Most of us had a bicycle when we were young.
Mine was a CCM with a three-speed hub gear and upright "sit-up-and-beg" handlebars.
I looked enviously at other boys whose bikes had drop handlebars and 10-speed derailleur gears, but there was no way my parents could afford anything fancy.
That bicycle served me well until I bought my first car at age 20.
An early bicycle was patented by Frenchman Eugene Meyer in 1869. It boasted a huge front wheel with pedals directly attached to it.
The large wheel was Meyer’s way to increase speed by rolling a great distance for each turn of the pedals. It was limited only by the length of the rider’s legs.
The rear wheel was tiny. It was called the penny-farthing after the British coins of the day. The rider was perched high above the road and in danger, particularly if he needed to brake suddenly.
James Starley’s 1885 Rover safety bicycle was the first modern design.
Just three years later, Irish veterinary surgeon John Boyd Dunlop invented the pneumatic rubber tire. This greatly softened the bicycle’s ride, particularly on cobblestone roads, and also made it faster.
Today, the overwhelming majority of bicycles continue to be built with a version of Starley’s light, strong, diamond frame. A modern bicycle weighing 10 to 12 kilograms can carry riders more than 10 times heavier. The only other practical means of transport able to carry so much more than its own weight is the Canadian canoe.
When I started teaching at the University of Southampton, I bought a bicycle and began riding to work, despite owning a vehicle. Britain was a great place for cycling. Many people rode bikes to work.
The south coast of the United Kingdom rarely sees snow. (It snowed four times during my 16 years there.) Winter weather might be wet and unpleasant, but not dangerous, so you could ride year round. Drivers were mostly respectful of bicycles and, more than 50 years ago, Southampton had bicycle lanes along all major roads.
These bike lanes were shared with municipal buses — no cars allowed. Professional bus drivers are careful because they know hitting a cyclist could end their career.
When we arrived in 1988, Barrie still had no bike lanes. To make matters worse, street drainage grates often had slots aligned to trap a bicycle tire. Mercifully, these have been replaced with better designs.
A good part of road safety in the U.K. is down to the law-abiding nature of British cyclists. Predictable, they keep to their side of the road and rarely ride on sidewalks. British bicycles are required to have lights, a bell, and mudguards.
The police pay attention, too. I was stopped once for speeding (downhill) and for riding (carefully) in a pedestrian precinct. (At one time, I mused about being stopped for being “drunk and disorderly in charge of a bicycle.”)
Here in Barrie, though, cyclists can be on either side of the road, or pedalling on the sidewalk. A few years ago, few had lights, so they were barely visible to a driver at night.
On one occasion, I nearly hit a youth wearing dark clothing on an unlit bicycle. I had been turning left, and he was riding against the traffic, on the sidewalk — so, from an unexpected direction. I stopped to check if he was OK and warned him he needed lights, and that riding against the traffic pretty well ensured a driver might not see him.
Barrie drivers seem to return the favour and pay little attention to cyclists. I used to arrive at work with smudges on my left shoulder — dirt from some grubby van that barely missed me. I abandoned cycling to work after several near encounters.
If cyclists want respect from drivers, they need to ride in a predictable manner. One way to achieve this is to obey traffic regulations. Displaying lights and wearing high-visibility clothing also help.
When we are not rowing, my rowing buddy and I walk around the Barrie waterfront. Cyclists, runners and in-line skaters often overtake us. For the most part, they are respectful and do not threaten walkers enjoying the trail.
However, a few years ago, some cyclists overtook us at speed, but were barely pedalling. They were riding electrified bicycles.
They have been joined by people speeding along on electric skateboards, and vehicles looking like the Vespa scooter. These riders are rarely respectful, cruising — silently — at speeds likely to cause serious injury if a collision were to take place.
The bicycles changed, too. Initially, it could be hard to distinguish between pedal bicycles and electric ones. Recently, e-bikes have been sporting very tubby tires. Without the electric assist, the rolling resistance of this kind of tire would make them hard to pedal — why racing bikes always have narrow, high-pressure tires.
Motors had been added to bicycles from the earliest days. Even a few penny-farthings were fitted with small steam engines by enthusiastic inventors. Of course, these had boilers with a small fire heating the water to raise steam — highly impractical for the everyday rider.
But then gasoline engines appeared. These were fitted to bicycles early on.
The first true mopeds, their motors were started by pedalling with the drive engaged. They were forerunners of the motorcycle.
As the power of their gasoline engines increased and reliability improved, pedals became superfluous. Of course, tires grew larger as machines became heavier until the only resemblance to the graceful, nimble bicycle were handlebars, a chain drive and a pair of wheels.
In Europe, small, nimble machines with high-revving engines were favoured. My neighbour owns a water-cooled Italian Ducati. With a massive 150-horsepower engine, this "crotch rocket" is seriously fast. The United States, as you might expect, gravitated to hefty motorcycles with huge engines. Some Harley-Davidsons have motors larger than the one in my Mini Cooper.
In North America, the gasoline-powered moped and motor scooter have been replaced by electrified versions. They have been joined by new electric battery-powered personal transportation devices including the first Segway (2001), "hoverboards," electrified kick scooters, and even electric unicycles (e.g., the Onewheel). Some are very fast by pedestrian standards (a modified Onewheel achieved a speed of 60 km/h) and scary. Losing control could cause serious injury to a strolling pedestrian. Riders have been overtaking pedestrians on our waterfront trail silently and at scary speeds.
Forget the term "electric bicycle" — allowing these machines to be classified as "mopeds" is questionable. Some have pedals and might be pedalled. However, the pedals are mostly vestigial. If they break down or the battery charge runs out, it is far easier to walk them along.
And why are they on our pedestrian paths and trails? Their gasoline-powered predecessors were never allowed to share space with pedestrians.
