Body Inertia brakes for bikes

Current bike showing palm forces on brakes during decelleration with red arrows

Mule train bike with a set of folding handlebars.....

 

which I have now stolen for this project.

Bike with original steerer and all cables removed at the same time. I can just put it all back on when this experiment is done.

New steerer uses a 32mm tube ...

brazed across a scooter fork. It has hand-made washers inside for extra strength.

Here's the original plan, you can see the handlebar with built in brake levers resembles the folding handlebars.

Here is the result at the end of the day.

Hi

For a long time I've been riding bikes which have the brakes reversed - this is possible because the handlebars don't bear any of my body weight. When I slow down I can allow the natural decelleration body motion to press in the brakes, but I still have the normal hand-squeeze braking method.  For a long time I've been thinking about using the decelleration only, like trailer brakes, but have only started building something in the last few days, after gathering a dead kid's scooter and stealing or swapping out bits from other bikes.  

I was inspired by seeing a few bikes with Shimano DI2 electronic shifters on them at a recent bike show. Surely there are ways of streamlining a bike's controls that don't involve wifi, batteries and software! A recent Age article echoes these thoughts, "It was common for cars, fridges, and even coffee machines to have embedded software".

 Its all going well and I will report further.

Regards Steve Nurse

June 7, 2021, bit of progress today. I made some handlebar halves from a straight aluminium bar and gathered a few other bits, gearchanger, bar extenders and a bell. If the brakes don't work I will at least be able to warn people to PANIC and get out of the way.

Sketch for making combined handlebar and brake levers and

Most of it already made. Top is the folding bar that is being replaced.

June 8, 2021, Good progress above as shown. I made the handlebars with some holes drilled so they can double as brake levers. Still a couple of days work before I can test the idea. The story continues in this post.