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| Leg Brake on a Bicycle |
- Growing up, there was a need to learn how to drive a geared motor cycle and also get a driver's license.
- There are two categories of two wheeler licenses: one for geared vehicles usually with leg brakes and one for auto/non-geared vehicles where the braking happens by hand and are simpler to operate.
- Driving license had already been acquired for the non-geared vehicle but due to lack of availability of a geared vehicle for practice, the acquiring of this license was taking quite some time.
- The main problem was adapting to braking a vehicle using the leg where one to respond differently and the conditioning takes some time.
- Unfortunately could not manage to get anybody/s vehicle for learning after many attempts.
- And at that time (1995 or so) bicycles were rather common and used for transport. So an idea was: why not add such a feature to a bicycle.
- A Hercules Town and Trek was also available.
- After some visits to the local bicycle shop and a used vehicle parts market, a hand brake was obtained.
- Using the required clamps and the cable and adding a parallel to the rear brake assembly, this hand brake was added to the slanted portion of the bike frame to function as a leg brake, which could either be operated by hand or by leg. A picture of the assembly is as shown above.
- It functioned rather well for its implementation and provided enough practice for leg braking, though it was a funny sight for people to see the way the braking worked, by reaching out on the slanted frame.🤣
- As this was implemented years ago, there is no actual picture of this contraption just an edited picture.
- It was indeed a cool hack way back then.
