How to stop bicycle theft

Qualitymark

How would you go about ending the rocketing epidemic of bicycle theft?

My own suggestions: by law, all bicycle sales should be through a bank (by debit or credit card). All should involve a photo of the buyer and seller registered on a form with an official body. The frame number should be recorded on the same form. Each bicycle should have a 'logbook' with photos and name, address and RSI or passport number of buyer and seller.

I know this sounds stringent, but the only thing that stopped the dangerous trade in stolen scrap metal in Britain was scrapyards being required to trade only through banks, to be licensed and to get proper identification for all sellers: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/scrap-metal-laws-to-stop-metal-theft-come-into-force

rollingscone

A dedicated bike theft patrol
https://youtu.be/o41MacRxepQ

ted1

Qualitymark wrote: »

How would you go about ending the rocketing epidemic of bicycle theft?

My own suggestions: by law, all bicycle sales should be through a bank (by debit or credit card). All should involve a photo of the buyer and seller registered on a form with an official body. The frame number should be recorded on the same form. Each bicycle should have a 'logbook' with photos and name, address and RSI or passport number of buyer and seller.

I know this sounds stringent, but the only thing that stopped the dangerous trade in stolen scrap metal in Britain was scrapyards being required to trade only through banks, to be licensed and to get proper identification for all sellers: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/scrap-metal-laws-to-stop-metal-theft-come-into-force

That's very impractical , to many bikes out there. Increase the penalties and have a mandatory minimum sentence. The lads out there with 80+ convictions don't give a rats about being caught as nothing happens to them.

smacl

ted1 wrote: »

That's very impractical , to many bikes out there. Increase the penalties and have a mandatory minimum sentence. The lads out there with 80+ convictions don't give a rats about being caught as nothing happens to them.

Agreed, no point in creating specific new legislation without providing the resources and incentive to enforce it. I was looking at a bike on a second hand site recently, found it corresponded to a stolen bike at http://www.bikeregister.ie/, followed up with the owner, and the Gardaí got the bike back for the owner. Without naming names, if you look at any of the second hand web sites out there, you'll find plenty of offers too good to be true by sellers that have a history of selling bikes at silly prices. If there are people selling knocked off bikes (or any goods) in plain sight of the law, they should be gone after first. I reckon sites selling second hand goods should be required to look for proof of ownership, and where goods sold are shown to be stolen, the site should be open to prosecution through receipt of stolen goods. AFAIK, this is the case for a bricks and mortar auctioneer or pawnbroker, and it should be (and probably is) for all such intermediaries. When I contacted the site in question with details on the bike I was looking at, I was presented with a boilerplate statement saying that if I though the goods were stolen, I should follow up with the Gardaí. This is of course crap, in that if they're receiving commission on the sale of stolen goods, they're breaking the law, and the onus is on them, not me, to correct things.

tldr; Kill the market for stolen bikes, and the incentive to steal them plummets.

Qualitymark

Increasing penalties doesn't work, unfortunately, because cops are too sensible to want to prosecute someone for something they see as a relatively small crime if it's going to lead to a serious sentence. Even if they wanted to prosecute, judges wouldn't want to come down hard on the mostly young lads who steal bikes.

But making it harder to steal bikes by controlling how they're sold, that would work.

As for "there are too many out there", that kind of inertial statement is true for most societal changes. But gradual change works. After all, cars used to change hands without logbooks, but we now all take the documentation of cars for granted. We all now bring our cars for NCT, only a few years after the system started. It's enforced by sanctions - if you kill someone in a car with no NCT you're going to lose the house because your insurance won't pay up - but that's not the only reason we do it; we do it because it's what's done.

If you started by saying "All bicycles sold new in 2016 must have a logbook, with every change of ownership recorded on it, and every transaction logged with photo and ID number", it would make 2016-onwards frame numbers unsaleable except legally.

Edit: @smacl, if any site taking a fee for selling things was open to prosecution - and was prosecuted - if it turned out to be acting as a fence, this might be some disincentive. But the main disincentive would be an evidence trail attached to the bike. Think of it as like microchipping your dog.

Idaho Ver. 3

A manned, secure bike park facility either side of the Liffey (to tackle Dublin city's problem anyway), I've always thought would be a great idea.

Here's a fancy one in Utrecht

https : // bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/utrechts-indoor-bicycle-parking-facility/

Qualitymark

Nice! Can't see "free for the first 24 hours" being the model in Ireland, though; we even stiff people for parking in hospitals when they go to visit their dying mother.

