Test: Carrying a Newborn on a Bike
A little background here: Many moms carry their babies around by bicycle here in the Netherlands. It’s pretty much a necessity when families live in densely packed cities where driving an automobile is neither practical, pleasant or affordable. At WorkCycles we’ve always recommended that this be done by putting the child in a Maxi-Cosi (by far the most popular make of car seat for infants), secured in the box of a bakfiets. We mostly do this in the Bakfiets.nl Cargobike but a number of others are good as well. We have a lot of experience with this system and haven’t seen any problems. Customers have even told us stories of accidents that their babies SLEPT through. In short a baby appears to be fairly safe in a protective car seat, in a sturdy wooden box, only several centimeters from the ground.
But not everybody wants to ride a Bakfiets and we customers regularly ask us to mount the Maxi Cosi on the front or rear carrier of a standard format bike… which we’ve steadfastly refused. Colleagues of ours do this regularly and quite a few customers have left one of our shops and gone straight to “brand X” where they’ve bought a bike equipped this way. We haven’t really helped the customer in such a case and we’ve lost a sale as well. I wanted to research the matter further.
Photo: Example of a bike equipped to carry a baby in a Maxi Cosi over the front wheel, NOT from WorkCycles.
Setting the Maxi-Cosi on a front carrier seemed like a BAD idea but perhaps acceptable with our new, super heavy duty and stable Fr8 bike. So I built a test rig and experimented with Pascal, then 2 mo old. Kyoko and I each rode the bike for an afternoon on a variety of (quiet) roads and smooth paths in Amsterdam.
One of our complaints with carrying babies on standard type bikes is that the parking stands are inadequate to hold the “load” stably. This is particularly true since the baby is set high over the front wheel while most bikes have their parking stand beneath the crank axle. That’s just not stable. The Fr8 is built differently: The rack is mounted with just enough clearance over the front tire and a very wide and stiff stand is integrated into the “Massive Rack”. This rack and stand are actually rated for over 150kg of cargo so a few kg of baby, Maxi-Cosi and the overbuilt system were not going to tax it. Test one passed with flying colors.
The system holding the Maxi-Cosi looks cheesy but it’s actually extremely solid and secure. I wouldn’t have put my 2 month old son in there otherwise! I bolted a board to the carrier and strong tie-down straps secure the Maxi-Cosi. In the bag below the Maxi Cosi are a stack of blankets and cushions for shock damping. It’s not visible in the photos but Pascal IS strapped into the Maxi Cosi under the blankets.
Riding the bike with baby aboard was obviously no problem, but wasn’t nearly as confidence inspiring as having the baby low in the wooden box of the bakfiets. There remained something unnerving about having the baby so high and in your sight line.
While riding we discovered the real problem with such a system: damping of large amplitude vibrations from the road surface… shaking the baby in other words. On perfectly smooth surfaces it was fine, but even the smallest irregularities in the road caused Pacal’s head to shake up and down. Even with the giant 54mm tires of the Fr8 so soft that they almost rolled on the rims, a small pothole or root pushing through the road caused unacceptable shaking.
Project over thus:
The shocks transmitted through the bike in such a format are simply unacceptable for a small baby, and short of an elaborate suspension system there is no way to counter it. An adequate suspension would require much more vertical distance between the baby carrier and front wheel and this setup was already as high as I would consider acceptable. Thus any further work in this direction would require a bike with a much smaller front wheel.
We maintain our position that carrying a baby on the front of a “normal” format bike is not acceptable and will not offer this until we’ve found a better approach.
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January 20th, 2009 at 08:05
I’ve seen these baby seats mounted on the back of a lot of bikes, but never on the front before. There’s a definitely advantage to being able to see your child as you cycle.
There is a photo somewhere of my (now 14 year old) daughter sitting happily in a bike basket when she was a couple of months old. We didn’t really transport her that way though, which is just as well as I think social services in the UK would have descended on us and taken her away if we had. If they had, she’d probably have grown up without cycling, and be heading towards obesity due to travelling everywhere by car.
January 20th, 2009 at 18:49
David, the Steco Baby Mee is indeed designed to be mounted on the rear carrier. We find it a rather dubious way to carry a baby, but it’s certainly better than doing so like on the black bike above. A couple Amsterdam shops do this a lot and it’s really scary looking. Firstly the Maxi Cosi sits very high, so high that it can actually interfere with one’s sight line. Secondly the baby is cantilevered our forward of the front wheel. Sorry, but a baby is not a bumper.
We’re still working (slowly) on a better solution. It’ll require another type of bike, though, thus you might see a new variant of the FR8 on the market next year.
January 21st, 2009 at 01:28
Hi Henry – thanks for posting this! I’ve been obsessing about this a bit as our son’s due date approaches. I’ve found most infant solutions quite sketchy as well. Amidships position (to reduce travel from impacts from front and back wheels), placement as low as possible to reduce rotational momentum with tipovers, use of well-secured rear-facing standard car seat, and being in a position where neither driver nor bike can land on baby all seem important.
Other issues that I’m trying to find a real evidence basis for is the whole head/neck stability issue. You read a lot in the safety literature about how infants do not have appropriate musculature to support their relatively large heads, and thus cannot mitigate jostling and impact forces the way we can. There is also vague concern about unrecognized repeated minor head injury from shaking and subtle impacts, as well as stresses on their necks. They of course, cannot communicate specific discomforts the ways toddlers can, so it’s hard to know if those are being missed. But I suspect we’re in the realm of expert opinion rather than actual studies here (I’ll keep looking).
