Veritasium did a great video on the opposite direction turning. They even show a bike that prevents you from turning the wheel one way to show that its essential.
When I took control theory at university, in the last lecture, the lecturer took out a bike with rear wheel steering and challenged us to ride it in the hallway outside the lecture hall in the break. No one could get it to roll more than a couple of meters. The second half of the lecture was spent proving that a rear wheel steered bike is in fact (almost) impossible to control.
The term used in motorcycling is countersteering. A lot of people think they are using their body to change direction but that would not be sufficient. Also it helps to be deliberate about the handlebar pushing motion for safety and performance.
A fair bit of the stability of a bicycle (especially at low speeds) is due to the fact that you have a human holding onto a bar that behaves exactly like a thing that a human would grab onto to steady themselves. If you grab this bar and rotate it clockwise, then you yourself will rotate anticlockwise - and that is true whether the bar is the handlebars on a bike or a random bar fixed on a wall. Holding ourselves steady by grabbing onto something is something that humans have a remarkably effective and quick feedback loop for, which is why bicycle riding comes naturally once you get over the fear of falling off and just do what feels right.
Rigging the handlebars to turn the wheel the other way cancels out that automatic feedback loop.
nxcho|2 years ago
Nevermark|2 years ago
kqr|2 years ago
dizhn|2 years ago
The term used in motorcycling is countersteering. A lot of people think they are using their body to change direction but that would not be sufficient. Also it helps to be deliberate about the handlebar pushing motion for safety and performance.
_jsnk|2 years ago
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0
mnw21cam|2 years ago
Rigging the handlebars to turn the wheel the other way cancels out that automatic feedback loop.