bike 2

This summer brought stricter bicycle laws to Japan which were aimed at keeping cyclists, pedestrians, and really all people safer, with one of the broadest rules simply stating to “not ride unsafely“. While there are plenty of unsafe riding habits, including listening to music, holding an umbrella or using your cell phone at the same time as you’re biking, one of the most unsafe practices is letting a friend ride on the back of your bike as you pedal.  It may look stable and easy to pull off in an anime, but it is really quite dangerous and police have been trying to stop it for years.

Sometimes though, you and your friend need to get somewhere quickly and wheels are faster than feet, so you have to come up with some new ideas about how to share the bike. Luckily, a pair of high school students have come up with a solution and submitted their thesis for “peer review” via a six-second Vine.

It seems to happen all the time, you meet friends somewhere and some of them decided to walk instead of ride their bicycle. If you end up moving the gathering to a different location, what are you supposed to do? Everyone wants to stay in a group, so usually the walkers will hop onto the back of a bike and then everyone can go together. However, with the new bicycle safety regulations, you don’t want to get caught riding double as it might get you into a load of trouble.

bike 1Flickr/Gwydion M. Williams

Many people believe giving someone a ride on your bike is unsafe since the passenger is not in control of the bicycle and it causes the bike to become unbalanced. However, a pair of students seem to have a solution and have turned both people into riders rather than rider and passenger. This “brilliant” solution isn’t a tandem bike and it will work on a normal bicycle. It just takes a bit of coordination.

https://twitter.com/6doga/status/616989871349968896

Piece of cake! The two students are so confident in their solution that they even go so far as to obscure their faces from the camera, due to the sudden rise in popularity they expect to receive from solving the “no bicycle friend” problem.

▼ Or you can always just bike slower, or walk faster…

bike 3Flickr/tokyoform

In all seriousness, this obviously is not a safe way to ride a bike, but pulling off the feat in an enclosed area off-road is still pretty impressive. Don’t try this the next time one of your friends is bike-less, though. Really, why not just walk instead? It will give you more time to appreciate each other’s company as you calmly stroll to your new destination…although you would have plenty of time together if you get caught by the police riding this way and are hauled into the police box together for processing.

Source: Twitter/@6doga
Featured image:Twitter/@6doga Top Image: Flickr/m-louis