So there's this cute little key rack that's supposed to help you ride your bike more...
Okay, let me insert this disclaimer here: If you live in suburbia and commute twenty interstate miles to work, this whole post will be as foreign to you as Tibetan throat singing or the dietary customs of the Maasai. The target demographic is people who live within a few miles of work by surface street or bike path and actually do commute or run errands by bike sometimes.
...anyhow, there's this cute little key rack that's supposed to encourage you to ride your bike more often by dropping the bike key on the floor every time you grab the car key off the hook. It does this so you actually have to pick the bike key up and hold it in your hand, thereby theoretically forcing you to at least stop and consider taking the bicycle after all.
It sounds like an effective gentle behavior modification tool, but I wonder how well the designer really knows how people work.
See, the problem is this: It's not like the prison warden screws this thing to the wall. There's nothing keeping somebody from keeping the car keys on the kitchen counter after the third or fourth annoying key-drop. Or tearing it off the wall and stomping it into scrap in a fit of pique. The only people that are going to put up with its shenanigans are probably already taking the bike or the car based on which is most appropriate for the weather and the trip.
It's like those filter tip things they used to sell to help you quit smoking; the ones that came in the gradated set of five, in increasing steps of filteriness. You were supposed to use filter one for, like, fourteen days or something, and then filter #2 for twelve-and-a-half, and then move to filter three, four, and five at designated intervals et voila! You smoke no more!
But anybody with the discipline to work through that program exactly by the instructions already had the commitment and willpower to just not stick a cigarette in their face in the first place, while anybody who wasn't serious about quitting would just toss the whole goofy mess into the drawer with the Mr. Microphone, the broken Furby, and that undeveloped roll of 35mm film from their trip to Puerto Rico in '98.
It's easy to trick yourself by accident; people do it all the time. But if you try and play head games with yourself on purpose, it doesn't work nearly so well, because you always see it coming.
.
Will power is odd. I quit smoking cold turkey and yet can't seem to push away from the table. I wish I were as physically limber as the mental contortions I'll go through to justify that slice of pizza or bag of chips.
ReplyDeleteWere I forced to have this key holder, I'd build some Rube Goldberg contraption to put the bike key back in place that would make the Purdue engineering students bow their heads in shame.
This must be why I always know which cup I put the peanut under.
ReplyDeleteI'll assume they're not paying me an exorbitant sum to take their gizmo home, so I'm expected to shell out $$ for them to piss me off, plus have to mount the thing, which looks like it has a power cord so one has to have an outlet near the door for it to work.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what color the sky is in their world. And why they have so much time on their hands....
Elmer,
ReplyDeleteOh, it will sell. The irony being that it will sell best to people who don't need it.
Like those self-propelled alarm clocks or the gradated ciggie filters, it will sell mostly to people who have already committed to doing something anyway; it'll just be a little gris-gris that they can give credit for success that really came from inside themselves.
And then there'll be some people who buy it just for the novelty or receive it as a gift; those are the people who are gonna wind up unplugging it in a week.
For some of us, (apropos of nearly nothing at all), the trip to PR is more likely to have been in '78.
ReplyDeleteM
Just looked at the Wired article...
ReplyDeleteIt figures a German invented it. :rolleyes:
gvi
BICYCLES HAVE KEYS!?!?!!? WHEN DID BICYCLES START HAVING KEYS?!?!?!
ReplyDeleteHmmm... I wonder if that bike on the back porch that I never ride has a key? I'll have to look at it when I get home from work.
s
Brilliant idea.
ReplyDeleteThey will sell far more of them as presents to bicyclists than to actual bicyclists.
OTOH, it will drop the car keys if you grab the bike-lock key, right?
ReplyDeleteOr you could put both on one hook. Maybe a bent nail pounded into the door frame with a rock from the yard. Whatever.
When I worked in downtown Sleazattle, I biked 15 miles each way, uphill at both ends and never ever required a key!
ReplyDeletemacvs2
The only bike I see myself riding does indeed have a key - and electric start.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid once they've got you hanging the bike key (bike key!) on the designated hook, it's already too late.
ReplyDeleteWhoever invented this thing must not have seen the old Jimmy Stewart movie, "The Shop Around the Corner", where the shop owner bought a number of musical candy boxes (or maybe cigarette boxes, it's been awhile). Jimmy Stewart thought they were a mistake and Margaret Sullivan was able to sell one to a woman as a diet aid because the song would become annoying.
ReplyDeleteA simple nail driven into a wall with placement of the motor vehicle key before the bike lock key on the nail will do the same task at a lower cost, without consumption of electricity and without dropping any keys on the floor.
ReplyDeleteExpect a lot of inventions like this with the advent of legalized MJ in CO and WA State.
ReplyDeleteI got a better solution to the problem- sell your car, then you'll have to ride the bike, but you'll have extra dough for the bus when it rains.
Interesting... and doomed to failure, as you said...
ReplyDeleteI have a plan to quit smoking. It involves the doors to the furnace closing behind my dead ass.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous KM said...
The only bike I see myself riding does indeed have a key - and electric start.
Amen.
I've got a new hobby.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to go around on blogs and find people talking about shit I have no interest in doing, and then leave comments about how I have no interest in doing that shit.
Tam said "Like those self-propelled alarm clocks..."
ReplyDeleteYou mean cats? yeah, I got a couple of those and last I heard you do to...
> They will sell far more of them as presents to bicyclists than to actual bicyclists.
ReplyDeleteYep. Much like "wine accessories" purchased for wine-drinking friends by non drinkers. Who needs (or wants) an aluminum "anti-condensation bottle stand" (basically a glorified coaster) with "Merlot" silkscreened on the side? Plus if your bottle of merlot is gathering condensation you either have very nonstandard preferences or live in an environment where gills would be a survival advantage.
> the dietary customs of the Maasai....
Never tried drinking* blood (other than my own, incidentally, after leading with my face into something harder), but I'd bet that a device that drained blood out of your jugular vein if you picked up the car keys would do a hell of a lot more to encourage alternate transportation than a device that drops your bike [lock] key on the floor.
*And don't get me started on blood sausage/black pudding, etc. One word: melena.
Might work, but many people do use locks with combinations for securing their bicycle. Mine is secured in the locked fence and not locked at all when home.
ReplyDelete>There's nothing keeping somebody from keeping the car keys on the kitchen counter after the third or fourth annoying key-drop.
ReplyDeleteCats. Cats that steal things.
>But if you try and play head games with yourself on purpose, it doesn't work nearly so well, because you always see it coming.
My exSO was in a timezone of her own. It was anywhere between 12 and 17 minutes ahead of real life. People are different.
The key to this device's success (pardon the pun) is to get itself recognized as a weight loss aid covered by Obamacare.
ReplyDeleteThey could go for double subsidy and claim to reduce carbon emissions as well.
:)
Hell my bike doesn't even have a kickstand! It sounds like the kind of thing that's useful to a person who requires GPS and Google to get around their own freakin' neighborhood.
ReplyDeleteAnd it figures that it was invented by a German, they're into coercive behavior modification - for the betterment Of ze Planet, of course. Betterment - like how they really needed to "unify" Europe in 1938 in order to promote better financial and political stabilization.
This is why I roll my eyes at those people that deliberately set their watch 10-minutes fast so they won't always be late.
ReplyDelete