19 Comments

Cracking piece. There is a potential solution. Register every bike frame with BikeRegister.co.uk. Then make it mandatory for every online sales platform (Gumtree, Facebook Marketplace, ebay) to list the registration number, with autolookup for stolen models. Microdots in the frame make it impossible to renumber a frame.

I've spoken to BikeRegister and a number of other orgs about this - all doable. It's something that's been spoken about for yonks. The only obstacle is political will. The Dept of Transport were looking into it...five years ago. Still nothing.

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Superb suggestion, just a minor correction (sorry!): the website is bikeregister.com not .co.uk

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Oh yes that's the one! Thank you

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Fascinating. Well done for getting your bike back.

Please, please cover phone thefts at some point (no need to have yours stolen!). I'm in SE1 and it feels entirely unwise to use a phone in the street any more because of the risk of people on bikes with faces covered grabbing it. And it's not just the phone loss but the risk of thieves accessing email/SMS and resetting passwords to do a digital heist afterwards . Google's recent update to detect an Android phone snatch automatically and lock the screen is promising, and Apple should copy that, but even the Google feature is off by default.

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It's such a knotty topic and I think it's been reported elsewhere, the real question I have is who's behind it, where's the organised crime involvement, who is then shipping them to China for parts?

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That's the question I'd love to see an answer to. How has phone theft evolved to the point where there is significant technical skill and organisation to not just pinch and resell but as a scaled up operation that can do digital thieving via online accounts (kids on bikes seem unlikely to be capable of that), reselling, or shipping off en masse to be stripped for parts. Even though kids do the nicking, it feels like organised crime. I've not seen any good coverage of even what the police are doing, or can do, to catch the people behind the kids.

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Great read, and I'm glad you got your bike back! The threat of getting my bike stolen has changed how I cycle around London, only cycling to and from places where I can park it securely off street (mainly between home and work). When renting a house, space to keep the bike indoors is a must have requirement. Ideally I would also have a 'burner bike' that I would happily park anywhere, but I fear even that would eventually get stolen if left outside overnight.

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Amazing read. This is what locks me to a Forest subscription rather than purchasing my own rn and I’m sure I’m not alone

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Forest are doing a great job of putting themselves out of business by continually eroding everything that made them better than Lime and now seemingly not bothering to maintain their fleet. Other than that, bike subscriptions are great option.

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Nov 5·edited Nov 5

Really enjoyed this read! This is such a deterrent to new cyclists (like myself) - bike rental companies are an attractive option but seem to be currently out of stock. I imagine demand is high, because they handle replacements themselves. It's such a pity / ironic that for many cyclists using cheaper bikes, it's probably not worth getting insurance but rather expecting to have to repurchase a new, cheaper bike every now and again. Which of course perpetuates the cycle (😉).

Agree with the suggestion below that stricter controls and / or process change around purchasing would be a good resolution.

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Chuffed you managed to get it back and also can't imagine what a challenge it must've been getting a GSD back home without a front wheel. Chapeau!

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I was an avid rider in New Haven Connecticut USA. In the mid 1970s with a similar problem . Just as you’ve found most locking mechanisms will be overcome . The value of the bike relative to time to steal is large so the only good method which has been adopted here in the US is to find a way to bring them inside buildings so that the thief has little ability to be unnoticed .

Or if possible disassembled and similarly brought into a safer area . We tried to make them look seriously ugly and uncharming to reduce the look of a new expensive one . But little works . Good luck.

As an anecdotal story , I was an avid advocate for The sport and took Greg lemond to dinner when he was just turning to be a professional in Europe . Today I have given it up as a sport after many ugly and dangerous encounters with vehicles and their occupants .

Here you can insure them as personal property as a home owner or renter . A thought or a battery motion sensing alarm

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The Dutch have low levels of bike theft? I'm from Rotterdam and most people I know have had their bikes stolen at least once. We absolutely don't leave them unlocked, it's not the 60s with the wittefietsenplan.

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Fascinating article. When did London turn into New York or San Francisco?

Who are the thieves?

Why are police disinterested?

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Really a fantastic article. Well done.

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I hate bike thief's with such a burning passion, they are the worst of humanity, the scummiest of the scummiest, special place in hell for them

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Great piece Jim.

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This is such an important issue for lots of Londoners. Regarding LCC: In the last 2 years I have written twice to LCC and asked them to develop a kind of kite-mark scheme for secure cycle parking to which public institutions could sign up or adjust their own cycle parking provisions. Never got a reply. When I raised it at a LCC stand during one of the cycle Sunday events, they were not interested at all and just directed me to the secure grading scheme for bike locks. I think LCC could do a lot more in this respect. At least they now appear to acknowledge that bike theft is a deterrent to the uptake of cycling in London.

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