By Ray From Core77

I can’t for the life of me recall where or when, but I once heard that you turn a bicycle (“cornering,” as we call it) not by steering with the handlebars but by ‘pointing your belly button in the direction you want to go.’ It comes naturally to anyone who has surmounted the learning curve, but it’s easy to forget that we aren’t born with the ability to ride a bike. Jersey City, NJ-based brothers Steve and Rich Thrush sum up the problem:

As you probably know, the experience of riding a traditional tricycle or a bicycle with training wheels is quite different than riding a bicycle. In fact, because you cannot lean into turns on a traditional tricycle nor a bicycle with training wheels, kids riding these toys often develop bad habits which they then have to unlearn when learning to ride a bicycle.

The recently Kickstarted Dreisch leaning tricycle addresses the counterintuitive physics of muscle memory by shifting the steering to the rear axle via a hinge and a pivoting swing-arm that runs the length of the frame. The result is a ‘natural’ turning mechanism.

As big-time bike nerds, we’re glad to see a genuine innovation in bicycle design, albeit for a specific subset of riders. By sheer coincidence, a commenter suggested a use case for a certain much-discussed concept bike just this morning: “Age 2–5 kids glider bike I think. Gonna make one.” We’d be curious to see the results if he or she does, as this would be a bicyclic evolution of a baby walker—for which trade names include Exersaucer and Jumperoo—though I’m not exactly sure if a harness has any advantages over a traditional balance bike or, say, Andreas Bhend’s convertible take on a child’s first bicycle.

For more on this story and video go to: http://www.core77.com/blog/transportation/learning_by_leaning_the_dreisch_tricycle_rides_like_a_bike_27841.asp