Here's an underground one in Japan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcZSU40RBrg

yermanoffthetv

A tracker built into the frame along with a unique frame number eched in like cars? Tech is cheap these days.

JonDoe

Stop corporations from bribing our politicians, this would help create a more equitable society where bike crime would be but a distant memory.

Idaho Ver. 3

Qualitymark wrote: »

Nice! Can't see "free for the first 24 hours" being the model in Ireland, though; we even stiff people for parking in hospitals when they go to visit their dying mother.
]

No, me neither. But I'd certainly pay a euro or two to be able to whizz into town and do whatever business I've to do knowing for certain that my bike is safe, dry and happy.

Bigus

Aren't a lot stolen in quantity for export , which would negate any irish legislation.

Embedded chip in the frame by manufacturers would help a worldwide issue.

In Ireland both planners and Building management should consider better indoor bike parking, both commercial and residential .

It's a shame though that your bike locks weigh more than your bike in Dublin.

Qualitymark

yermanoffthetv wrote: »

A tracker built into the frame along with a unique frame number eched in like cars? Tech is cheap these days.

I haven't seen any version of this that would be economical - have you?

But again, I think it's the buying and selling… I mean, even if it started with the Cycle to Work bike sales (which are by definition new bicycles) being monitored in this way - a frame number, picture of the bicycle, picture of the buyer, record of the transaction - that would be a good beginning. I would guess that most of the bicycles sold in Ireland nowadays (other than children's bikes) are bought through this scheme.

Edit: @Bigus Some are clearly stolen for export, but I'd guess that 90% are stolen for the sale on the corner.

RainyDay

Are bikes really stolen for export? I've heard rumours but never seen any evidence of this.

I agree with smacl that hitting the buyers would be important. A bit of public education on this wouldn't go amiss, and working with donedeal and adverts to find a way to stop them selling. How about bikes can only be sold by somebody with prior 'seller' reputation, and you can only sell 1 bike a year?

Qualitymark

Idaho Ver. 3 wrote: »

No, me neither. But I'd certainly pay a euro or two to be able to whizz into town and do whatever business I've to do knowing for certain that my bike is safe, dry and happy.

Is the Square Wheel bicycle park still going? And isn't there one in Drury Street?

RainyDay wrote: »

Are bikes really stolen for export? I've heard rumours but never seen any evidence of this.

I agree with smacl that hitting the buyers would be important. A bit of public education on this wouldn't go amiss, and working with donedeal and adverts to find a way to stop them selling. How about bikes can only be sold by somebody with prior 'seller' reputation, and you can only sell 1 bike a year?

One a year would be a bit unfair to the shops that sell on adverts.ie, but yes, the seller record and reputation would be good.

People seem to have fairly loony ideas of how much a secondhand bike should be worth on these sites; I've seen bikes that would effectively cost €300 new (this year's model) being sold for €300 secondhand (five-year-old model) on them.

Idaho Ver. 3

Qualitymark wrote: »

Is the Square Wheel bicycle park still going? And isn't there one in Drury Street?

.

Never heard of the Square Wheel. Isn't Drury Street just a car park with some space for bikes?
Fairly sure I remember someone on Broadsheet that had their bike stolen from there anyway!

Qualitymark

Square Wheel is or was (?) a big bicycle park in Temple Bar, you pay/paid a couple of quid and Ciaran guards/ed it from his desk; he also did or does repairs and occasionally bought and sold bikes. Nice guy. I parked my bike a good few times there when I worked in town. You could or can pay by the week.

I've never parked in Drury Street, but others here may have.

Icepick

Start using better locks and use them properly. The amount of ****ty locks people use is unreal.

Qualitymark

Icepick wrote: »

Start using better locks and use them properly. The amount of ****ty locks people use is unreal.

Wouldn't it be better if you didn't need to lock your bike?

Idaho Ver. 3

I think I might submit my idea to the Corpo and patiently await what I imagine will be no response.

Beasty

Qualitymark wrote: »

Wouldn't it be better if you didn't need to lock your bike?

Maybe so, but I would still consider it the most constructive post in this thread so far as the other suggestions are, in my view, pretty impractical

yermanoffthetv

Qualitymark wrote: »

I haven't seen any version of this that would be economical - have you?

