biking
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Check out this high-tech prosthetic for amputee cyclists
The Cadence leg prosthetic looks like something Chell from Portal might wear, but it's actually specially designed for riding a bike. Design student Seth Astle just won the James Dyson award for Cadence, which helps give below-the-knee amputees the fluid leg movement necessary to pedal a bike efficiently.
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NYC's bikeshare will have 10,000 bikes
New York is a big city, and most of its residents really hate driving (for good reason). So it seems appropriate that the city's planned bikeshare program, launching next summer, will be by far the largest in the U.S. Its 10,000 bikes will dwarf the 1,100 available from D.C.'s Capital Bikeshare, currently the country's largest. And the range will go from the Upper West Side all the way down into Brooklyn.
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What happens first in Vegas: bike lanes or bikes?
Las Vegas is a good place to test the theory of induced demand: In a city hostile to cyclists, will better bike infrastructure convert more drivers into riders?
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Bikes find a way in San Jose
Rapid growth and a gaping class divide don't make biking easy in San Jose, Calif., but a few committed cyclists push back against the city's car-centric culture.
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Mom could be arrested for letting her kid bike to school
There are a few factors that make it tricky for kids to bike or walk alone: Bad drivers who face insufficient consequences, lack of sidewalks and protected bike lanes, too few crosswalks. We COULD improve biking and walking infrastructure, and have cops actually crack down on illegal driving maneuvers. But that's hard! Instead, let's just arrest everybody who doesn't drive their kids to school. That appears to be the approach in Elizabethton, Tenn., where Teresa Tryon has been threatened with arrest if she keeps letting her daughter bike to school on her own.
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Introducing the self-inflating bicycle tire
PumpTire has developed the world's first self-inflating bike tire, which actually takes in air and inflates to ideal pressure as you ride. This won't keep you from ever getting a flat or anything, but it could spare you a lot of tedious adjusting and checking of tire pressure.
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Corralling bike fever in Nevada City
Tiny, touristy Nevada City, Calif., is making big strides toward bike friendliness by planning to install bike corrals to replace parking spots -- which proves it can catch on anywhere.
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Musical GPS lets you steer your bike without looking at a screen
It's hard enough to look at your GPS and at the road while you're driving, but on a bike that split second of inattention could easily lead to injury. So Dutch researchers, who know from biking, have developed a music-based navigation system called "Oh Music, Where Art Thou?" It's a smartphone app that lets you navigate by following a strain of music through the streets. If the sound seems to come from the right, you go right; if it comes from the left, you go left. (Hopefully there's a needle-scratch feature for missing your turn.)
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Dinner (and bikes) are served: The tour begins
For the month of September, I'll be traveling around the western U.S. as part of the Dinner & Bikes Tour, talking and learning about the bike economy.