Horrible Business Idea?

This reminds me of one of the projects I built in my high school Basic Electronics class. I wired a solar panel directly to a light-bulb, to create a Solar-Powered Night Light. The instructor failed to see the beauty of the thing-- I kept trying to explain, "You see, you shine light on it, and the light shines!"

Deserves a place in the inventors hall of fame, right next to the ropeless jump rope: http://jumpsnap.com/

Possible upsides: Running on a rubber mat rather than cement or concrete.

Downsides: Completely unnecessary. Possible safety risks depending on the speed you build up going downhill or through normal use and then falling off the back somehow. Completely unnecessary.

But the other thing is that the video has no voice track to try and sell it. We have no pitch in this video and therein lies their major problem.

Maybe they do have other benefits we don't know about. Maybe there is a medical case for this sort of thing. I'm no fitness expert, so I would be willing to hear them out, but it sure looks ludicrous.

Though, riding that thing down a hill has to be rather fun. If not horrifyingly scary.

Oh yes, these will sell like hotcakes. It's a logical certainty:

1) Many people run on threadmills indoors

2) Most of those would love to have an outdoor scenery scroll by while they run on the threadmill

3) Therefore, put the threadmill on wheels and you have a huge market!

I can see millions of these being sold.

NOT.

This one looks better:

http://www.humancar.com/overview.htm

http://www.humancar.com/videos.htm

You get the benefit of inertia, if nothing else. Then again, I can't imagine how difficult this thing would be to take uphill.

It doesn't look like it's steerable. A slight oversight?

maybe it feels more fun? (just to start a discussion..)

This is why people no longer believe the republicans to be better handlers of the economy.