Yes I have www.thetileapp.com $25usd

Idaho Ver. 3

Beasty wrote: »

Maybe so, but I would still consider it the most constructive post in this thread so far as the other suggestions are, in my view, pretty impractical

Would Dublin really be incapable of opening a bike park facility? Plenty of large, idle buildings around. Interior requires feck all infrastructure.

Qualitymark

yermanoffthetv wrote: »

Yes I have www.thetileapp.com $25usd

I was dying for that to come out, but don't see good things said about it now that it is out. But perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places. Is anyone here using it?

@IdahoVer3 The Japanese parks cited above are underground.

RainyDay

yermanoffthetv wrote: »

Yes I have www.thetileapp.com $25usd

It relies on a critical mass of users. Your stolen bike will only be found if another tile user is near it, and has their tile app running.

Beasty

Idaho Ver. 3 wrote: »

Would Dublin really be incapable of opening a bike park facility? Plenty of large, idle buildings around. Interior requires feck all infrastructure.

Requires money - no-one is going to accept the likes of NAMA giving property away for the benefit of one particular lobby group and as we have all seen, property prices in Dublin are very high once again - making it manned requires a lot more money (probably 2-3 full time employees manning each of the 2 facilities you suggest, plus any additional administration required). Money is a pretty scarce resource at present, and there are many other things that people would probably prefer our taxes to go on before supporting something like this

roverrules

Beasty wrote: »

Requires money - no-one is going to accept the likes of NAMA giving property away for the benefit of one particular lobby group and as we have all seen, property prices in Dublin are very high once again - making it manned requires a lot more money (probably 2-3 full time employees manning each of the 2 facilities you suggest, plus any additional administration required). Money is a pretty scarce resource at present, and there are many other things that people would probably prefer our taxes to go on before supporting something like this

How much would people consider a fair price to pay for cycle security?

Nothing I pay taxes anyway
€1 to €3
€4 to €5
€5+

Can't do a poll maybe someone could just out of interest

Effects

yermanoffthetv wrote: »

Yes I have www.thetileapp.com $25usd

That's crap here though. I nearly bought a few until I checked if any mates had. Three of them and they all sent them back.

JJJJNR

How to stop bicycle theft -

yermanoffthetv

Effects wrote: »

That's crap here though. I nearly bought a few until I checked if any mates had. Three of them and they all sent them back.

Well the tile is really only for someone who lost their keys down the back of the couch, the point is the tech is there to have a small and cheap way of tracking a bike if its nicked by some gurrier. A simple antenna that pings its location to the user when requested.

Idaho Ver. 3

roverrules wrote: »

How much would people consider a fair price to pay for cycle security?

Nothing I pay taxes anyway
€1 to €3
€4 to €5
€5+

Can't do a poll maybe someone could just out of interest

I'd pay 3 to 4 euro, no problem.

tomasrojo

I have to say (though my luck will run out eventually) that apart from a front wheel being stolen years ago before I knew that you had to secure the wheels in some way, I haven't had any issues with theft in Dublin, or anywhere else I've lived. I don't really worry about it.

Vandalism, on the other hand, that I have had problems with, now and then.

Qualitymark

yermanoffthetv wrote: »

Well the tile is really only for someone who lost their keys down the back of the couch, the point is the tech is there to have a small and cheap way of tracking a bike if its nicked by some gurrier. A simple antenna that pings its location to the user when requested.

I don't think the tech's there yet. If it were, someone would have made millions - no, billions - from it.

Any time I've looked into this, either the technology seems distinctly oversold, or the price of running it is too expensive to make it worth buying, like Spybike, which, last time I looked, cost a fair amount but then also incurred a monthly telecoms cost for the SIM.

Can't understand why a good, simple, affordable system hasn't yet been invented.

ted1

Idaho Ver. 3 wrote: »

I'd pay 3 to 4 euro, no problem.

On a daily basis ?
15-20 quid a year. Close to a thousand euro a year. Most people's bikes are only a thousand

Qualitymark

One reason logbooks for Bike-to-work bikes would work is that it would change the perception - at the moment, most people don't think of bicycle theft as a serious crime; it's not quite socially acceptable, but it's not far from it. If there was official paperwork like this, suddenly you'd be crossing the government if you stole a bike.

Skrynesaver

For some reason the old spam solution rejection form comes to mind... with particular emphasis on the insufficiently painful part

Your post advocates a

( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!

smacl

Beasty wrote: »

Maybe so, but I would still consider it the most constructive post in this thread so far as the other suggestions are, in my view, pretty impractical

The pragmatic solution that many use is to simply ride a crap looking bike around town, and when parking it, make sure it is parked among slightly better looking bikes with slightly inferior locks. You don't have to be the fastest or toughest wildebeest in the pack to avoid the predators, just not the weakest.

