subject: Recumbent Bike - Land Record For Top Speed In A Human-powered Vehicle [print this page] You know bike culture is growing continuously regardless of if slowly when you begin to see more and more recumbent bicycles on the roads of a place like NY City, formerly one of the most notoriously bicycle-unfriendly cities around and still host to irritable drivers and hostile policemen.
It has for a while been recognized that a reclined rider position, together with the frame geometries completely unique to that situation, make for miles better aerodynamics and much quicker speeds so fast, in reality the land record for speed in a human-powered vehicle is held by a recumbent bicycle.
So fast, actually that early on bicycle races banned recumbent thanks to the design's inherent benefits. After winning a few races, it became quite clear that, all else being nearly equal, a recumbent rider was definite to triumph each time. And so the recumbent quickly faded from popular view and has been relegated to usually home-built designs.
But cycling is kind of the rage in Europe, particularly the more socially progressive states like Germany and Holland. In Germany, there's even a town which voted to ban all car traffic to the fringes of the city, while in the Netherlands there are numerous more bicycles than autos on the road on any given day! And so it is that in these nations the recumbent bicycle has found reasonably prevalent adoption, and the trend looks to be catching on even in a rough place like New York.
Recumbents, or bents for short, can be found in one or two different designs, from low-riders that look almost as if the individual is laying down supine to choppers that almost resemble classic motorcycle designs. In fact , 'bents' are a heap more sundry than regular bicycles ( AKA uprights ) are, which is 1 explanation why they aren't yet as widely supported by bike shops in the United States.
