When Micha Wallace, a student at the University of Guelph, learned that Lauren couldn’t ride a bike because of a birth defect, she decided to find a way to help her. Lauren, the nine-year-old daughter of one of Micha’s professors, was born with only one arm. So she couldn’t activate the back brake on a bicycle. Micha and her fellow students – Katie Bell, Anina Sakaguchi and Andrew Morris – decided to find a solution.
They created the Single Handed Bike Braking Lever (SHBBL), an innovative bike braking system that can be operated with one hand. The design was entered in the Dyson Canada Design Competition and recently won the top award – $5000 as well as a trophy, a Dyson vacuum and the opportunity to enter the international level of the same awards.
Sir James Dyson, whose foundation endows this design award in 16 countries around the world, talks about educating young people to think outside the box to find solutions, “Using your hands and brains to solve problems is an enormous creative challenge. This understanding should begin at school. We need to direct our talent from secondary and higher education into the core task of putting research and technology back into making products that the world wants.”
He should know. The creative inventor has designed several products the world wants including the Ballbarrow, a wheel barrow that uses a ball instead of a front wheel for greater manoeuverability; the Air Blade, an energy-efficient, rapid hand dryer (that really works!); and of course, the famous Dyson vacuum, a unique and highly effective bagless cleaner, which works on the principle of cyclonic separation. Dyson took his original vacuum design to several manufacturers who rejected it. Today, most of these manufacturers are emulating his model.
Dyson cheerfully talks about failure being part of the design process. One of his legendary comments is, “Enjoy failure and learn from it. You can never learn from success.”
Micha and her colleagues spent four months working to perfect their bicycle braking system. “It was intensive,” she acknowledges. “We started with computer modeling, then finally built the prototype.”
As might be expected, the early designs didn’t work properly. But they persevered and when the last design actually worked, “it was fantastic!”
The SHBBL is truly innovative and is going to prove useful to more than children. Already there are suggestions that bicycle couriers and police officers may be able to use the novel braking system on their own bicycles, freeing up one hand for other things.
Overwhelmed with their success Micha and her colleagues accepted their award from James Dyson himself, acknowledging afterwards that it was exciting to meet the inventor in person. Now they’re waiting to see how their invention fares against other winners from around the globe at the international level.

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