The German science show "Galileo" accompanied the route of a typical German bicycle. Where do our bicycles come from? Under which conditions are they manufactured? And how about low-priced bicycles available on the Internet for self assembly?
Interview with the bicycle expert Dirk Zedler:
1. Mr Zedler, how can I as a non-professional recognize whether a bicycle is good or not? We tried in the report, but we didn’t succeed.
A bicycle is more than the sum of its parts. Even a bicycle which is exclusively made of sophisticated components may function poorly or be unsafe. Only the professional assembly and the adjustment by a skilled technician provide a round package. The name of individual components or the list of individual weights will not help. I therefore recommend that you buy a bicycle in a specialist shop. There you’ll be fully informed, the bicycle will be adjusted to the rider and you may do a test ride.
2. What are the major problems with a bicycle that is not good? (Keyword: not only annoying, but even dangerous, liability etc.)
A bad or cheap bicycle does not match the physical proportions of the rider. Both the riding behaviour and the functioning avoid any fun during riding. The functioning of cheap products typically decreases very quickly and often they are bound to be thrown on the scrap heap after only a few rides. Bicycles from the specialist shop have a longer service life and are used even for many years when serviced regularly. A really dangerous thing is according to my experience, when a non-professional tries to make a cheap, partly assembled bicycle bought in the DIY construction market ready for use. We had experts’ reports for bicycles where wrongly adjusted brakes, an improperly adjusted gear system or even inaccurately fixed pedals or front wheels resulted in falls or crashes with serious injuries. The manufacturers of such kind of products often succeed in not assuming liability depending on what is written in their user manuals.
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Read the entire interview.
