. The extreme counter-steer during moto races happens all the way through a turn, and then it happens in the other direction in order to end the turn. The part you and the parent comment missed is the bike forces try to un-lean when moving forward, and it becomes very apparent at higher speeds, so constant counter-steering is necessary.
> I encourage you to check the tone of your comments. Being rude to folks, especially while being wrong
I know it can be very hard to understand someone's tone, but it's equally wise to check your assumptions and your own tone. I was simply trying to make my point clear precisely because it appeared the comment above didn't understand what I said the first time.
You've claimed I'm wrong, but I don't believe I am, and I've provided evidence for my case. From my point of view, pushing back on that without evidence is rude, as is arguing against my first sentence apparently without reading the rest of the clarifying explanation.
BTW, what you didn't see is that I upvoted @JKCalhoun for engaging in the discussion.
It really is a form of not-at-all-subtle trolling. If you feel like you're talking to a wall on the internet, the correct move is to stop interacting with a waste of time.
Or don't repeat yourself, because the text is static, and it's not required. You put it there once, and it's still there. Forum sliding with spammy garbage doesn't make friends. Saying the same thing a different way still amounts to an internet fight, but it's arguing without trolling.
You've mis-read my motives and this situation, perhaps @jaxwerk's suggestion that I was being condescending was enough to convince you it was true, however that comment is making an incorrect assumption. I didn't feel like I was talking to a wall, I asked the same question of a different person, a person who after I asked the first time, suggested that motorcycles tend to lean into a turn when turning. If you've ridden a motorcycle and know how to counter-steer, you'd know that motorcycles tend to right themselves while turning and that you have to keep counter-steering in order to maintain the turn.
My question was honest. I know from experience that the question of whether someone has ridden a motorcycle is very important when discussing counter-steering. Many people who've only ridden bicycles don't believe counter-steering exists at first. The people who understand counter-steering are the people who've taken a motorcycle safety course and/or learned about motorcycle racing and/or experimented while riding. It's much, much easier to feel & understand counter-steering on a motorcycle than a bike, and it's far, far more important.
>Does that make sense?
No, but English is not first language, I'm lacking some technical vocabulary.
How about this? If you sit still on a moving bike, and you don't try to lean, bike steering changes your lean. While you are turning your wheel further to the left, your lean to the right is increasing (your right side turning radius is decreasing).
That's it. That works for negative angles and negative lean, meaning if you're steering right and leaning right, then you start moving your wheel to the right, your left lean increases because your right lean decreases.
And it's always true. No matter where you start, you could be already turning left or right, steering more to the left always sharpens your turn to the right.
Does that make any more sense? I really do want to find a better way to describe counter steering so it becomes more intuitive and easier to understand.
Limits (compared to regular turning) are your lowest speed is higher (where you'd lose balance without holding handlebars) and the fact your center of gravity and stability are messed up (can't turn as tightly). And self preservation of course.
Another limits is that you've got a delay to reach the brakes, which can make it dangerous for others in addition to yourself. And I agree that having your center of gravity moved up really mess up your stability.
Or cheap basic road bike.
Turning by leaning only works at all because when you lean it causes the handlebars to countersteer.
To prove it, lock your handlebars so that they can only point straight forwards, and then see how easy it is to steer. It's practically impossible.
It's impossible to start going straight even. The point was that leaning will initiate the turn (no limits on method).
That's totaly not my experience.
I meant it more as a comparison between anecdotal evidence vs research evidence. I.e., someone saying "I've never seen a fire, I'm not sure why we need to bother with fire drills."
Maybe better would be "why bother getting vaccinations, I've never seen a bacteria in my life."
There's just one thing that I don't understand: on a bike, with the hands of the handlebar, I can turn right by leaning right, but I don't understand how leaning right would cause the countersteer left.
Here's another video that helped it click for me when I didn't get it either https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgUOOwnZcDU It's more "phsyics-ey"
When your hands are off the handlebar and you "lean right," the handlebars won't visibly "turn left," and if they do it will only be for the briefest moment. It only takes the tiniest countersteer to cause the "lean angle." It has to happen because your handlebars are non-rigid.
Let me know what you think after the video above. IIRC it has the "rolling cup" example, which for me works best.
I watched the video above and another one and I'm getting it a little better. Also another thing is that recently I've been riding a bike rather slowly, at speed where countersteering is not necessary and less visible, as shown in another video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C848R9xWrjc). And as for countersteering while the hands off the handlebars, I realise that usually my eyes are on the road, not the handlebars, so I'd easily miss the brief countersteering.
Thank you for your patience too!
