Chainless bicycle

June 20, 2006

Most childhoods would be incomplete without an incident involving lost skin and a bicycle. Indeed, given that the bicycle is the world’s favourite means of transport (more than 100 million bicycles are sold each year – double the number of cars) and they all feature a highly-efficient but potentially dangerous chain drive, we’d suspect that most people will have had an unfortunate recollection of an incident involving a de-railed chain, lost skin, grease and perhaps a destroyed garment or two. So we like the idea of a bicycle without a chain. US-based Dynacraft has introduced just such a beastie - the Dekra-D Drive bike has an internal drive shaft which offers less maintenance, greater safety and a cleaner solution than a conventional chain-driven bike by replacing the parts of the bike that cause the most problems and require the most maintenance - the chain and derailleur.