*Flintstones

It honestly was a road hazard though, maybe they can find a private road to drive on

*canada

Adding video to channels (Canada) - requested by MarineGunrock.

what and they didnt expect to get pulled over?

cool idea though

Yeah! That's Strachan and Queen W, just south of Trinity Bellwoods park. I live about a 5 minute ride from there.

Great idea....shame about the police. Assuming the brakes are sound I'm not really sure why it's any more hazardous than riding a bike or driving a car. In fact, I think it would be actually be safer for both the occupants and fellow road users.

What they should have done is kept the electrical system and battery so the signals worked, at least.

Yeah and the 'no license plate' thing kinda trips cops out as well.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'cycle, road, vehicle' to 'cycle, road, vehicle, flintstones' - edited by calvados

There's a guy who rides an enclosed three-wheel recumbent bike all over the sidewalks where I live. More legal yet a bit more hazardous than these guys going 15mph in their car in town.

Officer: "The safety factor of it is... unsafe"

I know this is canada, not the US, but, regardless, I don't see anything wrong with what they were doing. In the US, I understand why we have a driver's license system, but something about that feels an awfuly lot like restriction of movement, which is considered a right. Seems too prohibitive.

I actually agree with the cops on this one..

It's technically too slow, no signal lights, no break lights, if they needed to make a hard stop i'm not too sure if the breaks they have would be able to do the job of slowing the car down fast enough, because they would potentially hit a pedestrian or car that stopped ahead of them for some reason.

Plus the already mentioned lack of license plates.

I gotta agree with the cop on this one...at least he seemed interested in the concept.

I know conventional thought would tell us allowing this contraption on the road is just plain wrong because there's no license plate, no break lights, et cetera, but what if we took a moment to think beyond conventions. Let's think more about why it's considered wrong, aside from it being a vehicular bohemeth run by pedals, which on the surface just seems ridiculous (that I agree with). But, I think we're conditioned so much by conventional (popular) thought that we lose our ability to give critical perspectives.

If I was to make a guess why everyone was saying it was wrong, I'd say it has everything to do with safety. An argument can always be made in favor of safety, and that argument is instantly popular with most. That's why you hear politicians yelling from their soapbox that they will make things safe for our children, or safer for the family, or, most recently, make us safe from terrorists. And an argument that is popular with most usually becomes the convention because it usually becomes the law. And, laws restrict our liberties, therefore, I believe, they should be considered carefully (and with absolute scrutiny) before gaining our support.

To that point, isn't restricting these guys in their cycle-jalopy a preemptive measure to ensure other motorist's safety? I mean, truly isn't that the argument being made in favor of safety? As if to punish them before they've committed a real crime? Somehow that just doesn't set well with me. But, I know my opinion is not a very popular one.

The problem with the police position on this is that it is based on the false assumption that the "car" is a motor vehicle, or for some unexplicable reason should be treated as such.

It is a human powered cycle. If it was not given the appearance of a car nobody would think it needs electrical turn signals, license plates etc.

As for stopping safety, it only goes 15km (about 10 miles)/hr and has brakes (I think he said it has 5 of them in the vid) and one of those breaks was good enough to a stop in the gallery in about a foot (we can see the mark).

Just consider, would the police reaction be valid if he removed the car body, but changed nothing else?

As for "The safety factor of it is... unsafe" this is true for any moving contraption, the police don't require all cars to be towed home because they might, and sometimes do, cause harm.

Oh, dgandhi, your sort of pragmatic wisdom is surely welcome here! I think I'm off to upvote the shit out of your queue.

*dead pedalers

This published video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by twiddles.

http://www.glumbert.com/media/pedalcar

oxdottir has fixed this video's dead embed code - no star awarded because oxdottir was awarded too recently.

Updates: These guys won!

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/toronto/archive/2008/04/03/163847.aspx from http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/03/flintstonesstyle-ped.html ...

*promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 9:14am PST - promote requested by dotdude.

a cool cop would have chuckled and offered to help pedal it back to the gallery, there was like 7 bike cops sitting there, not like they couldnt of escorted the artists back