Sometimes being a cyclist can seem like, well, an uphill ride. You ride alone, cars dominate the road and often there are no bike lanes to remind vehicle drivers of your right to share the road. Designers Pepin Gelardi and Teresa Herrmann have come up with a low-cost fun solution to expand, visually and physically, the biking community.
The Bicycle Contrail functions similar to a carpenter’s chalk line: A small amount of powdered chalk is filtered through a brush inside the device and picked up on a felt wheel. The felt wheel transfers this chalk onto the rear tire leaving a fine layer. As chalk builds up, the tire leaves a faint line of color on the road. The result is a bicycle contrail, a colorful and short-lived representation of your cycling path.
Gelardi and Herrmann developed the innovative bike community concept for the Design21 Power to the Pedal competition. Pepin Gelardi explains that one of the goals of the Bicycle Contrail is to encourage more people to cycle by allowing the biking community to leave a unique mark on the road and reclaim their right to the shared road.
When many cyclists use the Contrail, the colorful lines become evidence of an active bike community that pedestrians, drivers and bicyclists can’t fail to notice.
Visit: http://www.gelardi.com/portfolio/contrail/
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