Gearfuse Technology, Science, Culture & More
Nothing is sweeter than a good, solid bike ride. Sometimes, it can be fun to bring your child on a bike ride around town or to the local market. However, most people choose to ride with their kid attached to the back of the bike. The Zigo puts your child in the front, directly in harm’s way. Did that teenager in the ’97 Honda Civic just pull in front of you? Why risk damaging a $600 bike? Go for the gold. Or if you can’t take a joke and would prefer having your child bundled up safely, buy a Volvo.
I’d rather risk my kid riding on an electric dirt bike than load him in the front of this death trap!
It looks like shit anyways.
Link (via)
Unfortunately, placing your child in a rear-mount carrier seat carries risk, as does strapping your child into an SUV, or crossing the street. The Zigo Leader is designed for safety. The forward-position of the ChildPod places children where they can be observed, a position favored by most parents. Unfortunately, vehicular hazards come from all directions, not just frontal, and the ones unseen are the most dangerous. This is why direct observation is so important. The ChildPod has a bumper and a crumple zone designed to withstand frontal collision at bicycle speeds. Furthermore, while the Zigo Leader is novel in many ways, Dutch Cargo Bikes have a long history of use in Europe, where they know a little more about commuter biking than we do in the U.S. The front-loaded Bakfiets is in Europe the preferred vehicle for child transport by bike.
I wholeheartedly back Michael up here. Firstly “plowing into” things is a rather atypical bicycling accident and at the speeds one travels on such a trike its unlikely that that built-in crush zone will even be damaged.
No matter where the kids are located there’s always a critic who’ll point out and overstate the danger: “kids in front will serve as bumpers”, “kids in trailers will get crushed by motorists who only see mom on the bike ahead”, “kids in the middle…”. you name it, I’ve heard it. Its all just uninformed speculation and an irresponsible cheap shot for an attention grabbing headline.
My company Workcycles has sold thousands of child carrying bicycles of various formats including standard type bicycles with child seats front and rear (and sometimes both), long wheelbase bicycles and trikes with the kids in a box forward of the rider, long wheelbase bikes with two kids behind the rider and family tandems where little tikes pedal along in front of mom or dad. Dutch kindergartens use our bikes to ferry up to 8 kids around. Obviously they’re all designed with appropriate safety features.
We periodically hear comments such as the author’s from passersby (non-customers thus) but haven’t seen any of these supposed dangers in practice. The occasional fall or accident has results mostly in minor bike damage and bruised egos. Sure, sooner or later a tragedy can happen, but it probably won’t be the particular format of the bicycle to blame.
Fact is that cycling, especially the careful utility cycling one does with kids aboard just isn’t especially dangerous. Here in the Netherlands millions of people cycle daily for both transportation and recreation and only the competitive cyclists in group rides wear helmets. Mass carnage on the roads? Hardly. The number of cycling related deaths each year can generally be counted on one hand.
-Henry
Well the safest thing will be to sit in front of TV and not go out and for heavens sake don’t bike at all! In fackt don’t go out, it might kill you!
Wait, that is dangerous as well, you fat, you get heart attack!
@ MARIE
YA YOU ARE RIGHT WE ; SHOULD STAY AT HOME…….
yeah, putting your kid in front of you makes absolutely no sense-I can only assume that the inventor doesnt like kids a helluvalot, and is planning on selling this thing to people that dont have that much concern for their kids-uhh, think i would rather be the thing that hits on obstacle first before i put my little, fragile kid in the way. Zigos suck.
“Professional” opinion? Not bloody likely if it includes “jokes” about crushing children and some swearing. Plus entirely made-up risk assessments. Every advantage has a disadvantage. For example, fixing the child on top, at front or rear, has the guarantee that the child falls at least 2.5 feet whatever happens.
Why don’t you look up accident statistics that are available? The vast majority of accidents with children at the rear on top is from falling over (top-heavy; usually causes concussions or piercing injuries from objects met on the way down) and from putting fingers between the wheels (usually badly restrained, parent’s fault) — but this points to the major drawback of rear-fitting: child out of parents’ view, unknown whether it’s OK/asleep/up-to-no-good (and checking means taking eyes off road or stopping).
Furthermore, If your bike rear-ends a car, or you hit something stationary, it’s your own momentum you deal with [200–300pounds at 10–20mph] while if you are rear-ended then it’s a car’s momentum [3000-6000pounds at 20–??mph] and in both cases the baby is the crumple zone: what is most survivable? (If you’re cycling head-on into a driving car, then it’s game over whether front or rear child.) This scales with the square of the speed, remember.
Or to make it even more professional, why don’t you look at the Western nation with most widespread cycling and see what they do there? Right, in Holland the vast majority that can afford it has a bike carrying the children in front of them. On a purpose-built bike with an elongated frame and the carrier low to the ground (e.g. http://fietsfabriek.nl or http://bakfiets.nl or any others). Go into any Dutch city centre and it swarms with those, with spaces for 1–3children.
That kind of bike costs 1000-2000euros (say upto 3500USD), while fixing a seat on top is just 50-100euros, and quickly removed after a few years. I’ve been considering importing such a bike, but (a) too narrow roads here (S-W England) with hopeless car-only mindsets, (b) too steep roads for Dutch flatland gearing, (c) too expensive. I don’t think I get it up the last half mile to my house, on a 12% slope. [Why didn’t those Victorian sadists follow the relief’s contours when roadbuilding? Why the extreme up/downs?]