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London Design Student Locks Out Bike Thieves
LONDON, January 26/PRNewswire/ -- A London student has come up with a canny design that could help prevent thousands of bikes being stolen.
Dominic Hargreaves, 23, a student at the UK's top design school, the Royal College of Art, has had three bikes stolen since he moved to the capital last year. And he's not alone: On average a bicycle is stolen every 71 seconds in England.
Looking at this urban problem as a design challenge, the young designer realised that the only way to overcome the problem was to lock the bike somewhere out of the reach of thieves. Dominic's solution? A bike lock located 8 feet above the ground. Well out of reach of bike thieves.
How does it work?
The bike cradle can be fitted to any wall and is attached to an electronic hoist which lowers to the ground when triggered by the owner's remote control. The mechanism can also be programmed to read an oyster card if located at a tube station, or indeed any public location. Once the bike is placed into the cradle and locked in position, the user then activates the hoist to pull the bike up onto the wall. The bike is then safely out of the reach of thieves and their bolt cutters.
Dominic believes the idea would work on domestic dwellings such as houses or blocks of flats as well as public spaces like railway or tube stations, where the bike can be activated by a smart card. With politicians and health professionals alike increasingly trying to encourage more people to 'Get on their Bikes', Hargreaves' invention could be the very thing to make the campaign a success.
The design is one of the winners in the GBP15,000 iQ Design Challenge set by Toyota to Royal College of Art students and alumni to create products that respond to modern urban life, along with a computer aid designed to help "two-finger" typists increase their speed and accuracy, and a quick-release, hygienic ice cube tray that avoids the perennial problem of cubes flying out when the tray is twisted.
For further information or interviews please contact Aine Duffy, RCA Media Relations on +44(0)7736-460575 or e: aine.duffy@rca.ac.uk
Source: Royal College of Art
For further information or interviews please contact Aine Duffy, RCA Media Relations on +44(0)7736-460575 or e: aine.duffy@rca.ac.uk
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