Qualitymark

smacl wrote: »

The pragmatic solution that many use is to simply ride a crap looking bike around town, and when parking it, make sure it is parked among slightly better looking bikes with slightly inferior locks. You don't have to be the fastest or toughest wildebeest in the pack to avoid the predators, just not the weakest.

This is what I have done, historically. However, the crap bike method works if you have a superb body. Once your body moves leftwards on the


crap <

---

> superb

scale, this is less workable.

Also, why should you have to do this? It's like suggesting that no one should live in a nice house, and if they wanted to, they should spray graffiti all over the walls and throw a few old bicycle frames and prams in the garden and bleach out the grass and plant scutch so it wouldn't be robbed.

Bloggsie

smacl wrote: »

Agreed, no point in creating specific new legislation without providing the resources and incentive to enforce it. I was looking at a bike on a second hand site recently, found it corresponded to a stolen bike at http://www.bikeregister.ie/, followed up with the owner, and the Gardaí got the bike back for the owner. Without naming names, if you look at any of the second hand web sites out there, you'll find plenty of offers too good to be true by sellers that have a history of selling bikes at silly prices. If there are people selling knocked off bikes (or any goods) in plain sight of the law, they should be gone after first. I reckon sites selling second hand goods should be required to look for proof of ownership, and where goods sold are shown to be stolen, the site should be open to prosecution through receipt of stolen goods. AFAIK, this is the case for a bricks and mortar auctioneer or pawnbroker, and it should be (and probably is) for all such intermediaries. When I contacted the site in question with details on the bike I was looking at, I was presented with a boilerplate statement saying that if I though the goods were stolen, I should follow up with the Gardaí. This is of course crap, in that if they're receiving commission on the sale of stolen goods, they're breaking the law, and the onus is on them, not me, to correct things.

tldr; Kill the market for stolen bikes, and the incentive to steal them plummets.

I have posed that question before in regards the sites selling bikes which may be stolen & if found to be doing so what rights has the owner of the bike in regards the site selling it if the bike has been sold & not captured before hand. Going after jonnie scumbag with 20,30 plus convictions isnt going to make a difference to him so thats a waste of time in regards harsher sentences for bike theft. If it was made harder to shift them on by going after the sellng sites, perhaps the amount of boardises and others wont be on here looking for help in trying to recover their belongings.

ford2600

Bloggsie wrote: »

I have posed that question before in regards the sites selling bikes which may be stolen & if found to be doing so what rights has the owner of the bike in regards the site selling it if the bike has been sold & not captured before hand. Going after jonnie scumbag with 20,30 plus convictions isnt going to make a difference to him so thats a waste of time in regards harsher sentences for bike theft. If it was made harder to shift them on by going after the sellng sites, perhaps the amount of boardises and others wont be on here looking for help in trying to recover their belongings.

Bikes(like power tools, chainsaws etc) are stolen because enough people will buy them. People disengage their intellect/morality and buy something that's great "value" without thinking or disregarding where it probably came from.

About 15 years ago I had a chainsaw and hedgecutter stolen on a Saturday night. When i discovered it Sunday morning I drove straight to nearby car boot sale.

I didn't find it but within a certain demographic of sellers, most products seemed stolen;angle grinders/drills with cut leads, tool sets with parts missing, uncleaned/serviced chainsaws etc. The place was doing a roaring trade full of ordinary people. I'm not quite sure to this day if I'm glad or not I didn't find my stuff.

As long as people continue to buy bikes on donedeal or wherever where price is great "value" they will continue to be stolen.

Beasty

smacl wrote: »

The pragmatic solution that many use is to simply ride a crap looking bike around town, and when parking it, make sure it is parked among slightly better looking bikes with slightly inferior locks. You don't have to be the fastest or toughest wildebeest in the pack to avoid the predators, just not the weakest.

Absolutely - they will go for the one they perceive as easiest to get. Make your bike a bit more difficult to get and they will in all probability move onto the next one

Qualitymark

According to this piece

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2015/03/battling_bike_theft_take_2_gps.html

about the US experience,

(Oregon police Sgt Tom) Hamann said Lake Oswego has been focusing on bike theft since officers noticed spikes in the number of reports a few months ago. "We had a lot of bikes that were ending up getting stolen, and it appeared that there was a limited group of people responsible," he said.

