New innovations to prevent bike theft, with a criminologist's opinion

I've long complained that we, as a society, aren't doing enough to prevent or deal with the underappreciated consequences of bike theft. But could that finally be changing? In this video, I look at new ideas for preventing bike theft.

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0:00 Introduction
0: 33 Meet Maddy
1:04 Bike Valet Parking
3:12 Sponsor Message: Velosurance: America's Best Bike Insurance
4:56 Voluntary Bike Registration
8:20 Public Locking Bike Racks
10:01 Loaner-Lock Programs
11:44 GPS Integration
16:28 Empirical Guidance for Keeping Your Bike Safe

[TomBabula]

Speaking of bike racks, they need to put more of them in front of stores, not behind in sketchy corner. Some business in may area have bike locker boxes where you can put your own disco locker, but don’t trust them because they don’t have anything inside to lock the bike to, so all they need is to cut your lock with bolt cutter.

[hiphopsuperman]

Got my bike stolen and was able to track it to an apartment complex. Blanketed the building with posters offering a cash reward for its return. The police helped me recover it shortly after. Yes AirTags have shortcomings, but worst is having no clue where your bike is at all!

[sarahlanthier]

Bike valet sounds awesome! I'd invest in this 100% We have an issue in my city where they steal bikes just for the metal and turn them over to chop shops. They butcher the bikes and send them off to the scrap yard so quickly that the local cops say all the evidence is gone by the time they have a warrant to raid the place; they've raided a specific chop shop in my city multiple times trying to catch the bike thieves with no luck.
Not only have two bicycles been stolen from me so far but the bicycle thieves have also walked into my yard threatening to assault me because I was standing between them and my bicycle. Luckily I was holding a heavy shovel and they thought better of it.
I'd love to be able to just go out for a bike ride and not have to worry anymore. Great video!

[dustinbranham]

I'm a fan of the loaner locks at bars and restaurants, and here's why. While I always bring my U-lock when I ride for transportation, I never bring it when I do road rides for exercise, and I don't know many roadies who bring theirs, either. However, it's very common for roadies to stop in for a beer, coffee, or lunch, and that means we need to find a place with a good patio so we can watch our bikes. But here in Seattle, sitting on the patio isn't always a pleasant experience depending on weather, and it also means we pass on certain restaurants that don't have patios. If we can borrow a handful of decent locks and then daisy chain the bikes together, then we're more likely to stop at that restaurant, and its more secure than just not locking the bikes at all while we sit near a window and *sort of* keep an eye on them.

[ealing]

11:20 No one should be locking their bike up like this anyway. 80% of bikes I see are locked this way. You want to create as little space as possible for a thief to cut through your lock. Always fill the U-lock: lock seat post, parking post and back wheel together.

[Nemo]

Beater Bike, that even criminals think is a piece of crap.

[antb]

My 2 favorite ways:
- lock integrated into frame and wheel (like DOTT or dutch bikes)- means that someone with a power grinder probably needs to damage the frame or they can't ride off. This can be combined with a larger lock
- video surveillance areas (a lower cost bike valet) with a face covering rule.

[rileynicholson]

Since she brought up cost-benefit, i think it reelevant that popular perception of bike theft in BC is that it has essentially no downside. Since most individual bikes are not super valuable and easy to unload to a broker for a quick payout, bike theft is treated as petty crime.

Im not saying it accurate, but the perception among people here is that if someone steals your car, the police will do something about it, find you car, and the thief will likely face severe consequences that moght include prison time. In constrast, the perception is that if someone steals your bike, at best the police will make them return it if they didnt sell it fast enough and they will be released by a judge pretty much immediately.

Bike theft feels comparable to shoplifting in law enforcement response, but the victoms are individual rather than mostly corporate businesses, so I understsnd the frustration.

