[Closed] Watching guy Martin, so a question?

Cos they look funny.

In all seriousness you can't weight transfer on them so limit the off road potential

Great on the flat. Not ideal for climbing.

They lose a lot of the other advantages- for us, probably the big one is just the size, they're harder to store (both at home and when parking- you can't just chain them to any old railing) and they can't go through traffic in the same way, and you've got to think a bit more about where you go with them .

In traffic it's the visibility that always freaks me out, and it always seems like any collision's going to be far worse with you being so low.

I thought the UCI had a lot to do with it too?

I used to have one. Never had a problem with other vehicles seeing me, because they are peculiar they definitely catch drivers eye. Normal bikes just blend into the road scenery in comparison.

Fast on the flat and downhill. Proper pita on any gradient, even the fast ones have MTB range gears as you can't use you upper body strength to assist.

They also PROPER freak horses out.

Catching driver's eyes, sure, but I remember driving to work one day, I'd seen it already in my rearview then it "vanished"- so I figured it was in a blind spot, eventually found it right beside me on the left, below my level of sight, just outside of the rearview mirror image. If I'd not seen him earlier, that could have been pretty ugly, considering I was indicating to turn left...

To be fair though that seemed like a pretty low machine and had no visibility aids, most folks seem to have flags etc... So maybe that's not a commonplace issue. If he'd had a functioning brain he'd not have been there either so I guess a competent rider avoids the low visibility situations, same as any upright-bicycle-rider does.

Think your last point has it. Piss poor road craft that, whatever you are riding.

Re-opened as I was a dumbass.

(cheers Drac!)

Yeah but thing is, while he should have ridden round the visibility issues, they're still there. I agree they're eyecatching when you see them but that doesn't help when you don't.

Simple answer: because the UCI banned them in the 1930s for being too fast.

Compared to conventional road bikes, they're faster in most circumstances, safer and comfier. Faster because of the aerodynamics and biomechanically better riding position, safer because you can brake harder, dont get pedal strike on corners, hit things feet-first, and are unusual. Comfier for obvious reasons.

Cycling is very fashion-driven, especially road cycling. People what to buy the bikes their TDF heroes ride, they don't want to buy unusual-looking bikes no matter how much better they are.

Oh, and on visibility - you're lower, but much more visible. You're at eye-level with car drivers, not percehd above them. You're unusual so drivers take a second look and actually notice you. In years of commuting on recumbents and conventional bikes, I've had lots of near misses on conventional bikes, never on recumbents.

Its partly a UCI thing

I do think safety must be an issue. I'm think rolling hills in road and how far away you are when you appear and junctions with parked cars etc.

Apparently balance is hard up hill

Obviously not really the thing off road

But mainly we ride what we enjoy and know

People what to buy the bikes their TDF heroes ride, they don't want to buy unusual-looking bikes no matter how much better they are.

He's right you know. Look at the hordes of MAMILs on "race" bikes, but with the stem turned skywards and a top tube box. They want a "racing" bike, like the pros. They want that image, that ability to tell their friends that their bike is "just like" the ones the pros ride in the tour.

I had an extended borrow of a long wheelbase, under seat steering, faired 'bent some years ago and it was fun. Not just normal fun, but utterly hilarious, infectious giggling hilarity to ride. Love 'em.

The UCI thing is irrelevant.

I do think safety must be an issue. I'm think rolling hills in road and how far away you are when you appear and junctions with parked cars etc.

Apparently balance is hard up hill

Obviously not really the thing off road

But mainly we ride what we enjoy and know

In all my expeience, and that of other recumbent riders, they're safer. Think of close calls you've had with cars, it's not that they don;t physically see you, it's that they don't notice you. Being unusual, and being et eye-level, makes you much more noticeable.

Balance isn't harder, but it is different - it takes a while to adapt, and starting uphill is probably the thing that takes most getting used to.

Off-road, no - great fun on fast dirt tracks, but you can't hop the front wheel.

I don't have a hoverbike! I'm at eyelevel for anything smaller than a truck, but most recumbents I've seen on the road have been below eyelevel for anything taller than a sports car.

They are more popular across the Channel in Europe, used to regularly see them in Germany. I think the big problem in UK is lack of decent separate infrastructure. If they were on the UK road's drivers just wouldn't see them.

They are more popular across the Channel in Europe, used to regularly see them in Germany. I think the big problem in UK is lack of decent separate infrastructure. If they were on the UK road's drivers just wouldn't see them.

