https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18ZlKhZPL_Q&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Turn left to go right, turn right to go left.
I couldn’t do it, sadly it was too dark to get a video of me making a fool of myself .
Couldn’t see the video properly, but I’ve seen those bikes ridden at local fairs etc. never got a chance to try one.
Given that I’ve ridden my unicycle all the way to the scene of the accident, I think I’d be similarly awesome on that bike! 
Yeah it was only a 2 sec clip…I was trying to take a picture of the mechanism that reversed the direction of the steering but I failed and got a video instead.
The guy that owned this one said he made about $300 or so on bets. It really is next to impossible for anyone who has spent their whole life riding normal bikes and driving normal cars. I bet I could make a killing on one if I brought it to the State fair here in NC…
I tried riding it backwards and I think I would have succeeded were it not for the coaster brake.
Like other new stuff I suspect with some work at it you could ride it. Case in point, I can ride a motorcycle with my left hand controlling the throttle on the right handlebar. I haven’t tried this on my bike yet but with a bit of practise I could likely do it. It’s just that I’ve never had a reason to do it on a bike but on a motorbike, on a long trip, being able to switch arms gives you a rest.
A few years ago, I watched a doco about left and right handed stuff. Very cool. They got a right handed woman to spend an entire month, doing everything left handed. At first she was a real gump, but after a while was just as proficient. After the month, she actually kept doing some things left handed as that was better overall.
I’m generally right handed, but can golf and other similar things either way no worries. After the doco, I thought about various tasks and now do some things left handed exclusively.
Like using a potato peeler. Most people do it right handed, but there is a second blade on the other side of the peeler, that is sharper! :-). I have now taught myself to peel potatos carrots and such, left handed.
About 2 years ago, I developed pain in my right shoulder that made it damned near impossible to raise my right arm higher than shoulder height. The cartiledge in my shoulder is falling off the bone. Surgeon wants to pin it back on, but recovery is like a year, so I’m putting it off as long as I can. I’m hoping to get killed by a motorist while riding, before I need the op. Anyway, the shoulder makes some things really hard. I now brush my hair left handed. My wife says I don’t look any worse than before! I also get things like cups and glasses out of the cupboard with my left hand. Instead of opening the door with my left hand and grabbing the cup with my right, then closing the door with my left, I now open the door, grab the cup, put the cup down, the close the door all with my left hand.
After a while left handed stuff isn’t that hard. I suspect riding the FK’d up bike would be similar. I can now switch between left and right hand drive cars no worries and imagine thesame would happen with the strange bike and a normal bike.
A few years ago, I watched a doco about left and right handed stuff. Very cool. They got a right handed woman to spend an entire month, doing everything left handed. At first she was a real gump, but after a while was just as proficient. After the month, she actually kept doing some things left handed as that was better overall.
I’m generally right handed, but can golf and other similar things either way no worries. After the doco, I thought about various tasks and now do some things left handed exclusively.
Like using a potato peeler. Most people do it right handed, but there is a second blade on the other side of the peeler, that is sharper! :-). I have now taught myself to peel potatos carrots and such, left handed.
About 2 years ago, I developed pain in my right shoulder that made it damned near impossible to raise my right arm higher than shoulder height. The cartiledge in my shoulder is falling off the bone. Surgeon wants to pin it back on, but recovery is like a year, so I’m putting it off as long as I can. I’m hoping to get killed by a motorist while riding, before I need the op. Anyway, the shoulder makes some things really hard. I now brush my hair left handed. My wife says I don’t look any worse than before! I also get things like cups and glasses out of the cupboard with my left hand. Instead of opening the door with my left hand and grabbing the cup with my right, then closing the door with my left, I now open the door, grab the cup, put the cup down, the close the door all with my left hand.
After a while left handed stuff isn’t that hard. I suspect riding the FK’d up bike would be similar. I can now switch between left and right hand drive cars no worries and imagine thesame would happen with the strange bike and a normal bike.
With left and right hand drive cars, the steering wheel still turns the car the same way, the shifter is just in a different spot (and you’re typically on the “wrong” side of the road). That adaptation is different because the changes are mostly visual, whereas the mountain bike changes affect the stability of the bike as well. This bike is dynamically unstable (without rider control) as far as I can tell, and is an interesting study in the physics of bicycles. Unlike a normal (riderless) bike which has a tendency to self-right whenever it begins to tip one direction or another, my limited experience with this bike suggests that it will not because of the counter rotation of the handlebars, which seems to make the bike tip over even more (hence my assessment that it is dynamically unstable). I’m actually quite disappointed I didn’t have more time to study the thing. I would have liked to do a couple tests with it.
The crazy thing about this bike is that unlike your car example, it seems you have to (temporarily) uncouple everything in your brain that ever told you that turning right would make you go right. Every minute you spend driving a car or riding a normal bike, you’re reinforcing that connection (between turning right and going right) in your head. As adult triathletes, most of us have spent a pretty significant period of time reinforcing these connections, and the result is that it takes a pretty significant amount of time to “unlearn” them. Several people I talked to have ridden the bike, and only one person that had tried it more than a few times ever actually was able to maneuver it around–it took him about the equivalent of a month of daily attempts before he got it. This is consistent with the amount of time the owner said it took him to figure it out. Interesting anecdote: the day the owner got the hang of riding the backwards bike, he almost caused a car crash as he backed out of his driveway because he turned his steering wheel the wrong direction.
The bike in this video does the exact same thing as the bike I rode, but the one I tried looked a lot more ghetto.
If you look at the video you notice the bike requires a LOT more rider input than a regular bike, and my gut feeling is that is not the result of a lack of rider proficiency but rather some peculiar stability issues. The result is that even if you could make the connection to turn left to go right a few times, this connection has to be formed on a much deeper level such that you can react to the bike fast enough to keep it from tipping over (several times per second), and it is the summation of all these minor corrections to the bike (using the left->right input) that determines whether or not you can ride the bike.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XUgjoCusR4
I’d race on that.
I agree with a lot of what you have said, but there is so much with driving that is ingrained and therefore bizarre when you are on the wrong side of the car and road
Particularly for a first time driver driving a car on the wrong side of the road, turning at intersections can be a big problem, as can motorway/freeway off ramps. It’s even worse riding a bike or motorbike as they are the same as you’re used to, but you have to make different decisions about turning. At least in a car you are on the wrong side of the car, to be something of a reminder things are different.
Here in New Zealand, we drive on the left, with the steering wheel on the right. All good. Most cars here are Japanese and when the build a left hand drive car, the turn signal is on the left, and when right hand drive, it’s on the right. All good, it’s always on the door side of the steering wheel. That is too easy as the shifter is always on the middle, away from the door. The entire car is mirrored so to speak. Well, except the shifter in a manual car which is still an H.
My daughters VW Golf however is right hand drive, with the turn signal on the left of the steering wheel, NOT by the door. At the end of my street, I invariably turn the wipers on! LOL
And don’t even get me started about the chaos that ensues when I drive my buddies left hand drive Chevy on Kiwi roads! LMFAO