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Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

theguardian.com

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Re: Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

#71

Post by dpark »

tlrobinson wrote: post #27
dpark wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is then you need to remember to keep your bike's GPS tracker charged. Your bike isn't carrying a large capacity 12V battery the way your car is.

For this purpose you could just have the cellular module wake up every x minutes to check to see if it should begin tracking. Or use BLE and an accelerometer. If your phone isn't in range and the bike is moving then starting tracking. I haven't done the math but you could probably get away with recharging every 6 months or so.

I have to be honest. I'm seriously doubting that math you didn't do. In my experience GPS murders small batteries. And putting large batteries on bikes seems like a nonstarter for bikes that aren't electric assist.

Re: Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

#72

Post by alkonaut »

archgoon wrote: post #64
fiatmoney wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's their job to do what they're told. If the city government decided Bike Crime was a top priority, cops got promotions based on how many bikes they recaptured, etc. then presumably they would be more active. Conversely, when the government decides it doesn't want a law enforced it's very easy to make that clear. Laws are an excuse to be able to target kinds of activity the government wants to target at the time; i…

Which is why the "Batman solution" as described in the article may actually be the best way of dealing with this problem. Individual citizens who care about the problem can investigate the issue, and once they've gotten the meetup setup, the police can be called in to complete the arrest. This way, the community are the ones initiating police action, rather than the police themselves (which, as you point out, bad inc…

Exactly - and tracking down stolen bikes online is time consuming and thus expensive work that is better done by volonteers than by police. That money can be spent on other activities.

The problem is that it is probably rare that police is even willing to spend 30 minutes on traveling to a known location for a stolen bike. Seattle (maybe the US in general I don't know) seems like a good place in this regard if he isn't laughed at when trying to get a police officer to come talk to a bike thief.

Re: Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

#73

Post by LanceH »

ptaipale wrote: post #57
tlrobinson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exploding bike seats? http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYlBT1d_GWo Seriously though, GPS receivers and GSM radios are a few dollars each these days. Seems like an easy thing to hide in the frame (of course a thief could still part out everything except the frame)

Finding your bike is not helpful if the police is not interested. And they usually aren't where I live. Except if you're yourself willing to enforce your retrieval with violence... at which point the police will be interested if everything does not go easily.

I've heard of people meeting, trying "the fit" and just riding off.

Re: Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

#74

Post by swimfar »

vinay427 wrote: post #17
maaaats wrote: post #16

In Norway we have a central register where you can add your bike. Each bike has a serial number engraved in the frame which is used for registering it. In an ideal world, everyone would check the bike they are buying in this register and see if it is reported stolen or not. Of course, this doesn't happen, but the opportunity of it I think helps deterring people somewhat for stealing a bike to resell it. And last year…

Many local police forces (towns, cities, universities, etc.) in the US have this type of register using the serial number but I doubt that it is centrally accessible. Instead, they usually provide a sticker with the police department name/logo that one applies on the frame to identify where it's from. This is certainly not an ideal solution; I would much rather have something like vehicle licensing but free, managed…

But it appears that only law enforcement have access to the database. It would be much more effective if people were able use it to do a search to see if a bike was reported stolen or not. It may be because it has been around for a long time and was never updated to have an internet interface.

They say they are the "only true national database" (whatever that means), but I'm sure other (non-true) ones popped up because of this limitation.

Re: Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

#75

Post by pavel_lishin »

s_q_b wrote: post #54
05 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are commercially available trackers, e.g. http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Bicycle-gps-tracker-GPS-GSM-G...

One problem is that, even if you have your device GPS tracked, it can be hard to get the police to intervene, especially in large cities. Someone once stole my iPhone 5. I had find my iPhone enabled, and the phone was locked down. The thief began texting me from his own phone, demanding ransoms ranging from $100-$1000 for the return of the phone, while aggressively threatening to throw my phone into the Potomac. So I…

You're a good person, and you also shared an effective way of retrieving stolen property that I'd never thought about before.

Re: Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

#76

Post by lostlogin »

WalterBright wrote: post #69
tlrobinson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exploding bike seats? http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYlBT1d_GWo Seriously though, GPS receivers and GSM radios are a few dollars each these days. Seems like an easy thing to hide in the frame (of course a thief could still part out everything except the frame)

Wouldn't a metal frame act as a Faraday cage and block all radio waves?

A cage needs to be earthed - the rubber tyres probably hinder this, however I'm not an electrical expert at any stretch.

Re: Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

#78

Post by WalterBright »

lostlogin wrote: post #76
WalterBright wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't a metal frame act as a Faraday cage and block all radio waves?

A cage needs to be earthed - the rubber tyres probably hinder this, however I'm not an electrical expert at any stretch.

> A cage needs to be earthed

No, it just has to be around the object. Try wrapping your cellphone in aluminum foil. It won't receive or send anymore.

Re: Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

#79

Post by lostlogin »

x0x0 wrote: post #36
na85 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are. They're choosing the rational response when balancing a low-risk, high-reward activity such as bicycle theft.

And yet... A friend was walking in soma watching a video on his iphone. He noticed someone peering over his shoulder; the dude grabbed the iphone and took off. My friend chased him, and this is where it gets interesting. The thief, instead of outrunning my friend and/or just dropping the phone, punched my friend. My friend plus a bystander who saw the punch ended up chasing the thief down. SF police don't give a fuck…

This isn't a good thing - even if the thief serves half that there is no scenario where that outcome is a net benefit to society. However this view of mine may be venturing too far into politics.

Re: Seattle vigilante reuniting stolen bikes with their owners

#80

Post by Chronic51 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #75
s_q_b wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem is that, even if you have your device GPS tracked, it can be hard to get the police to intervene, especially in large cities. Someone once stole my iPhone 5. I had find my iPhone enabled, and the phone was locked down. The thief began texting me from his own phone, demanding ransoms ranging from $100-$1000 for the return of the phone, while aggressively threatening to throw my phone into the Potomac. So I…

You're a good person, and you also shared an effective way of retrieving stolen property that I'd never thought about before.

He's a good person. Me and a million others would have pressed charges. Are we bad people?
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