Echoing the UCI thing. The UCI isn't very supportive of them in racing terms but that doesn't stop any average joe from buying one and riding it to a cafe. The difference between us brits and riders on the continent is even though we've not had significant history in competition riding we have a fashion for only buy competition derived bikes for recreational and transportational cycling. We have fads of riding the wrong bike. Mountain biking took off when couriers bought them for riding in london, then track bikes took off for the same reason. Road bikes are fashionable now but their not really the most suitable bike for just riding along on the road unless the race organisers have fixed the potholes on the route. Cross bikes are in vogue now for no real practical reason.

What we've never really bought is transportational bikes for tranportational riding. Bikes you can ride to work without having to change your clothes when you get there, bikes you ride in a dress, bikes that you can comfortably ride from dusk til dawn. Ben sells the bikes that ordinary europeans ride, but in the UK its only the velovision subscriber base* that buys them.

* the sort of weidos that smile when they ride

f they were on the UK road's drivers just wouldn't see them.

My 20+ years of riding them on UK roads, and selling them to other people who do the same, says differently 😉

How often have you been on the bike, a driver looks at you, and pulls out anyway? It's happened to me quite a few times on upright bikes - never on recumbents. The one time I hit something - a taxi did a U-turn without looking and I piled into the back of him - I hit feet-first and was fine. If I'd been on an upright bike I'd have gon head-first into the back of the taxi or over it.

It's all about the correct bicycle for the situation - folding bikes are great for packing away, cargo bikes are fantastic for carrying stuff, MTBs are great for messing about on rough stuff, recumbents are great for riding fast and far. Upright racing bikes aren't actually especially good at anything, but if you like buying into the TdF hero worship, the mystique and the teams and the legends, they're fun to buy to emulate your heroes.

Lack of bunny hopping puts me right off recumbents....

I used to be able to track stand mine 😀

Off-road you just have to pile into stuff and hope you bounce over. Tight, technical, hoppy stuff they won't do obviously, but fast swoopy stuff is great fun. And using a trike to do three-wheel drifts around corners is just ridiculous 😉

one word: kerbs.

Upright racing bikes aren't actually especially good at anything

For getting out on the roads/hills for a ride with your mates there is nothing better suited.

You'd be dumb to actually buy a race geometry bike if you don't race but not all upright "racing" bikes are like that. In fact the trend at the moment is for more "endurance" type bikes that are comfier for you average Joe while still being fast and light.

In a similar vein, why are there not more faired upright bikes. Sidewinds not withstanding they would be a laugh in a straight line.

Random internet picture.

[img] [/img]

In a similar vein, why are there not more faired upright bikes.

Weight?

But also is that thing actually any more aero than a normal bike? The frontal area will be huge.

^^ Motorbikes ?

Same sorts of reasons.

1) banned by the UCI
2) only works in limited situations, most races are won on the climbs where aerodynamics are a negligable factor, and downhill I imagine the extreme tucks you see are quite effective, and on the flat they ride in a pelaton, so only ~1in 10 would need the fairing.
3) heavy, a motorbike fairing and all it's faastenings probably weighs near enough what the racing bike does.
4) motorbikes arent very aerdynamic compared to cars, what you need are smooth continuous surfaces to minimise turbulence and surface area. A fairing with a bloke satpedaling behind it with a 'ft gap between them will be useless.

A bit like disk wheels.

I don't believe the 'safer more visible bit'

1) Your head might be at or just below eye level of a driver, but on a normal bike your whole body and all its hi-viz whatever is in the plane of a driver's vision, not just your relatively small head.

2) One of the things I rely on when riding my upright bike is precisely the fact that my head is higher than the tops of cars and I can see over them.

3) You'd be well below the door line of a van or lorry.

These things are what put me off. Sure I might be wrong, but I'm not going to spend £2k to find out. Experienced riders of recumbents will tell me that there's no issue but I suspect there's a lot of confirmation bias going on. Accident stats are going to be hard to come by because of the lack of riders.

I've ridden one for a short ride and it was bloody awful. However this was a high-up one and a design that I think is well known for being hard to ride. It took all my power to get up to 15mph on the flat.

But the other things that puts me off is the fact that I like the riding position of an upright bike. It's not just about speed it's about handling - I love the feeling of getting of the saddle and honking up something steep.

Upright racing bikes aren't actually especially good at anything, but if you like buying into the TdF hero worship, the mystique and the teams and the legends, they're fun to buy to emulate your heroes.

That's just bullshit I'm afraid, and fairly insulting. When I bought my first road bike (£500 incidentally) I'd be hard pressed to name a single pro rider.

