Here a link to a great video that illustrates how hard it is to unlearn something fundamental and then how tricky it can be to recover that knowledge again.
A colleague shared it with me as part of a discussion about getting users to adopt a new technology we’re deploying and how hard it’s been to change ingrained attitudes, “But we’ve always done it this way, why change things now?!”
The video is about riding a slightly modified bicycle and the physics/mechanics of bike riding and brain neuro-plasticity, etc.
Momentum is a critical first step in maintaining balance on a bicycle. Changing the steering interfered with people smoothly gaining speed to keep the bicycle balanced. They were too focused on the difference in steering.
It’s an interesting demonstration of how much our mind’s cling to what we’ve learned. I don’t see that as a bad thing. It means we remember valuable life skills that we’ve learned for a long time. A person who learned to swim at age 9 might need those skills at age 30 when they fall out of a boat. Most people would recall how to swim. Even if that skill hadn’t been used in 20 years.
I appreciate the point he’s trying to make, that we should understand the mental bias we approach things with, but I think the analogy he’s drawing is kind of false-- learning how to ride a bike with opposite steering is all about muscle memory, and he seems to be comparing it with prejudices and preconceived notions. I guess as a general metaphor for recognizing and understanding prejudice it’s ok, but to me it’s two different things. Muscle memory is very ingrained because the motions involved in things like juggling or riding a bike are extremely complicated, as the narrator points out, but there’s not really the same emotional investment as one has with say, a political opinion.
If he practiced riding both regular and bizarro bikes, he’d learn both after awhile-- similar to backing up a trailer. When you first try it the trailer goes in the opposite direction you expect when you turn the steering wheel, and you do a comically bad job of it the first few times. You eventually figure it out, but you don’t forget how to steer going forward. You wouldn’t really be able to believe two opposing political opinions at the same time.
One advantage to owning and learning to ride a bike like that is it wouldn’t be stolen and ridden away by an impulse-grab joyrider!
This is why I put my daughter at the top of a grassy slope on her bike when she first wanted to learn to ride. I told her to put her feet on the pedals and gave her a little push. About halfway down the slope, I told her to start peddling. She did so and when she got to the bottom of the slope where the ground leveled out, she continued to ride the bike all the way to the end of the field. From this moment on, she knew how to ride a bike.
It had taken her brain only a matter of seconds to “get it”.
I see so many parents running on level ground along side their kids trying to get them to ride fast enough for momentum to take over. This method does eventually work, but only after many falls, skinned knees and hours of time.
This is similar to the experiment in which the subject had to wear glasses that turned everything upside-down. After getting used to it, he had trouble coordinating without the glasses.
Countersteering is the act of turning a two-wheeled vehicle in one direction by MOMENTARILY steering the front wheel in the opposite direction. Countersteering unbalances the bike, causing it to fall in the opposite direction of the wheels turn.
(For a “normally-steered”, two-wheeled cycle)
In order to start a turn, or prepare a cycle to make a turn, the rider momentarily turns left to fall right, or momentarily turns right to fall left, thereby setting up the proper lean angle for a turn in the intended direction. This is easy to see if you first ride thru a puddle of water, and then make a turn on dry pavement. The visible tire tracks will show the process.
At speed, turning the front wheel to the left (push on the right handgrip, or pull on the left handgrip, or both), and the bike and rider fall to the right. Assuming the rider is trying to avoid gravel rash, the rider intinctively, and quickly, steers the front wheel to the right. The bike is now leaning in the proper direction for a right turn, and both wheels circle to the right. Time everything correctly, and you can look forward to many years of happy riding.
At walking speed, all that’s required to turn right is to turn the front wheel to the right. Body strength is used to keep the cycle from leaning/falling. A first-time, two-wheeling rider has to learn to, intinctively, make the required steering adjustments, or learn to live with training-wheels for the rest of their life.
The Physics of Countersteering
Countersteering
As aceplace57 and Mangosteen point out, momentum makes learning to ride a two-wheeled cycle so much easier. At least for most people (and you know who you are).
The $200 Backwards Brain Bicycle challenge doesn’t allow momentum. Or wheelies. It’s a standing start. The rider has to balance the bike, balance themselves on the bike, propel the bike forward, and input backward steering corrections at the same time. A trials rider, BMX racer, or balance beam gymnast, should be able to easily balance the bike, and themselves, with their butt on the seat, and feet on the pedals. They would only have to think fast enough to first create the mental inputs required to steer backwards/opposite, and hope they can physically respond fast enough to stay up-right.
Also assuming excellent balance, another option would be to steer “hands-free”. Just shift your body weight. No hands on the handlebar, no counter-intuitive reactions.
*No hands -
While countersteering is usually initiated by applying torque directly to the handlebars, on lighter vehicles such as bicycles, it can also be accomplished by shifting the rider’s weight. If the rider leans to the right relative to the bike, the bike leans to the left to conserve angular momentum, and the combined center of mass remains nearly in the same vertical plane. This leftward lean of the bike, called counter lean by some authors,[43] will cause it to steer to the left and initiate a right-hand turn as if the rider had countersteered to the left by applying a torque directly to the handlebars.[46] This technique may be complicated by additional factors such as headset friction and stiff control cables.
The combined center of mass does move slightly to the left when the rider leans to the right relative to the bike, and the bike leans to the left in response. The action, in space, would have the tires move right, but this is prevented by friction between the tires and the ground, and thus pushes the combined center of mass left. This is a small effect, however, as evidenced by the difficulty most people have in balancing a bike by this method alone.*
Personally, I think it would be very difficult at first, but not insurmountable. I do have experience riding trials bikes. However, if there’s a danger that I would have to re-learn how to ride normal-steering, two-wheelers, I’m not interested in learning to ride the Backwards Brain Bike.
I think it’s unusual that it would take someone 8 months to learn to ride the Backwards bike, but he didn’t say how many actual hours he had actually spent training/trying.
I’ve ridden a backwards bike, and it only took me a few minutes to get the hang of it, so I admit I have always been baffled at the amount of difficulty other have with it. It took a bit of constant thought to keep making steering inputs opposite of what I was used too, but that’s it. I was much more concerned while road racing a motorcycle with GP shifting (up for 1st gear, down for the rest) rather than the standard shifting (down for first gear, up for the rest) that I’m used to. Mixing that up at full lean and 50mph could have worrying consequences.
