How come bicycles aren’t made to pedal both wheels instead of just one? wouldn’t using both be more efficient?

You bring up a good point on steering and it wanting to bind and the bike would understeer, aka the front wheel will want to just push forward instead of turning in the direction you want it to. You could maybe cure that with some sort of crude limited slip system.

I see a bigger problem. I will use a car on ice for an analogy. Say you have a rear wheel drive car and lose traction while accelerating, you still have traction on the front tires to steer and have potential control of the vehicle. The bike acts the same way if you lose traction you still have a fairly planted from tire.

Now say you have an all wheel drive or 4×4 on ice and lose traction while accelerating all tires break loose. You can still have control of the vehicle because with 4 tires you have 4 points of contact to the ground leaving the vehicle stable.

Now imagine being on a bike and lose traction on both tires in a slippery condition while pedaling, in my mind there's only 1 outcome. You hit the ground.

/r/NoStupidQuestions Thread Parent