If you want to sell more recumbents might I suggest not trying to foster the 'us' and 'them' thing - it's going to turn more people away than it'll attract.

How often have you been on the bike, a driver looks at you, and pulls out anyway? It's happened to me quite a few times on upright bikes - never on recumbents.

That happens, but there are also incidences where the bike is genuinely not visible.

To the OP:

If recumbent bikes are that much faster/more efficient why are we not all riding them?

Why aren't YOU riding one?

I borrowed two recumbents for a while in London,a Kingcyle and a Windcheetah (no fairings).
They were both very fast and I found that traffic gave me plenty of space .
With the 3 wheeler though,you were right at exhaust level and can't move around in stationary traffic that well.
Although it was fun ,you never got the 'at one with the bike' feeling.
The joystick steering felt strange ,and putting it up on two wheels was scary.
Oh, and parking/storage could be a PITA.

The Kingcycle was good and at least it had proper handlebars .
Very quick to get the hang of stop/starting,but not being able to move around as much does feel strange .I didn't try any big hills,but I imagine you would just gear down and get on with it. They seem to be popular with Audaxers 😉

Most cyclists don't even know that the UCI exists, so I don't think the exclusion of recumbents from UCI sanctioned competitions is the principal reason for their rarity.

I think it's simply that they are generally more expensive, more mechanically complex and just more of a niche product. If they were produced by mainstream manufacturers and were available in more shops, I'm sure we would see more out on the road, but I suspect they still wouldn't capture the mass market. The conventional upright bicycle design works OK for most casual users.

had a ride on this, awesome machine!

[img] [/img]

[img] [/img]

Recumbents aren't cool, you only have to do an image search to work that out, they look ridiculous and will never be mainstream whichever way you try to gild the lily.
[img] [/img]

Is that a gear stick ?

Is that a gear stick ?

Off road issue sorted...
[img] [/img]

DrP

Is that a lock on the handlebars? 😆

I think it is!

However, even if it wasn't locked, I wouldn't have a clue what to do with it....!

DrP

got his forks fitted at halfords i see

Actually..he told me the forks need to have the rake reversed for handling properties...!

DrP

esher_shore - I'm building one like that at the moment 😉

Pedalling around tight corners on that must require some interesting contortions.

I see. You are however taking the word of a man who built THAT!! 😛

You tend to lean recumbetns more than steer them - ones with underseat steering can have quite limited steering, but it doesn't seem to have any effect except on very tight canal gates and the like, where you're off the bike anyway.

Just watched it now. I'm a big Guy Martin fan, and it was a very impressive challenge, but I can't help but think it wasn't really in the spirit of the record. All the previous records had been set on a traditional tandem bicycle, but theirs was more of a human-powered vehicle than a bicycle.

The US organisation that recorded the record they were setting themselves against categorises recumbents and traditional bikes separately:

[url= https://ultracycling.com/sections/records/stats/timed/ ]https://ultracycling.com/sections/records/stats/timed/[/url]

Most cyclists don't even know that the UCI exists, so I don't think the exclusion of recumbents from UCI sanctioned competitions is the principal reason for their rarity.

...

just more of a niche product. If they were produced by mainstream manufacturers and were available in more shops,

While most people might not know/care about the UCI, the fact that recumbents aren't right now being produced by more mainstream manufacturers and so remain a niche product is basically a consequence of the UCI banning them. So it's pretty relevant IMO.

On top of that, even if you are considering them, there are a lot of disadvantages compared to traditional diamond bikes and not many real advantages once you look past just speed. I could sort of see how you might fancy a blast round the lanes on a Sunday on one but it just wouldn't work for me for commuting for example. I say this having of course never ridden one myself 😉

This one belongs to my brother.
[IMG] [/IMG]

I tried riding the solo one he had before this and couldn't manage more than two yards.

not many real advantages once you look past just speed

There are many other advantages:

