There’s a petition making the rounds asking bicycle manufacturers to, put simply, make better bikes. The goal? For bikes that fail quickly to stop being produced in favor of higher quality bicycles that can last a minimum of 500 hours.
Why? Because, they say, too many of the cheap bikes sold at big box stores are failing early, break when a shop mechanic tries to repair it, or simply can’t be repaired. Sometimes that’s because threads strip or parts break, or because they use non-standard parts that aren’t replaceable.
The result is too many scrap bikes hitting the dump, and too many people becoming discouraged about using bikes as an alternative to cars. You can submit the petition here as a Google Form.
Feature photo courtesy Watts from the pile of junk bikes behind his shop. Chances are your local shop has a similar collection, too. Stuff they’ve taken on trade or that people have dropped off and never picked up, possibly because they were told the bike couldn’t be fixed. Or that the repair cost more than the bike’s original price.
