Mikael's Bike Goes to Africa

Some of you may recall that Copenhagenize/Copenhagen Cycle Chic were the proud recipients of one of Yahoo!'s Purple Pedal bikes last year. The bikes are equipped with a mobile phone with a camera, which is run off a solar panelled box on the back. It takes a photo every minute when active and instantly transports it back to a Flickr website and the Purple Pedals website, complete with geotag. When the bike is stationary for three minutes, it goes to 'sleep' and will awake once again when it is put into motion.

All quite flash. All went well for a good while. I rode it around, for example, when the Portland crew came to Copenhagen on a study trip last fall. Here's a photo series taken by the bike's camera.

After that there were some technical difficulties involving... well... technical stuff. I'm pleased to say that the bike is up and running again and, after a week in Copenhagen, the bike is now in Tanzania!

My friends at Baisikeli, the development org that sends used Danish bikes to Africa, were given the bike. Henrik, one of the two guys, is in Tanzania for a month to check up on the recieving end and the workshops that convert the bikes into ambulance bikes, water-carrying bikes, etc. He took the Purple Pedal bike with him.

I just checked the photo stream on Flickr and there were a couple of hundred black photos from inside the bike box on the plane but it is now registering geotags from Dar es Salaam airport. COOL! I had a few discussions with Yahoo!, who generously helped get the bike to Tanzania, about whether the US phone would work in Africa, where most mobile networks are European. So I'm thrilled that the bike looks like it's working.

You can follow the bike's journey in Tanzania on this Flickr photostream.

If you're in Copenhagen this spring or summer, you may get the chance to ride the bike if you rent a bike from the Baisikeli bike rental shop here in the city.

Here's a video I made when the bike arrived in Copenhagen.

You can see all the bikes around the world on the microsite for Purple Pedals here.

Bike Helmet Protest in Melbourne

I had a brilliant week in Melbourne as a guest of the State of Design Festival . Loads of interviews and events that all culminated with my keynote speech on the Saturday. There was, however, an event on the Saturday morning - July 26, 2010 - that was extremely interesting to be a part of. A group of citizens, rallied together by filmmaker and bicycle advocate Mike Rubbo , decided to go for a bicycle ride together on Melbourne's new bike share system bikes. A splendid idea. Melbourne's bike share system is shiny new, although unlike most cities in the world with a bike share programme, only 70-odd people are using them each day. In Dublin, by contrast, there are over 30,000 subscribers. Not to mention the cracking successes in Paris, Barcelona, Seville and most of the over 100 cities with such systems. So, a group of people, many of them Copenhagenize.com readers, fancy a bike ride. Sounds lovely enough. They met up at the bike racks at Melbourne University. Hired the bikes wi

Head Protection for Motorists

A while back we posted about an Australian 'motoring helmet' designed to protect motorists' heads in car accidents. It was designed in the late 1980's. Then we recieved this tip yesterday. Another head protection device for motorists, this one developed at the University of Adelaide, in Australia. A serious product for the serious of protecting motorists from the dangers of driving. Despite airbags and seatbelts, motorists are victims of alarming head injury rates. Here's what the Centre for Automotive Safety Research [CASR] in Australia says: The Centre has been evaluating the concept of a protective headband for car occupants. In about 44 percent of cases of occupant head injury, a protective headband, such as the one illustrated, would have provided some benefit. One estimate has put the potential benefit of such a device (in terms of reduced societal Harm) as high as $380 million, compared with $123 million for padding the upper interior of the car. Thi

Fear of Cycling 03 - Helmet Promotion Campaigns

Third installment by sociologist Dave Horton, from Lancaster University, as a guest writer. Dave has written a brilliant assessment of Fear of Cycling in an essay and we're well pleased that he fancies the idea of a collaboration. We'll be presenting Dave's essay in five parts. Fear of Cycling - Helmet Promotion Campaigns - by Dave Horton - Part 03 of 05 Like road safety education, campaigns to promote the wearing of cycle helmets effectively construct cycling as a dangerous practice about which to be fearful. Such campaigns, and calls for legislation to make cycle helmets compulsory, have increased over the last decade. In 2004, a Private Members’ Bill was tabled in the UK Parliament, to make it an offence for adults to allow children under the age of 16 to cycle unless wearing a helmet. Also in 2004, the influential British Medical Association, in a policy turnaround , voted to campaign for helmets to be made compulsory for all cyclists (for comprehensive detail on these

The Life-Sized City Blog

Search This Blog