Humans did not evolve to ride bicycles (2017)

This article seems to be pointing to, but never quite saying, that the most perfectly-evolved bike is a recumbent. Or maybe even the crazy one at the bottom of the page that puts the rider on a weird frame that has them lying down on their front with their chin a half an inch above a fenderless front wheel.

And, yeah, maybe that thing goes faster than my shitty $300 Retrospec, and is much more efficient at converting muscle energy into forwards motion. But there is no way I would want to get on that contraption and ride it around the pothole-strewn streets of New Orleans. Never mind issues like only being eye-to-eye with dogs people are walking down the trails, being completely invisible to people driving cars, stopping at a light being super-awkward, and having absolutely nowhere to put my laptop bag or my groceries. I am quite happy to sacrifice speed and efficiency for all of those. I spend a lot of my riding sitting straight up because it makes my back happier; I don't give a shit if it increases wind resistance and decreases my maximum speed.

This is not to say there could potentially be a better design for a two-wheeled device powered by its rider's muscles. But there's a lot more to consider than just "how fast can it go on a racing track".

(But apparently Cyclefit is a business focused solely on racing bikes, so for them, I guess that's the only measure.)

>Why has the bicycle design survived if it is so bad?

The standard upright bicycle has one major advantage over more efficient designs: better situational awareness. The rider's head is free to turn without obstruction and high enough to see over cars. I choose to ride an upright for this reason. If I lived in a country with good cycling infrastructure I might have made a different decision.

Imagine thinking that the only thing that matters to riding a bike is the efficiency with which you can extract power from your legs.

Normal bikes are way safer because you can actually see around you and you're also much easier to see. That's not even taking into account how much agility you lose on a recumbent, or how easy it is to get off of regular bike while it's in motion and let it do the crashing while you walk away.

I rode a recumbent for years. It actually ended up giving me back problems and I switched back to a diamond frame. Also recumbents are bigger, heavier, and way more expensive.

Critical to my enjoyment of longer rides on a "normal" bike:

- upper and lower body strengthening (lifting moderate weights)

- suspending my body weight with my arms and legs, don't rest on the saddle

- yoga regularly

I'm intrigued by some of the modern cruiser-style ebikes, e.g. RAD. Seems to me that these are pretty darn comfortable. Perhaps this problem is finally solved!?

https://www.radpowerbikes.com/

In the same sense that we didn't evolve to ride around in cars, sit at desks, wear glasses, or a million other things that we do.

Well I didn't expect to see Cycle Fit mentioned on HN. They've designed and built several bicycles I've raced competitively on and factor in health issues, individual power output, style of riding, etc. They were one of the first to really push bike fitting to where it is now. It's a very science driven shop.

My first experience was when racing as a lowly cat 4 cyclist on a Cannondale off-the-peg bicycle. I experienced lower back pain and was pretty sure my position was wrong but my tweaking wasn't improving things. Phil put me on a Serotta cycle fit machine which looks like this: https://www.cyclefit.co.uk/fitting . It allows every aspect of the position to be adjusted until the best position for you is found... best with regards to whatever you prioritise. For me it was pain-avoidance first, then endurance and hill climbs power/stamina second. Once they found the best position, we dialled-in the Cannondale to as close as the stock frame allowed (changing steam, seat post, saddle, bars)... and I went from DFL (dead effing last) in races to top 10%.

I didn't really enjoy racing criteriums so didn't stick with that, but I did love the difference the bike fitting made to my enjoyment of riding and had changed to doing distance social rides instead (100+ mile on a weekend... London > Brighton > London for example). And it made me think, if Cycle Fit can do this to a stock bike, what could they do with a fully bespoke bike?

The answer is a lot. I've owned a Serotta, Robin Mather, and a Seven, all made for me after geometry designed by Phil at Cycle Fit. Each bike was for a different purpose, and each one is subtly different. It's amazing, I no longer experience any back pain when cycling, not even for ultracycling and endurance events that last a few days. Riding these bikes feels like being roadrunner in the cartoon, floating through air and legs spinning effortlessly. Everything about them is superlative, but it's the fit that makes it so. The bikes I test rode were good, but not as good as the bikes made for me. I lost the Serotta due to a hit and run incident in London, but the other two remain my prized bikes.

As for Phil, he's become an essential tool for a lot of professional cyclists. His obsession with understanding the science behind how the human body performs on a bicycle has led to some major wins for a lot of professional athletes. He's also extremely humble and very approachable.

If you're ever in the market for a ridiculously good bicycle made specifically for you... then Phil is your man.

What we need are not better bikes, but better bike lanes.

I mean what I want from my bike is cycle paths, car free paved areas that travel from my house to my kids school and local amenities so my kids have some degree of freedom with a constant fear of death.

I honestly don't care how fast a bike can go - the limits to the speed are basically risk aversion by the rider. Years ago I upgraded my commuter cycle from a fat tyred mountain bike to a decent road bike and the very next day I added 5mph to my time on a flat stretch in North London. My total commute time barely budged because although I convert power to speed, I was unwilling to weave through traffic to take advantage of it.

Hence, what we need are not better bikes, but better bike lanes.

I think it's interesting that the online recumbent community as I've encountered it is in general agreement that most styles of recumbent climb worse than a diamond frame. I say most styles because recumbent bicycle design covers a much wider range of options than upright bicycles. The consensus is that a good climbing recumbent loses 5-10% power on the climbs but is generally faster over a course due to aerodynamic advantage (lower frontal area, better CdA due to the body not being shaped like a parachute). You can, of course, have a recumbent that doesn't climb well. I have one (my casual recumbent) where my hip angle is really bad at producing power for some reason so I get like 2/3 the climbing speed at full perceived power but my other (my fast recumbent) doesn't have an issue.