The bakfiets solution is currently the only one I’d feel even semi-comfortable with trying (even that violates all sorts of American Academy of Pediatrics and other US injury prevention recommendations – admittedly, a conservative bunch when it comes to cycling). My friends used a Chariot Sidecarrier (http://chariotcarriers.com/english/html/sidecarrier.php) and infant sling (\not intended to be used while cycling\: http://chariotcarriers.com/english/html/accessories.php?accID=2), and liked it. Other eager parents in the US use similar infant slings in rear trailers, which worries me in terms of a lot of jostling (placement right over the axle) and not-infrequent tipovers. The upcoming Taga stroller/trike might be something I’d try with an infant (are you thinking about carrying this?).
I’ll be very curious to see what you’re working on with a new FR8 variant. I drooled puddles in the Clever Cycles showroom this fall when I saw the gloriously orange FR8 with the big rack and front stand. In the meantime, since we’re bakfiets-less, I’ll wait until he’s at least 9-12mo and use our Bobike Mini seat, unless I jury-rig a rear-facing car seat low down in the Madsen Cycles bucket first. But even then I’ll probably wait until he’s 6mo, as much as that pains me.
I understand wanting to keep FR8 development under wraps for now, but it’d be fun to follow along with your prototyping in this blog …
January 21st, 2009 at 09:29
Hi Julian,
We’ve equipped hundreds of bakfietsen to carry newborns by mounting a Maxi-Cosi in the box on a padded platform. There’s even room for toddlers on the bench behind. My son Pascal has been riding in one since one month old.
As you suggest the long wheelbase, vertically compliant frame, low position and distance from the front wheel make an enormous difference in the smoothness of the ride experienced by the baby. Assuming one rides with moderation and a soft front tire the shocks transmitted don’t appear any worse than those in Pascal’s Bugaboo carriage (with suspension on the wheels). Trailers, on the other hand, bounce around considerably and with the baby directly between the wheels, will certainly transmit much more shock.
Richard and I rode the Taga at Eurobike. It was very well executed considering it’s complexity and the designers were working on some attractive accessories. But it didn’t seem like something one would enjoy riding for more than a kilometer of so. II would regard it more as a big stroller that rode decently in bike mode than a bicycle to be compared on equal terms to something like the bakfiets.nl cargobike.
New FR8 variations? There are a number in the works and we’re not sure which ones will be great enough to warrant production. One could extrapolate from the article above that safely carrying a baby plus older child with a smaller footprint than a bakfiets is something we’d like to enable. Exactly what form that’ll take is still a question mark. We’re also working on three-wheelers but there are already so many on the market that we have to figure out exactly what we’re adding to the equation. The only new version that’s definite is a lighter, “city bike” variant, probably called “Fast FR8″.
January 26th, 2009 at 05:33
I just found this blog, but I’ve been riding one of your bikes around Chicago for months. Every day I get comments about how gorgeous / cool / awesome my bike is!
That picture with the baby seat is so funny to me. It looks like when I recently strapped my nephew’s car seat to my front rack to return it to my sister. I was only transporting the car seat, no child, of course. I thought, drivers are going to think I’m crazy, but what they don’t know is that I could be a Dutch super mum
Here’s a picture of the set up: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3363/3227896932_6d243330bf.jpg?v=0
January 26th, 2009 at 15:51
Dottie, A lot of Dutch parents would consider that a perfectly reasonable way to carry a child. See the next post about the mom who carries three kids on her WorkCycles FR8, one of them on the front carrier… without any seat at all. Also popular is for kids to stand on the rear carrier with their hands on dad’s shoulders, watching the world go by from a nice high vantage point.
I’m guessing you got your bike at Dutch Bike Chicago? It always warms my heart to hear from happy WorkCycles riders!
Chicago seems to be quietly becoming the top cycling city in the US while Portland and New York make a bigger fuss about it.
January 27th, 2009 at 07:05
Yes, I did get my bike at Dutch Bike Chicago. Great people over there who really care a lot about the bikes! Chicago is a good place to cycle and I appreciate the steps the mayor is taking to improve it. Chicago as a whole is a top city that doesn’t make a fuss about it – there’s more going on here than corrupt politicians
February 2nd, 2009 at 23:20
Thanks for the detailed reply! I just saw this lovely and innovative “short john” bike, linked from the clever cycles gang. This Frances Small Haul might be a nice design starting point for a lighter, shorter, baby-friendly bakfiets. Of course, it’s built for speed and touring, and thus not-so-Dutch, but the cargo bin just looks so much like a bassinet it’s hard not to fantasize about baby transport.
Check it out:
http://francescycles.com/galleries/cargo/#3123111045
February 6th, 2009 at 10:08
What do you think about carrying an infant on an Onderwater family tandem in its bakfiets configuration? I mean, assuming of course that the baby was in a maxi-cosi that had been securely fastened into the box. I’m curious about this because I think the Onderwater family tandem is a good solution for kids who are old enough to pedal, but not old enough to deal with our rather scary streets (I’m in the US), and it would be nice to get only one family bike when the time comes instead of having to get one and then another.
February 6th, 2009 at 14:45
Susannah,
The safety of a baby on a bike is dependent on the length of the bike’s wheelbase, how close to the center of the bike the baby lies, the shock absorbing capabilities of the infant carrying system, how far from the ground the baby is, the stability of the parking stand and the protection around the baby. In almost all of these areas the Onderwater is better than a standard bike but not quite as good as the Bakfiets Cargobike Long.
One of the real tricks to doing this properly is holding the baby carrier securely but not rigidly. It must absorb shocks and vibrations to prevent them being transmitted into the baby.
I think for the parent very conscious of the factors involved and willing to adjust their riding style the Onderwater Tandem can make a fine baby carrier. And then it’s really handy later on when the kids can pedal along.