The WHPVA
The World Human Powered Vehicle Association is an association of national associations and organizations, dedicated to promoting improvement, innovation and creativity in the use of human power, especially in the design and development of human-powered vehicles. The current members of the WHPVA are:
- Australia
- Belgium
- Denmark
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Great Britain
- Italy
- Netherlands
- Sweden
- Switzerland
Records
The WHPVA maintains speed and distance records for various times and distances for land, water and air vehicles. The best hour record is currently held by Damjan Zabovnik of Slovenia with a total distance of 87.123 km (54.136 miles).
History
The WHPVA was originally called the IHPVA (International Human Powered Vehicle Association), which was founded in 1976 in the USA and was for many years an association of individual members. In 1997 the IHPVA was reorganised into an international association with national organisations as members and an American association which adopted the name Human Powered Vehicle Association HPVA. Due to conflicts regarding record keeping and copyrights, the HPVA left the IHPVA in 2004. In 2008 the HPVA decided to rename itself to IHPVA while the IHPVA of this time decided to keep its name, resulting in two organisations with the same name. In a hostile takeover, the American IHPVA seized control of the domain name ihpva.org away from the international IHPVA. The IHPVA tried to regain its domain by appealing to the ICANN but was unsuccessful and in 2009 itself renamed to WHPVA.