DIY winter bike tires through zip ties

Just because the snow might be piling up doesn’t mean you have to hang up the bike. Fritz Rice of Dutch Bike Co got caught in the freak snowpocalypse that plagued Seattle late last month and decided to fashion some incredibly rad snow tires with nothing more than a box of zip ties.

Fritz says,

I can accelerate, brake, and corner with aplomb, even on the vile snowpack/sheet ice mix the plows leave in the bike lanes. The zip ties dig nicely into the hardest packed surfaces, but they’re thin enough not to bounce the bike around at low speed or on short pavement sections.

Notice how the zip ties are positioned. The heads of the zip ties are positioned at just the perfect position to provide traction while cornering, but the band of the zip ties themselves provide grip when rolling in a straight line.

Awesome. Ingenuity, ftw.

[via TreeHugger]

Check out more photos of the zip tie winter bike tires in action: