quizzically yours...
Dear...I guess bicycle manufacturers
Firstly, we are in dire need to discuss bicycles. For some time now I haven't owned one but as the green revolution planted its seeds and I relocated to a country where I’m unable to drive, I too suddenly thought it a healthy and thoughtful mode of transport to invest in. However, I will take this opportunity to address the human’s inadequate visual perception in a number of different capacities as assisted mobilized creature. I know it doesn’t look cool and god forbid that it actually causes any sort of wind resistance, but rear view mirrors seem to be as essential for bicycles as they do for cars, yet they are nowhere to be seen. I have observed some diy versions (usually re-purposed motorcycle mirrors) on those infamous two-wheelers belonging to people who also have transistor radios cable-tied to their handle bars. You’ve made little trinkets that dangle off the handle bars, water bottle holders that can house up to 3 water bottles, complicated instruments that measures how many calories you’re burning, but for some or other reason what’s happening behind you when balancing unprotected on a bicycle is not nearly as important as what happens when you are strapped into a motor vehicle. I would like to further discuss how little a bicycle seat looks like something you would want to sit on but it just simply seems like far too much of an obvious design error that I’ll skip past that for now. It doesn't seem to have been designed for the human behind. Briefly, if there were three seats available, the one being an torn tree stump with sharp shards sticking out, the other, a rake planted in the ground with it’s head turned upside down and a bicycle seat, it would be rather difficult to choose a seat that doesn't look like it wants to brutally sodomize you. We as a specie have stopped relying on our primal instincts, employed as warning system when being stalked from behind, for some time now. I still have to raise my concerns in my upcoming "Dear Creator" section of the PSSBlog on why we didn’t actually develop eyes that were located more to top of the head so as to be able to get a more full circle, panoramic view of our surroundings, but that will have to wait. I also feel compelled to address the absence of edible materials that can grow on our bodies which we can actually consume along with the question of why we don’t simply keep getting taller and taller as we get older, but once again, one momentous query at a time. With earthlings blindly traversing the streets, glued to their mobile phones more and more, wouldn’t it make sense to offer the same type of guidance system than those employed in self driving cars? Authorities have actually addressed the problem by putting signs on the walkways to warn pedestrians of the danger of walking and texting. These signs have apparently never been observed by any of the pedestrians for whom they were erected. The urban legend goes that a handful of people, who collapsed after walking into one of the signposts which accommodates these signs and snapped a pic while lying flat on their backs, have in actual fact observed it first hand, but we only assume this from the extremely low angle the picture was taken from. With the dumbing down of that wondrous instinct that made a tiger appear in your dream when your never resting senses pick up a smell or a sound of this approaching predator, a much needed substitute for our ever increasing de-sense-itized pedestrians is of proportional life saving importance. The sensor warning interface can take the shape of little lights mounted around the phones screen that lights up and starts to flicker when the somnambulist wanderer comes too close to other stumbling sightless navigators. Having a jacket that is actually fitted with a skeletal harness made up of bonds that makes areas around the torso lightly contract, creating a sense of softly being compressed in the chest by a hand, might be a handy little facility to steer the blind masses. It clearly evident that it will still take some time for types of virtual transmitters to become mainstream, similar to the much criticized Google glass, before people are actually able to once again look up towards the horizon as their forebears did when they weren’t walking and reading a paperback. The very least Science can offer is to collect some statistics on how little drag rear view mirrors on bicycles actually cause and to once and for eliminate the stigma around these very useful little reflectors.