Honeslty, I think some kind of campaign to increase awareness around insurance systems for bike theft would benefit people, even if its just more explicit protections for bikes in standard home/tenant insureance policies. Law enforcement really isnt the answer, the main deterrent seems to be direct confrontstion with property gaurdians.

[NoahStephens]

I feel lucky to be alive when the meaning of “Begs the question” changed.

[jw]

My solution, which worked for 10 years leaving my bike in downtown Toronto, was the "double-Kryptonite". (doesn't have to be Kryptonite, just a beefy U-lock)
Buy 2 U-locks, lock the front, lock the back. Turns out bike thieves are lazy and would rather steal the bike next to you with just the 1 lock.

[JoshLemer]

I think an easy step authorities can take is to make registering bikes with project 529 (or similar service) mandatory at retailer points of sale, and also require repair shops to check every bike that comes in against the bike registry. Seems like this step would all but eliminate bike thefts.

[caskadestudio]

Here in Perth, in Australia, we have a bike registration site called Bikelinc, which is built by WA Police. This means it is fully integrated with the system, in addition to letting members of the public search a serial number of a dumped bike to match to its owner. When my mountain bike was stolen last year, I thought it was gone for good. I filed a police report and moved on with my life, got a crappy second-hand bike to use as a commute bike. Then, six months later, the police contacted me because someone had found my bike, handed it in to the police, and using the registration they were able to return it to me! It works really well.

Currently, I don't use much more than a sturdy lock to prevent my bike from being stolen. The commute bike is crappy, I painted it to make it look even more undesirable, but I eventually plan on getting an e-bike which I will install a tracker and/or alarm in.

[drlukewhite]

I'd love to hear you and Maddy return to these questions of crime and discuss the issue of assault on cyclists. In London (UK), there are increasing numbers of news stories of gangs switching to bike mugging. I suspect that perception of crime is much greater than actuality in this case -- but I've only been assaulted twice in my adult life and both cases were when I was on my bike... It would be great to have a look at what the actuality of violent crime against cyclists is and how this varies internationally...

[JoeBManco]

The motorcycle cover idea is a good one. I will give it a try in addition to my two bike locks.

[ecopennylife]

Agree to the multi-pronged approach. If im leaving my eBike for an extended time, I remove the battery & quick release controller plus lock it with a quality U-bolt.

[cannotcomeupwithanam]

Super useful and informative information. My personal favourite is having the "bike valet parking" available in the dense city cores. A city like Halifax could benefit from that IMMEDIATELY and the cost benefit of such an offering would be easily established. Vehicle traffic in Halifax is awful and I rarely drive when I need to go into the core. Parking down there can be touch and go for your bikes but having a supervised bike parking area would alleviate almost all of the risk.

Thank you again for posting this and for spending the time to create it. It is much appreciated by us dedicated commuters.

[MagentaFerret-wdvt]

The safest thing is to bring the bike indoors. If there was space in a cafe, a shop, etc where I could leave my bike while I'm in the building, then that to me would feel safest, as opposed to leaving it outside. The easiest example of this is bringing my bike into our offices at work. It's 100% safe, like bringing it into my house. Not only is the bike safe, but so are all of it's attachments like lights, phone holder, pannier, even stuff inside the basket, etc. I don't have to detach this stuff or even lock my bike.

[tvuser]

Nice! I use the BikeFinder GPS tracker, not so much because I think it will give me my stolen bike back, but because it includes a good insurance for expensive bikes. Using hefty, quality locks is helpful, and the extra weight doesn't matter if it's an ebike. If the bike is visibly worn and dirty that can also help. I'm also lucky enough to live in a place with rentable city ebikes, so if I'm going to out on a pub run or something, then riding a city bike means zero theft risk for me.

[colinmartin]

I'm a very happy velosurance customer. Haven't had to replace a bike yet with it, but the setup process was super easy as well as including modifications for coverage.

[NFvidoJagg]

Not too long ago a stash of stolen bikes was found in Halifax, and IIRC a number of them got returned to their owners as they were registed