I would take a small bet that this is also true in Ireland.

For me, the 'scrotes' (not a term I'd use myself, but since it's come into currency in this thread…) are the people who buy stolen bicycles without asking too many questions. What about adverts.ie, donedeal.ie and gumtree.ie requiring an image of the receipt, with frame number quoted, plus an image of the frame number from the bike's bottom bracket, before accepting an ad?

What about the phone companies - 3, Vodafone, etc - offering a cheap data-only deal for SIMs for the various GPS trackers?

What about a few of the cycling programmers of Dublin getting together to make a sturdy, easy-to-use, cheapo GPS tracker with excellent customer service - one of the things I keep reading about various track-your-bike-thief yokeys is that the customer service is cat.

traprunner

Japanese multi story bike parking is coming.

http://www.independent.ie/life/city-cycling/japanesestyle-multistorey-bicycle-parking-planned-for-dublin-within-the-next-four-years-31385104.html

smacl

ford2600 wrote: »

As long as people continue to buy bikes on donedeal or wherever where price is great "value" they will continue to be stolen.

But if donedeal and similar sites are making a significant part of their profit by facilitating sales of stolen goods they should be targeted for doing so, much the same way that a pub or nightclub that was a known venue for sale of drugs would lose its license. By not looking for proof of ownership in order to list an item, these sites are basically creating a marketplace for stolen goods.

Qualitymark

traprunner wrote: »

Japanese multi story bike parking is coming.

http://www.independent.ie/life/city-cycling/japanesestyle-multistorey-bicycle-parking-planned-for-dublin-within-the-next-four-years-31385104.html

Interesting. From that piece on a plan for multi-storey car parking in Dublin before 2019:

For the first time in Dublin city, a coordinated multi-agency think tank is working to tackle bike theft.

Effects

yermanoffthetv wrote: »

Well the tile is really only for someone who lost their keys down the back of the couch, the point is the tech is there to have a small and cheap way of tracking a bike if its nicked by some gurrier. A simple antenna that pings its location to the user when requested.

My mate tired to track his keys when I asked him how well it worked. He was in Blanchadstown and it told him his keys were at his house on the other side of the city. They were in his pocket.
The tech is supposed to work further afield, if you are out of range, but that depends on other people having the app and using it.

Qualitymark

Also from that piece:

• 34pc of all thefts were reported in Dublin City Centre,
• 40pc in the rest of the Dublin Metropolitan Region and
• 26pc outside of the Dublin Metropolitan Region.
• Twice as many bikes are stolen during the summer months, peaking in July, August and September.
• Two Thirds of bikes are stolen from public places
• The most likely time is weekday afternoons
• One third are stolen from residential locations, houses, sheds, gardens etc... The most likely time is overnight

The Gardaí offer a "B.I.K.E Card (Bicycle Information Key Essentials)" which is said to be available from the Garda website, but I can't find it.

schemingbohemia

Qualitymark wrote: »

Wouldn't it be better if you didn't need to lock your bike?

Yes, but let's live in the real world.

Qualitymark wrote: »

Also from that piece:



The Gardaí offer a "B.I.K.E Card (Bicycle Information Key Essentials)" which is said to be available from the Garda website, but I can't find it.

http://www.garda.ie/Documents/User/B.I.K.E.%20Card.png

Qualitymark

schemingbohemia wrote: »

Yes, but let's live in the real world

No, let's change the real world.

schemingbohemia

Qualitymark wrote: »

No, let's change the real world.

Would you suggest people stop locking their cars and houses also? Because that's the logical conclusion of your argument.

Qualitymark

schemingbohemia wrote: »

Would you suggest people stop locking their cars and houses also? Because that's the logical conclusion of your argument.

I would suggest that it shouldn't be necessary.

In the 1980s all cars were locked with chains or Krookloks. No longer necessary. All women kept their bags on the floor of their cars, because if they put them on the passenger seat someone would smash the window and grab them. No longer necessary. Change is possible.

Beasty

schemingbohemia wrote: »

Would you suggest people stop locking their cars and houses also? Because that's the logical conclusion of your argument.

I remember a time when people could do that without fear. The world has moved on though. A lot of changes have been for the better, some have not - alas petty crime definitely falls into the latter category (and before anyone cries out, I know many do not consider bike theft petty - I do though)