It’s all fun and games until some drunk a-hole rolls you off the end of the pier in the middle of the night.
There are a lot of similar designs out there. Does anyone know of a place where a design like this is actually in use?
Doesn’t seem to have a solution to the problem of needing to take your few possessions out of the box to be able to sleep in it. Do you pile it up next to your bike and hope no one runs off with it?
A tent might be more practical, but I imagine most cities have pretty strict rules about setting up a tent on public land. I suppose this is just a question of collapsing the box and pedaling away.
This would absolutely be an invitation for bored teens and hooligans.
Probably on a nightly basis, if not hourly, your snooze coffin would get tipped over, kicked, or pedaled to the other end of town.
Without fail.
As has been suggested a tent is probably a more practical sleeping option. This thing looks like a pain to steer, where as a touring bike with paniers would serve the required function without being hard to maneuver and wouldn’t attract a bunch of folks expecting you to be serving shaved ice or the like.
Interesting as an art object to get people talking about issues the homeless face, but highly impractical.
What better way to demonstrate your social consciousness than by designing a product without actually consulting with the people you think will benefit?
That is the first thing I thought when I saw that. I bet it’s super easy to get out of, too, when it’s locked from the inside and filling up with water.
BTW: since when is a coffin anyone’s idea of a place that is roomy and/or to get a good night’s sleep? There’s a reason that dead people are buried in suits/dresses rather than pyjamas - we know they ain’t really gonna get any decent shut-eye in there.
That is how we design most of our social and economic policies, why not extend that to product design as well?
Actually talking to people in need is usually a formality long after the decisions have been made.
You have just made me want to be buried in some really comfortable pyjamas. I hate suits, why would I want to spend eternity in one? Maybe my best pair of jeans and an old t-shirt would be best.
Cremation for me, so something asbestos-lined, or if cremation isn’t an option (Poland, where I live, is sometimes weird about that) then burial at sea in a pair of trunk with some water wings and one of those fake shark fin things.
Haters gonna hate. It’s not like this would leave the occupant more vulnerable than sleeping in a dumpster or cardboard box or bundled in dirty blankets. Just slap a lock on the bike while you’re sleeping if you’re worried about someone pedaling off with you inside.
Oregon. Of course.
Well, I live on the West Coast of BC, so of course any burial would have to include severing one of my feet, putting it into a shoe and dropping it in the ocean.
But suppose you want some entertainment?
Why haven’t we seen this on True Blood already?
I was thinking something along the line of “what happens if some bored and inventive teens come by with drywall screws and a battery operated impact driver?”. The idea’s particularly bad if you can get sealed in.
It would definitely make you more vulnerable.
Harder to hear, harder to see. If in blankets, you can hear activity around you quite unambiguously. In addition, this bike coffin screams novelty and bored teens are attracted to novelty like rats to peanut butter. They see lots of homeless people in blankets and cardboard. A bike coffin is just begging for bored and drunk teens to practice their Vine-ing skills on the unfortunate resident.
One of the primary realities of sleeping on the street is that you can’t really ever “sleep.” It’s always a constant halfway state of slumber and semi-alertness. You can’t afford to just pass out for eight hours because odds are you’re in a place you’re not supposed to be or a place where other homeless and non-homeless people are a concern.
I live in a city with a sizable transient population but I must admit I’ve never seen teenagers go out of their way to torment sleeping homeless people. I’m sure it happens from time to time but I wonder if it’s really a bigger risk than sleeping somewhere that you’d be exposed to the elements.
Or maybe some cities just have more assholes than others.
Well, sir.
I’m dialing in from NYC, so that probably explains a few things.
In fact, I’ll take this one step further.
It would probably be a fairly amusing experiment (not for the guy inside) to use this with a two-man crew. One sleeping inside, the other secretly filming the mayhem outside. I guarantee if that was a YouTube channel, they’d have fresh footage every day, if not every hour.
Even so, I’ve lived in most major metropolitan cities or visited them at length, LA, SF, Chi, Atl, Pdx, Sea, Bos, and another dozen more and I can’t think of one of those where one would be safe in this. MAYBE out in the woods or deep in some park, but even then I think I’d be more terrified.
People are messed up. People with alcohol really messed up. And people with alcohol and guns even more so. This thing is a deathtrap.
