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Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion

nytimes.com

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Re: Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion

#91

Post by uptown »

leonhandreke wrote: post #16

I wish bicycle theft was tackled in a similar fashion. A combination of factors seems to be at play here: Photo ID required to sell the car and technological hurdles that are too hard to overcome for small criminals. With embedded computer chips being so cheap nowadays, surely it should be possible to embed some sort of tracking system in bicycle frames.

Seems like some physical attributes of bicycles make them difficult to apply similar protections. I'd like to see a lock that has an acoustic alarm (similar to those panic keychains that emit a very loud high-pitched sound when activated) combined with a dye-pack component that emits a plume of bank-grade dye when compromised. Add those to a best-in-class lock design and I think you'd have a decent deterrent.

Re: Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion

#92

Post by jzwinck »

mortov wrote: post #60
jzwinck wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to reduce bicycle theft in the US, the solution is simple: drastically increase the penalties for perpetrators. Get caught stealing a bike? One year in jail. Adjust until the level of theft is where you want it to be. Stealing a bike is not just taking $300 or whatever from the owner. It's robbing that cyclist and would-be cyclists of the confidence to use their preferred mode of transportation, and deter…

Spoken like a true American ! After all, if stealing a king size snickers bar deserves 16 years ( http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/040700-01.htm ), stealing a bicycle needs some serious deterrent sentencing. Sure, he was a recidivist and had previously stolen some Oreo cookies too ! Or, it's a bicycle - keep things in proportion. Sure it sucks to have stuff stolen (I've been a victim too) but crazy disproportion…

I don't live in America. When I did, I felt more similar to how you do now. Today I live somewhere with harsh penalties for crimes, and the effects are very visible. You can leave your smartphone on a table while you go buy food and no one will take it. People lock up pretty decent bikes with simple cable locks. Peace of mind is worth something; protecting people who steal is not helping anyone.

I thought this would be obvious, but I am not arguing for 16 year sentences for stealing food. Food theft is one thing for which the penalty is a real conundrum (maybe the guy was really hungry).

Re: Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion

#93

Post by jzwinck »

rmc wrote: post #51
ilamont wrote: post #43

I did a ride-along with a cop outside of Boston about 12 years ago. His car had a laptop attached to the dashboard, an innovation that only started appearing in the 1990s. One thing that he was able to do was instantly look up the plate on a vehicle without having to radio it in -- and the lookup interfaced with what I assume was an updated database of stolen cars. Another technological innovation he mentioned was th…

I believe police cars in the UK have cameras with automatic number plate recognition. They drive around and it scans for stolen/uninsured cars.

Likewise in America and elsewhere: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/your-car-tracked-...

Re: Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion

#94

Post by lttlrck »

alec_heif wrote: post #3

Interesting that the Honda Accord and Honda Civic are (or rather, were) the two most stolen cars. Is that because Hondas are more reliable (so there's more old Hondas on the road) or because they're easier to steal?

My insurance rep told me it's because there is significant share part sharing across generations. Coupled with their longevity and popularity this results in a huge parts market. My Mini Cooper was ~50% cheaper to insure than my previous though slightly newer Civic.

Re: Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion

#95

Post by nextw33k »

All these crime is down articles make me think there is something more fundamental at play. That whilst technology has helped, that perhaps the real answer is economic.

Crime was a way of getting something that you wanted with little effort but high risk. However with consumerism we can have what we want with medium effort and low risk. There is a lower barrier to getting what you want with anything of material worth.

Re: Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion

#96

Post by _delirium »

jzwinck wrote: post #92
mortov wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken like a true American ! After all, if stealing a king size snickers bar deserves 16 years ( http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/040700-01.htm ), stealing a bicycle needs some serious deterrent sentencing. Sure, he was a recidivist and had previously stolen some Oreo cookies too ! Or, it's a bicycle - keep things in proportion. Sure it sucks to have stuff stolen (I've been a victim too) but crazy disproportion…

I don't live in America. When I did, I felt more similar to how you do now. Today I live somewhere with harsh penalties for crimes, and the effects are very visible. You can leave your smartphone on a table while you go buy food and no one will take it. People lock up pretty decent bikes with simple cable locks. Peace of mind is worth something; protecting people who steal is not helping anyone. I thought this would…

I can believe there are places that happen to have both harsh penalties and low crime rates, but I'm more skeptical of a general relationship. I believe studies in the U.S. have found that varying probability of punishment significantly varies deterrence (people aren't deterred if they believe they have a low chance of being caught), but that revising sentence levels upwards or downwards has virtually no effect.

As long as we're trading anecdotes, I live somewhere with very lenient penalties for crimes and what you describe is also true here. People typically don't even bother with a cable lock, they just use an O-lock [1] that locks the rear wheel to itself, whose main purpose is to make it inconvenient to ride off with the bike.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_city_bike#O-lock

Re: Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion

#97

Post by Shivetya »

superpatosainz wrote: post #79
michaelt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, with modern car immobilisers you can't bypass them or break them, because they're built right into the ECU that runs the spark plugs and whatnot. There's not really an equivalent for that in bicycles - a vital electronic component that, if removed, makes the bike unusable. Sure, you can get a bike tracker on ebay, but if trackers were making a significant dent in bicycle theft, thieves would just look for them…

Some Chilean startup is trying to do something akin to that, embedding a big lock in the frame, so stealing the bike would render it useless (tho, of course, it's an urban-only bike). http://nadiemelaroba.cl

The issues I see with preventing bike theft include that its just so easy to take parts off of one, so even if you could prevent taking the whole bike some of the other parts have value too.

Only solutions I see are, having secure parking for bikes offered for pay, as benefit of employment, or venue provided. What makes a bike a pain to store besides length is the handle bars and foot pegs stick out. So design a handle bar with a pin so it can be rotated alone the bikes axis when parked and folding pedals. Then you can box store them narrowly akin to bus lockers.

Still the primary deterrent to theft is putting it where its at risk and if that means not taking it, well.

Re: Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion

#98

Post by [deleted] »

lmm wrote: post #55
baddox wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt most people desire being a criminal as an end in itself. Presumably car thieves either went onto the next best job, whether that be a crime (where "best" considers costs, like the risk of being punished, and benefits), or a legal job.

Or stayed at home and claimed unemployment, if the marginal gain from working ceased to be worth the cost.

[deleted]

Re: Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion

#99

Post by alexhawdon »

Another thing the article doesn't mention but I've heard is now a common (sorry, nothing to cite) way of stealing cars is to take the keys.

Perhaps it's time for manufacturers to start with 2-factor authentication, perhaps the key and then a PIN that you have to enter? Is anybody doing this?

Re: Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion

#100

Post by gambiting »

samastur wrote: post #65
gambiting wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that especially inside the EU, bikes are stolen almost in bulk, then loaded into trucks and taken outside the country - even if you get stopped at the border(which is super rare, thanks to the Schoengen zone), it's impossible to check the serial numbers of the bikes - if there are any databases, they are usually not ran by the police, and there are absolutely zero international databases for bikes. Eas…

I live in Slovenia which is commonly considered east EU. Guess what, bikes get stolen here as well (not sure I know any cyclist who hasn't had one stolen at some point). And your 90% estimate is as offensive as wrong.

I know, because I come from Eastern EU myself. But I can see what the market is like - there is plenty of "imported" German bikes around. And I have trouble believing that Germans are selling nice bikes for close to nothing. And like Morsch said in the comment below - our stolen bikes end up exported to the West, or maybe further to the east. My point is that within the EU it's really easy to move goods across borders,and then they become untraceable.
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