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I've lived in various cities of The Netherlands for most of my life. Almost every bike I've ever had was stolen. I'm pretty sure leaving my bike unlocked for ov

by tinco 4y ago

I've lived in various cities of The Netherlands for most of my life. Almost every bike I've ever had was stolen. I'm pretty sure leaving my bike unlocked for over half an hour has been a 90% loss rate for me. I've never lost a bike that was locked. Even the crappiest lock has protected me in the center of Amsterdam. I've used a lock that you could probably cut with paper scissors to protect my retro racing bike. Often not even attached to a pole or anything. I'd almost blame my lost bikes on myself because the thieves are so consistently preying on my negligence. But F them, it hurt everytime, it's not my fault my head's in the clouds so often.

jeroenhd 4y ago
Bike thieves are the worst part about our bike centered culture. Perhaps even worse is the police doing very little to prevent bike theft even though everyone has a bike. I bet they'll laugh at you and send you away the second you admit that you didn't lock your bike; it's as if stealing unlocked bikes is normal in some places to the point where people make jokes about buying €5 bikes from hobos near the train station. Maybe we need some kind of smart lock situation, pinging your phone if you leave your bike unlocked when you park it somewhere not near to your home and forget to lock it. No interaction with the lock itself, just a quick notification. You can probably use Google's location stalking API to detect biking and then have an app listen for a lock ping over Bluetooth LE or whatever so the lock doesn't even need to track state or contain location hardware.