Photo: Facebook capture
You know the drill: there is almost no limit to the craziness fun things can turn into when it comes to the distractions at a bike rally. From the silliest contests to the downright kickass racing and stunt events staged by the organizers, almost anything goes. Some of these are safe, while others are rather far from any safety notion, but again, it’s people who chose to act in a certain way on their own, even though consequences may sometimes be less than happy.
So that’s why seeing a “bike centrifuge” and sort of knowing what to expect put a large smile on our faces… and we were not disappointed. This is obviously both silly and dangerous fun, but we all know that a few beers and 10 shots of Jaegermeister will always replace “no, it’s dangerous” with "how bad can it be? Here, hold my beer and watch this!”
The biggest shortcoming of riding this contraption is the fact that the bike will not lean into the turn, so the low centripetal force will be accompanied by a bigger centrifugal one. In other words, because the rider cannot lean so that the centripetal force would balance the bike into a steady orbit, a much bigger effort will be required to actually remain on the bike.
Technically, there is almost no force to keep the rider in place, whereas a lot of force is needed to have him hanging on to the spinning machine. A force which, as you can see, is not available at the moment, so the rider flies away into the crowd after only a few turns.
Fall off this bike can mimic coming off your two-wheeler in the middle of the road, and this means you DO have good changes to break a wrist or hand, crack some ribs and so on. At least the guy was wearing a helmet, showing that he was a smart guy after all.
As for the ones riding a centrifugal bike, what can we say? Where do we find one? A thick layer of snow in winter could break the fall just fine…
Inches off the ground, but still traveling at high speed
For some reason, seeing the bike well tied to the central post by strong, welded metal bars most likely offers a false impression of safety. Also, the fact that the radius of the circle the bike is restrained to ride in is yet another element which sort of alters the perception of speed, but physics remains the same. In fact, things only get worse.The biggest shortcoming of riding this contraption is the fact that the bike will not lean into the turn, so the low centripetal force will be accompanied by a bigger centrifugal one. In other words, because the rider cannot lean so that the centripetal force would balance the bike into a steady orbit, a much bigger effort will be required to actually remain on the bike.
Technically, there is almost no force to keep the rider in place, whereas a lot of force is needed to have him hanging on to the spinning machine. A force which, as you can see, is not available at the moment, so the rider flies away into the crowd after only a few turns.
Fall off this bike can mimic coming off your two-wheeler in the middle of the road, and this means you DO have good changes to break a wrist or hand, crack some ribs and so on. At least the guy was wearing a helmet, showing that he was a smart guy after all.
As for the ones riding a centrifugal bike, what can we say? Where do we find one? A thick layer of snow in winter could break the fall just fine…
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