On Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:48:25 -0400
Frank Krygowski wrote:

Speaking of innovation: Here's an article on wireless bicycle brakes
from a British online engineering magazine www.theengineer.co.uk

http://tinyurl.com/3jr2qax

One disturbing detail is the claim that "The current design enables the
cruiser bike to brake within 250 milliseconds, meaning a cyclist
travelling at 30kph has a 2m stopping distance." (Stopping at over 1.75
gees on a bicycle? Sorry, that's impossible in several ways.)

I'm sure that statement is not the fault of the brake system designers,
but the journalist. But if an engineering journalist gets such a thing
wrong, how can we expect good information from the popular press?

By the look of other articles there the magazine does not employ
journalists to write. It employs a copy-typist/sub-editor who takes
press releases and cuts them to fit on the page.


However it could be a mistake in translation somewhere along the line.
the original press release ( http://idw-online.de/pages/de/news445601 )
says: "Mit der aktuellen Ausstattung schafft es das Cruiser Bike
spätestens nach 250 Millisekunden zu bremsen, was bei einer
Geschwindigkeit von 30 Kilometer pro Stunde einem Reaktionsweg von zwei
Metern entspricht."

Which I read as a reaction distance of 2 meters (for the mechanism).


Making the design fail 100 times in 100 attempts is of course trivial.....




Mike