Trike-Bike Dumps Training Wheels

New Bike Design Could Take Fear Out Of Junior's First Solo Ride

(AP) 
The key to their bike, which resembles a trike with crooked wheels while at rest, is a belt with a spring mechanism that pulls the rear wheels inward.

Their design was among 24 of 853 initial entries chosen for the competition's final round, in which teams had three months to build a quarter-scale model of their bike.

Judges were so impressed with the Purdue team's design they awarded it the $15,000 top prize and had a full-scale prototype built for display.

Shim and his collaborators are now working to get their design patented and find an investor to manufacture the bike. Three companies - two from Korea and one from Taiwan - are interested, Shim said.

He said he has already received more than 100 e-mails from consumers asking when the bike might hit the market.

Ryan Atkinson, brand manager at Waterloo, Wis.-based Trek Bicycle Corp., said the design, which has won the praise of the Industrial Design Society of America, would have wide appeal to able-bodied children and children and adults with special needs.

"They've really touched on something unique in the way the bike stabilizes itself," he said.

Jerry Clements, a family physician from New York City, contacted Shim in hopes he could buy a version of the bike for his two 6-year-old daughters, now in the training-wheel stage. He said it's been frustrating helping his girls learn to ride.

"You can get a kid up on two wheels and as long as they're moving and they're looking where they're going, they're going to do OK. But once they slow down and stop, they fall over, get scared and get off. Then you have to start all over again."