This 3 minute video explains how important counter-steering is with some actual experiments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWuTcJcqAng
I think counter-steering is misunderstood since people assume it means that if you're turning right then your steering has to be left of center. But counter-steering is referring to the direction of change, the steering delta, not the absolute steering angle. You always steer in the opposite relative direction from what you'd do in a car. This is still true on a bicycle at 1mph.
A better way to think about this is that bikes turn by banking. The method of controlling the angle of bank does not map in a simple way to the direction of turn.
Some things can't really be simplified (and perhaps shouldn't be).
Sure it does! (Unless by "simple" you're ruling out derivatives). If your wheel angle is moving right, then your bank angle is increasing left (or IOW, your left turn is becoming sharper, left turn radius is decreasing). While your wheel angle is moving left, your bank angle is increasing right. Whenever you stop moving the wheel, your bank angle will stop changing and you will be in a constant radius turn.
> I doubt anyone would bother to call it "prosteering".
Not sure I understand this objection... there's no rule about symmetric or consistent prefixes. Lots of things called X have a counter-X (see also anti-X). Examples: counter-intuitive, counter-insurgency, counter-strike, counter-reformation, counter-current, etc.
Counter-steering is differentiating from steering. But there's no need to differentiate normal steering from steering, so we don't normally prefix things with "pro", unless you're talking about someone who advocates for something. I think there are a few counter-examples to that in physics though. :)
In motorcycle safety, it's rather important to call out the counter-intuitiveness of counter-steering. People's reflexes tend to do the wrong thing in tight situations where quick steering is needed. If you need to turn right very quickly and haven't learned counter-steering, you can injure yourself by trying to steer right, and many people have.
It's pretty common for riders who haven't learned counter-steering to believe that leaning hard will be sufficient, and/or that body lean is as or more important than steering. But to turn very quickly, knowing about and being able to counter-steer is incredibly important.
Once you can stabilize a no-hands ride, try pushing on the handlebar with one finger. You will find the the bike turns in the opposite direction of what you would naively expect. The harder you push, the tighter the turn will be in the "wrong" direction.
Not true - you just have to shift your weight to the left.
Not true - because of conservation of momentum (in the perpendicular direction) if you shift you weight to the left the bicycle will lean to the right and the center of mass will remain unchanged.
It's called countersteering, look it up.
Didn't you see just yesterday that lunatic claiming that the "4-color map theory is bunk"? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16862553
What exactly is your claim? That you can turn left without touching the handlbars, or that you can turn left without first having the bicycle steer right?
That you can turn left without having to "go right". If you tilt to the left by shifting your weight (and that's something I actually found almost impossible to do consciously - when I first learned to ride a recumbent I had to learn to weight shift before turning the handlebars all over again, for the same reason as people countersteer - when I tried to just turn with the handlebars I fell off, so I'm familiar with the effect we're talking about - but if you just lean to the left your body figures it out, or at least mine did) you'll turn to the left and follow the line just fine.
Then you're wrong, and mixing handlebars into this is just you trying to obfuscate.
You claim that "Every article you'll find will point out that on a light vehicle like an bicycle you don't need to countersteer with the handlebars". I'm guessing you're regurgitating [0]. At least you looked it up like I suggested, respect. But it says that you don't need to countersteer with the handlebars because you can countersteer without the handlebars. You're still countersteering, as can be seen by the initial bump in the middle graph [1].
Anyway, like someone else said this is starting to look like YouTube comments.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countersteering#Countersteerin...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Countersteer_response.JPG
Don't flatter yourself. I had read that article or another like it years ago.
> it says that you don't need to countersteer with the handlebars because you can countersteer without the handlebars.
You're right. I misunderstood, and I've learnt something - that explains why it was hard to lean over consciously. We'd've got here a lot sooner if you'd put half as much effort into engagement as you do into condescension.
That's because you're pedaling. If you stop pedaling, you can't.
On a good day I can ride along the top of a handrail.
To keep a bike going straight at low speeds, you shift your weight, and by that I mean you swing your elbows or you knees, not your whole body.
You also can vary the sensitivity of the steering input by controlling how much of your weight is over the front wheel.
You can also use the front brake if you are deviating from your line. It allows you to push against the resistance generated to realign your center of mass.
"Sharp turn" has smaller radius, therefore much larger the force. By turning in the opposite direction first, you're making the turn much less sharp, increasing the radius and thus reducing the force.
This holds in general for any motion where velocity is a continuous function of time, doesn't it?
Let f(t) be your deviation at time t perpendicular to the desired straight path, with positive to the right and negative to the left.
If you are "going too much to the right" at time t, e.g., f'(t) > 0, then because f' is continuous there must be some interval around t such that f' > 0 at all points in the interval. That means that f is strictly increasing throughout that interval, e.g., "you have to go further to the right first".
Just turning the handlebars causes adverse roll in the other direction. If you are falling to the left, turning the wheel to the right causes an opposite roll and restores balance.
Turning the handlebars the opposite way momentarily is a great way to start a turn because of the adverse roll that it causes.
[0] One of you is about to tell me exactly the name and author now, aren't you?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0
(both interesting and funny)
Similarly with the zero gee pendulum keep going far enough and the end would move to the left as it's only so long. Then reverse the process to move the pendulum to an arbitrary position. Alternatively, use vastly slower motions and the friction with the arm will counteract tiny momentum changes.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NcZCzr9ExKk
Also see this one for extra footage of the Gyroless, "trail-less" TMS bicycle that still manages to balance itslef
(The wheels can't be locked to each other, otherwise that would also cause the bricycle to be unable to turn, thus invalidating the whole experiment.)
IIRC, Arthur C Clarke mentioned races of that sort of vehicle in one of his works, so credit to him.
Technically, you can steer temporarily - if steering right by 20° tilts you to 45°, you can ride at 45° (actually, it's possible that a 45° turn would always relate to a 45° tilt - I'd need to think on it), however your allowed directions are determined entirely by your starting direction; if you started pointing South, there would be no possible way to move North, and would likely only be able to operate the bike in the 160° - 200° range, looking at the video.
Mathematically, with the usual simplifications and restrictions we mean by that, the device can not be steered freely at all.
Practically, if you were left in a room with the device alone for a while, you'd probably find some way to change its direction. My initial guess is to jerk it up as high as possible and then jerk it sideways and rebalance. It's pretty heavy, so this isn't going to work very well and will be very exhausting. However, I suspect the ultimate technique you'd settle on would work just as well if we locked the front wheel entirely so it couldn't be turned, so while you may be able to "direct" the device you would still arguably not be "steering" it.
The only thing that keeps bicycles upright in gravity is forward momentum. If a bicycle in gravity with no rider tried to turn right on its own, it would fall over. Only if the road curves naturally to the right will it follow and not fall over.
Imagine no bike. You're floating forward in zero-G. Now you want to go right. You turn to the right.... but you're still going forward. It's like that, but on the bike. Nothing is keeping you stuck to the ground, so no matter how you try to move the bike, it will want to keep going in the original direction of momentum, and you will just end up tumbling over if you try to turn the wheel or lean anywhere.
Another way to look at it, just like in the video: if you are tilted, you keep going forward, while tilted. You would literally need some force to pull you in a direction other than forward in order to turn without tumbling toward your original direction.
With a tricycle, when you turn the wheel, the inside wheel is essentially anchored to the ground where it is, and the outside wheel follows the only path that it can, since it can no longer continue going forward. If you were going fast enough during this turn, the whole thing would tip over, similar to how cars in gravity will flip over when they try to turn too fast. Momentum just carries them forward.
You should be able to turn if the road were curved, e.g., a velodrome (https://imgur.com/gallery/YqbXa)
A 'bricycle' in zero gravity is unsteerable
Should be "a bicycle in zero gravity is unsteerable".
Besides, the point of the experiment is to test the bike. There's nothing gained by not wearing a helmet. You're also implying that those other sports wouldn't be better with helmets, which may not be true.
The way to handle most falls if you can anticipate them is to jump straight up and off the bike.
I highly doubt this. The amount of force required to crack a human head open seems to be much more than what you can generate in 4 feet of free-fall.
I still suspect that the difference in risk between biking without a helmet and with a helmet is significant, and that the studies aggregated likely had a majority of riders using helmets (this is entirely based on subjective experience of US cyclist helmet-wearing probabilities, so let me know if that's wrong).
I suspect that there is some sort of cultural thing here where it feels more dangerous because someone is touching a bicycle. In particular it is probably some sort of car culture thing. In such a culture there is a tendency to aggressively ignore the danger of cars. That seems to cause a tendency to overestimate the danger of other transportation modes.
It's actually a really fascinating clip — though I suspect you're not going to watch it. For anyone else, you can start here to see it in action.
https://youtu.be/rNQdSfgJDNM?t=1m
The original video is only 3 minutes long.
"Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." "
It's fine to comment without reading/viewing the submission, and I'm sure many of us do :)
Although, I am curious as to why kikoreis doesn't use YouTube?
Sure, but if they explicitly say they haven't read it, then make a wrong assumption about it, surely you can call them out
That lack of a written guideline does not make it okay or a good idea to comment on the article based only on the headline like the GP did. Fine if you're responding to other people on other topics, but positing a straw man argument against your imagination of the article's contents without reading it, the comment will be rightly downvoted.
The guideline you posted is not the inverse, the guideline you posted is suggesting it's best to not make assumptions. Posting about the article content without viewing it is making assumptions.