- Comfort. You sit on a very supporting, comfortable seat instead of a skinny saddle, you don't have to wear special padded shorts, and delicate bits of your body don't go numb.
- Ergonomic efficiency. Studies at MIT and other places have shown that the recumbent position is better for your body - instead of pulling with your arms, down through your curved spine, and to the pedals, you push directly on the pedals with your lower back braced against the seat.
- No wrist or neck problems, you're not resting 1/3 of your body weight on places it's not meant to be resting.
- Luggage carrying. A touring recumbent can carry more than an upright touring bike, and it carries it lower and more centrally, without affecting the steering.
- Better braking, you're not going to go over the handlebars so can brake harder.
- Plusher suspension. As your pedaling directon is forwards and back not up and down, your pedaling doesn't make the suspension bounce - shocks can be set soft and there's no need for fancy platform shocks and lockouts.
- Longer-lasting drivetrain. There's 3x as much chain, same number of sprockets, so the chain lasts 3x as long. But even more than that the chain is much better protected, it doesn't get lots of muck thrown at it by the front wheel the way it does on an upright, so the whole drivetrain lasts a lot longer on a recumbent.
- Faster, safer cornering as there's no chance of the pedals hitting the tround.
- Better for people with medical issues or disabilities, especially with back and neck problems.
- Not so fashion-driven so don't depreciate anywhere near as quickly as other bikes.

I;m sure there are more, but it's late and I've been drinking 😉

Oh, and recumbents aren't actually expensive either. The frames are mass-produced in Taiwan in the same factories which make conventional bikes. Comparing like-for-like, a touring recumbent from someone like HPVelotechnik is actually cheaper than a touring bike from someone like Koga.

I tried riding the solo one he had before this and couldn't manage more than two yards.

Come see me - apart from people with actual medical reasons fornot being able to balance, in 18 years I've only seen a handful of people who can't ride a recumbent, and for them it was psychological - they'd convinced themselves they couldnt do it before they tried.

They're not any harder to ride than normal bikes, just different - you need to unlearn some instincts and learn some new ones.

[img] [/img]

Interesting graphic where frontal areas and head heights are concerned.

There's a fella near me who often commutes on a three wheeler. I sort of like them as an engineering and anthropometric exercise but as practical transport? They just don't flick my bean TBH I often see him pulling over to let the stream of traffic by and the couple of steeper bridges he has to negotiate do look a little laboured to me...

And it's not the lack of UCI endorsement there's plenty of 'outlier' niches in cycling that the UCI can't bend their minds around. Recumbents aren't all that special in being Non-UCI preferred.

How well do they really handle hills? come on, you must have to seriously gear them down to make that reclined pedaling position work, you can at least stand and muscle a traditional bike up a hill when you get to the limits of its gearing. And they simply don't look as engaging or exciting to ride as a "traditional" format bicycle. Sort of the difference between being sat in a car or sat on a motorcycle IMO.

I have only ever sat on a couple though and rolled around a carpark in a three wheeler so I am no great authority...

How well do they really handle hills? come on, you must have to seriously gear them down to make that reclined pedaling position work, you can at least stand and muscle a traditional bike up a hill when you get to the limits of its gearing.

Standing up isn't free energy - all you're doing when you stand up is using oyur body weight to push against, and trying to get your arms into a better position to pull on the bars. Both things you don't need to do on a recumbent as you have a rigid seat to push against.

Try pushing a heavy bit of furniture by just standing and pushing. Now try sitting with your back against a wall and pushing with your legs.

But it's not just pushing force and efficiency. On a conventional bike you're u=hunched up - for speed you hunch over, trying to get as aerodynamic as possible, so your legs get near your chest and your breathing is restricted. Again, not problems a recumbent has.

Interesting graphic where frontal areas and head heights are concerned

That's a good graphic, showing how higher recumbents aren't really any lower than upright bikes. Lowracers are more restricted, and not so suitable for roads - in my experience not so much because cars dont see you, but becasue your visibility is rubbish. If you're below car bonnet level then junctions are tricky.

But most "normal" recumbents aren't anywhere near that low.

Or put another way there's no real chances to do the shifting about of weight that a traditional bike allows. That change in body position that many of us have used on a traditional bicycle is effective. I get that Recumbents put you in a very aerodynamic position by default and that pushing horizontally rather than making circles is in many ways more efficient but I still think the traditional bicycle is the better "all rounder"...

I did briefly work with a guy who raced [url= http://www.bhpc.org.uk/home.aspx ]This[/url] and as a sport racing HPVs / Recumbents on closed circuits makes perfect sense, it's something that I might even consider trying myself. But for the road as transport. Not a chance...

Or put another way there's no real chances to do the shifting about of weight that a traditional bike allows

But why do you need to do that on a traditional bike? Only because the riding position is unergonomic.

No doubt recumbants work well in certain circumstances, and rightly have their niche fans. But they don't offer the sort of riding experience the vast majority of cyclists are looking for, especially true for mountain biking. Great effort by all concerned especially considering the weather, but don't forget the solo human powered 24hr record is over 700mls.

Well, no, I don't think anyone would argue that a recumbent can do what a MTB can do off-road.