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Comment by bigsassy | Hacker News Reader

From the FAQ (I swear I'm not from YikeBike PR): It is likely that you will jump off the front of a YikeBike in an emergency braking situation - this is very easy as there are no handle bars in the way.

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In an emergency, the thing in front is generally what I'm trying to avoid.

I think they actually meant to say "It is likely that you will be thrown off the front of a YikeBike in an emergency braking situation - this is very easy as there are no handle bars in the way." :P

I really don't see how jumping off front of the bike is intuitive though. I mean, it's like trying to jump forward from the chair your sitting in. This in itself is an unnatural action, and to top it off the bike is gonna be moving forward when you jump forward off it. I foresee some severely bruised backsides.

On a unicycle, it's actually very easy to fall off the front safely- it basically dumps you back onto your feet. The posture and balance of the yike look comparable to me.

I get what they're saying about not flipping over the bars, but personally, I'd rather be able to bail out to the back or sides. The way they are describing basically just throws you into an object, whereas with the back/sides you're able to avoid objects and roll on the ground. If you're going fast enough to flip over the handle bars: (a) you're probably not going to be able to brake in time anyway, and (b) it's probably not much better to just get launched straight into whatever you're trying to avoid.

At 20km/h it might not be so easy after all.

20km/h is only a little over 12mph. I can sprint faster than that for short distances, so even if the front wheel hit a huge curb and stopped instantly, I'd likely just run to a stop. Having fallen off both conventional bikes and recumbents, I'd feel pretty safe on this thing.

Better than on a bike where you're tangled up to start with.

I'm guessing that sailing off the front gets progressively easier the faster you're going. It's the graceful landing that presents a problem.

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