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What do you ride when you’re seven? A BMX from Halfords? A child-specific design from a specialist bike company like Islabikes? A bike that’s too big to ride because your dad said you’d grow into it? What if your father builds titanium bicycles for a living? Jim Zoellner of Roark Custom Titanium Cycles built this beautiful bike for his...

The 2m cars disposed of each year in Britain seems high but is dwarfed by the 14m scrapped by American drivers in 2009. A significant amount of steel is recycled during this process, but environmental awareness is encouraging ever-more creative ways to re-use the materials from scrapped cars. Architectural firm Leger Wanaselja in California...

The heads-up display (HUD) technology originally developed for pilots and eventually offered as an expensive optional extra by luxury car makers is now available as an app for iPhones or Windows Mobile devices. The device is mounted on the car’s dashboard and the apps use the GPS function to calculate and display the speed on the underside...

The women’s rights advocate Susan B. Anthony may have said that the bicycle did “more to emancipate women than anything else in the world”, but the road along which it travelled was a bumpy one. On 21st June 1895, the Newark Sunday Advocate ran the following article: The Unique Cycling club of Chicago is all that its name implies. One of...

Cyclists who buy lightweight mountain bikes are paying over £2,000 to save a kilogram. The ETA looked at online prices for new mountain bike prices last month and found that a 10kg mountain bike cost £2,483 more than one weighing 11kg on average. The cost per kilogram saved equates to £2.48 per gram; over five times more expensive than the...

The Uberhood is an elongated umbrella that mounts to bicycle handlebars and is intended to protect the rider from sun and rain. Its makers claim that an aerodynamic shapes means wind resistance is low, but the obvious drawback with such designs is the way they catch the wind from underneath and allow rain to reach the rider from the front....

The bicycle bell is a much under-valued accessory; although it is a legal requirement that bicycles start their lives with one fitted, the fashion is for them to be quickly removed. However, a Japanese film on Youtube suggests a new use for the millions of bicycle bells discarded each year; donate them to pedestrians for use on crowded...

Electric cars are touted as the personal transport of the future, but if American product designer Peter Treadway has his way many of us will be sporting SpnKiX motorised shoes The project has already secured enough financial backing via start-up website kisckstarter.com to ensure production will begin next month. A pair of the motorised...

Crossroads in California have been equipped with radar that can differentiate between bicycles and cars, and triggers a green light for cyclists. The ‘Intersectors’ use microwaves to determine whether a vehicle has two, four or more wheels and adjusts the traffic light accordingly. “To the city of Pleasanton, this is the best of both worlds...

Over 1m drivers this year face the prospect of an unexpected bill for £100 because their breakdown policy does not include home rescue. The Environmental Transport Association (ETA) estimates that of the 4m drivers who each year buy breakdown cover without home rescue, up to 40 per cent will find themselves in need of the service. Home...