A bike seat becomes a foot. A chain becomes a knee joint. Gear cables hold the whole frame together — and Ben Hogan is giving the blueprint away for free.

  • 95%+ of the prosthetic's parts come from repurposed bicycles
  • 85-90% of amputees worldwide lack access to a proper prosthesis, per WHO estimates
  • 9 days Hogan spent training clinicians in Ghana
  • 2 fully built prosthetic legs completed by the end of that trip

From Bike Shop to Prosthetics Lab

Hogan, a prosthetist at Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital in Michigan, spent years as a bicycle mechanic before an unplanned encounter changed his career. In 2011, an amputee walked into the Los Angeles bike shop where Hogan worked and showed him his prosthesis, unprompted.

"It really informed me of how much a bike and a prosthesis had in common," Hogan told PEOPLE in an exclusive interview. He later trained as a prosthetist at UCLA and, in 2013, built his first below-the-knee bike-parts prosthesis within a few weeks. He then shelved the idea for a decade, waiting until he felt he had the advanced skills to do it justice.

By 2024, working with a patient at Mary Free Bed, Hogan returned to the project and founded Project Bike Leg: a below-the-knee design built from a bike seat, chains, gear cables and a wicker socket, refined further with an above-the-knee version in 2025.

Nine Days in Ghana

Citing World Health Organization estimates, Hogan says 85-90% of amputees worldwide lack access to a working prosthesis — mostly in countries where a conventional device, which can cost thousands of dollars, is simply out of reach. A bike, he reasoned, is already engineered for human locomotion: lightweight, adjustable and built from parts available almost anywhere bicycles exist.

To test that theory outside a US hospital, Hogan traveled to Ghana and spent nine days training prosthetics students to build the design from scratch using local tools and scavenged bike parts. By the end of the trip, the group had completed two fully functional prosthetics together.

"I don't have any intention of financially benefiting from it or patenting these designs. I want them to be available to all parties all over the world."

Hogan has no plans to sell or license the design. His website hosts free instructional videos for both above- and below-the-knee versions, so clinicians or hobbyists with basic tools can build one locally without his involvement.

What Comes Next

The next phase is a pilot study tracking amputees in developing countries who wear bike legs full-time, to measure durability and comfort against a standard clinical prosthesis over months rather than days. Hogan's former bike-shop manager, Tim Potter, who taught him to fix bikes two decades ago at Michigan State University, says the arc of the story still catches him off guard.

Hogan sums up his own motivation more simply: his sister once told him his career should be his greatest gift to the world. "I do think this is my greatest gift to the world," he said — one bike wheel, chain and gear cable at a time.