I like recumbents in general from a tech perspective because there's no obvious correct way to design them. The most efficient chain line for a rear wheel drive bike runs through the rider's body for lowracer through highracer designs which usually means idlers. Long wheelbase (LWB) design moves the cranks down to below the rider's seat which works for some people and not for others. Driving the front wheel works but creates traction problems going uphill and requires deciding whether the bottom bracket moves as part of the steering (Moving Bottom Bracket, MBB) or the chain twists (not consistently named, I've seen 3-4 designs). There's also weird designs like the python where the pivot is in the frame itself below the rider. It's a fun thing to explore and think about.

> Fitting cave-dwellers to a Victorian contraption. Is this the best we can do?

Yes it is. Like crocodiles or sharks, the reason they haven't changed much is because they are basically perfect. Deal with it.

As the owner of three different recumbents, I don't care about max power output. I care about the relaxed pose. And the low drag in that pose.

Much of the unpleasantness of biking on a diamond frame can be corrected just by mounting a mirror under the handlebars, slanted so you can look down at it to see ahead. It takes a remarkably short time to get used to.

Just sayin'.

I get what they're getting at here, but isn't cycling still wildly more efficient than walking/running? Maybe they haven't changed because they are already reasonably optimal.

and yet the double diamond safety bicycle is a minor miracle of efficient design.

As someone that did long endurance bike races for many years, I would have to agree with the title alone. It never felt natural to be peddling a contraption for any length of time. I think if you got down to it, it’s really competitors striving to be as fast as possible on something that was invented, but not necessarily something that was invented to be the best or most efficient. At the lowest level, it’s really someone getting on a thing and seeing how much they can make the best of it.

Getting on a bike and pedaling a few blocks and getting there faster than walking, absolutely. Bikes have a lot of rolling resistance, so human effort hits a calorie intake threshold where now a fuel source need to be considered with longer distances vs. time.

Very thought provoking - maybe someone reading it today will design a better layout!

Something really odd going on with the layout on mobile, I got the impression I was reading the article in the wrong order, or that a bunch of the paragraphs were really supposed to be footnotes to the illustrations.

However, bicycles evolved to be ridden by humans.

Even on a personal level. My old steel road bike, modified extensively, now has a very short handlebar stem and compact handlebar. This happens to bring the modern brake/shift levers into a position where I can keep my hands on "the hoods" for many hours without having to switch hand positions to elsewhere on the handelbar for relief. Looks a bit weird, but works for me.

There's a reason the classic diamond frame bike has survived for 130+ years. People constantly invent better bikes but none of them ever seem to go anywhere, except of course recumbents and folding bikes, which really are better for a tiny fraction of cyclists. I'll bet they, too, have reached a pinnacle of evolution.

I’d love to get away from the chain drive. It might be cool to make a hybrid drive and transfer peddle power to an electric motor.

ultra low profile sedans and rotary engines are the most evolved cars, so why do we have trucks? or more on point, road bikes are more efficient than mountain bikes.

The monolithic view that a bike is about putting energy in and getting forward motion on a flat road out, misses the multirole requirement of a bike. Just as saying humans are unevolved because we aren't the fastest animals in the animal kingdom.

Bikes, like humans have many challenges other than just getting from point a to point b. sometimes we have to stop for short periods following traffic patterns. I suspect rolling onto the pavement each time will get old fast. More on that surface, bumps and jars from imperfect road conditions being solely absorbed by my laying down bits seems pretty awful. Being able to see those upcoming obstacles and potentially avoiding the more significant ones, is likely important.

You could say this about anything. Humans didn't evolve to drive cars and look cars are the same now as they were in 1895! They still have wheels, seats, engines, and a control device. It's silly to say that a modern car is the same as an 1895 car (that's 10 years before the Model T even).

Bicycles have changed just as much as cars. Disk breaks, lights, carbon and aluminium frames, clipless and magnetic pedals, handlebars are totally different as shifters and breaks, saddles are far more comfortable (made not just out of different materials, modern saddles are fundamentally different from old-style saddles), wheels are much lighter, tires are much more durable, we have far better shifters and even have electronic shifting. And much more. We wear helmets now! All of that is before get into how different lights are, things like GPS and tracking, or even radar to alert you about cars!

Obree's achievements are very cool. But saying that we should be more like him is crazy! He was mechanically efficient on those bikes, but he was not comfortable. You wouldn't want to ride his bikes for fun.

Even his latest bike where he is laying prone. Hard pass. That can't feel good on your neck! It looks super dangerous in cities with potholes (you will end up face planting). You have a very low profile and are much more likely to get hit by cars. And you will see far less around you because you're so low.

This is not some UCI conspiracy to prevent progress. The reason why the basic layout of the modern bike is the same (just like the basic layout of a car is the same) is because it's great at what it does. It's not some dumb compromise. 99% of cyclists don't care about power output to the exclusion of comfort and safety!

Having been using bicycles since the early 1970s I would say they have evolved a huge amount. Modern bicycles have more variety of forms now and are much lighter and with more easy to shift gear systems.

> Hence the most powerful thing we can do is a 2-legged take-off into a vertical jump, where we can produce 32 watts/KG.

Would this mean the best bicycle is actually more like a rowing machine on wheels?

tangent/ It only clicked for me how dangerous penny-farthings really were when I absorbed that the modern bicycle design was marketed and known as the safety bicycle.

Looks like we are trading a crooked back for a crooked neck :)