My uncle observed this in his thesis: 'the combined weight of lock and bicycle is a constant'.
What happens to your bike after it’s stolen
11–20 of 86 posts
Re: What happens to your bike after it’s stolen
#12I wonder to what extend the intensity of bike theft will incentivize bike users to buy and use bikes of low value. I have conflicting anecdotal experiences about this. I lived in Rotterdam, where bike theft is intense, but where people usually ride cheap bikes every day, and where you know you can buy a cheap bike to someone in the street, for a price as low a ten euros. Bikes are a cheap commodity in Rotterdam. In S…
Are lower income people in SF riding expensive bikes, or just the well-paid ones? If bike-riding is a rich person's thing in SF, then the average rider will have spare cash to throw at it, stores can focus on selling more expensive bikes, higher prices are normalised...etc.
Re: What happens to your bike after it’s stolen
#13I wonder to what extend the intensity of bike theft will incentivize bike users to buy and use bikes of low value. I have conflicting anecdotal experiences about this. I lived in Rotterdam, where bike theft is intense, but where people usually ride cheap bikes every day, and where you know you can buy a cheap bike to someone in the street, for a price as low a ten euros. Bikes are a cheap commodity in Rotterdam. In S…
Yeah, I've had multiple bikes stolen in the college town I live in. Now it's all cheap bikes until I move on or have a better storage system.
Then again, I'm broke too, so I'm sure that affects my decision.
Re: What happens to your bike after it’s stolen
#14In Copenhagen, Denmark where bike riding and bike theft is very common, the police does little about it. In fact it came out recently that the police have an unofficial policy of not investigating thefts of value less than 13.000 euros due to "lack of resources".
There is seldom story of say an angry man in a van running down two kids on a stolen scooter otherwise vigilante justice is very rare.
I think for most bike thiefs are just having field day (year or decade) and probably quite a bit more organized than in Seattle due to massive market for bikes and bike parts here in Copenhagen.
Re: What happens to your bike after it’s stolen
#15So what is the solution to bikes getting stolen? It seems like we cannot really make locks that are cheap enough to manufacture to prevent thieves from stealing bikes/harvesting them for parts. Do we put GPS trackers on all bikes? Can we enforce harsher punishment for bike thieves?
I think bait bikes are a good solution. Put out a few normal looking bikes with gps trackers in them, and have stiff fines for those who get caught. Making locks safe against an angle grinder isnt really feasible, but making someone think twice before even trying because it's a bait bike might work.
Re: What happens to your bike after it’s stolen
#16So what is the solution to bikes getting stolen? It seems like we cannot really make locks that are cheap enough to manufacture to prevent thieves from stealing bikes/harvesting them for parts. Do we put GPS trackers on all bikes? Can we enforce harsher punishment for bike thieves?
Ride bikes that aren't worth stealing. When I used to bike to the train station in suburban chicago, I used an old single-speed no-name coaster-brake bike bought at a garage sale for almost nothing. I locked it with a very simple cable and padlock and nobody ever bothered it.
Re: What happens to your bike after it’s stolen
#17I know the Constituion forbids it, but I think cruel and unusual punishment is A-OK when it comes to bike thieves.
Horse theft used to be a capital crime. Under the same constiution we have now.
Re: What happens to your bike after it’s stolen
#18I wonder to what extend the intensity of bike theft will incentivize bike users to buy and use bikes of low value. I have conflicting anecdotal experiences about this. I lived in Rotterdam, where bike theft is intense, but where people usually ride cheap bikes every day, and where you know you can buy a cheap bike to someone in the street, for a price as low a ten euros. Bikes are a cheap commodity in Rotterdam. In S…
Are lower income people in SF riding expensive bikes, or just the well-paid ones? If bike-riding is a rich person's thing in SF, then the average rider will have spare cash to throw at it, stores can focus on selling more expensive bikes, higher prices are normalised...etc.
Yes, I think you're right. In Rotterdam everyone ride bikes, regardless of their income. Whereas in SF, it seems more a young, relatively affluent thing.
Re: What happens to your bike after it’s stolen
#19"... Fortunately for Rosa, the Darlings were also allegedly fencing electronics, allowing the owner of a stolen iPad to track his missing tablet to the same apartment via an iPhone app connected to his iPad’s GPS. ..."
Would be a nice hack to build something like this. How would you embed a device like this into into a frame & other parts?
Comments: "... Ryan Scheel: Might it make sense to put a GPS device in bikes encrypted with a private key that only your computer has access to? ..."
RFID inventory of parts unique to a bike?
Would be interesting if each (high value) part had a unique serial number unique to the bike. Small RFID devices for the frame, wheels, seat brakes registered to a unique frame? That way each part could be tied to a frame & identifiable to one bike.
Re: What happens to your bike after it’s stolen
#20So what is the solution to bikes getting stolen? It seems like we cannot really make locks that are cheap enough to manufacture to prevent thieves from stealing bikes/harvesting them for parts. Do we put GPS trackers on all bikes? Can we enforce harsher punishment for bike thieves?
> Can we enforce harsher punishment for bike thieves?
Yes, you can, but you choose not to [1]. This is a drain on society beyond the mere cost of buying replacement bikes. Bike theft discourages (even prevents) people from riding bikes. It puts us back in our cars, and makes us more sedentary. People who have never even ridden a bike before and have $200 to buy one are discouraged from buying used bikes because of the risk of buying stolen property.
The net effect--the true cost--of doing nothing serious about bicycle theft is massive, and it is borne by everyone through higher health insurance premiums, if not directly through decreased personal well-being.
Bike theft ought to be dealt with just as harshly as breaking into a gym and stealing a stationary bike...perhaps as harshly as stealing a car. Its effects are just as deleterious.
[1] I say "you" as a US person living outside the US, in a place where good bicycles are routinely left unattended with cheap cable locks, and not stolen. Still, parts like lights and pumps do get stolen, and even this does discourage people from cycling.