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What Happens to Stolen Bicycles?

• brucehart 14y ago
  This is an area where a disruptive technology is due. Imagine if even 10% of bikes had technology that wirelessly sends out GPS coordinates or can identify the owner via an embedded RFID tag. Suddenly stealing bikes is not nearly as risk free and the incentive to participate is greatly reduced.
  • ryanwanger 14y ago
    ...assuming that thieves will actually be punished.
  • brlewis 14y ago
    See lallysingh's comment on this same article: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4444843 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4444843
  • jjara 14y ago
    Yes! Or a bar code/serial number encrusted in bikes' structure would do. Only this requires efforts from bike brands, owner, or shops to obtain a sustainable back-end tracking infrastructure.
• midas 14y ago
  I've heard rumors that lots of stolen bikes are exported on container ships leaving the US. The argument is that the shipping is basically free, since most ships are carrying large deliveries to the US and are empty on the return trip. Does anyone know if this is fact or fiction?
  • webandy 14y ago
    I was at a Wal-Mart in Shenzhen China and noticed a lot of used bicycles. I couldn't explain why they stocked used bicycles. Could have nothing to do with what you're saying, or they could have been stolen bicycles from somewhere else. In the US, bicycles sold at retail stores like Wal-Mart are new. http://www.flickr.com/photos/andyatkinson/392577801/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/andyatkinson/392577801/
  • lallysingh 14y ago
    Not terribly hard to find out -- the bike generates its own power, and is run outside. A few bikes with GPS and call-home device (powered by the bike) would draw traces to their destinations pretty quickly.
    • mrclark411 14y ago
      Would love for someone to do a long form sting. Install gps on 10 bikes and follow them as they get stolen and passed around.
      • agumonkey 14y ago
        I now have napkin designs of just this. I got hit by what seems to be some kind of paradox: old casual bikes are targeted more often than expensive flashy ones.
        • brk 14y ago
          Me too. Especially of it were a factory installed option. You could probably encapsulate the electronics in one of the frame tubes, which would mean it would be welded in to the bike. Impossible to detect casually, and nearly impossible to easily defeat without destroying the bike itself. Given the ratio of hours ridden to power draw of a small tattletale device, you could probably put a couple of magnets on the crank assembly (inside the tube the connects the crank to the frame), along with a couple hundred coils of wire and create a very nice charging circuit. It might take even 100 hours of riding to build up an initial charge, but I'm guessing that would be no problem in a typical scenario, even if it took 2 weeks to get there.
          • pavel_lishin 14y ago
            Isn't this something that would be trivially bypassed by passing a big spark through the frame? Burn out all electronics, without harming the rest of the bike.
            • 14y ago
  • sharkweek 14y ago
    it's very common for the US to export scrap metal back to China (or any number of manufacturing countries)-- http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/13/business/china-s-need-for-metal-keeps-us-scrap-dealers-scrounging.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/13/business/china-s-need-for-...
    • tcdent 14y ago
      When I was younger, I worked for a company that exported cardboard back to China.
      • pavedwalden 14y ago
        I've heard that was a very lucrative business for a while.
• monkeyfacebag 14y ago
  The "risk" as described here seems to account for only single incidences of bicycle theft. Seems like the more professional the bike thief, the larger the inventory of stolen bikes, thus the greater the penalty for being caught. Given that the value of stolen bikes on the market is relatively low, this might explain why there is no bike thief kingpin: at a certain point the risk exceeds the reward. As an aside: I am surprised that the risk to kidnappers is considered higher than the risk to bank robbers. Can anyone explain this?
  • simonsarris 14y ago
    > I am surprised that the risk to kidnappers is considered higher than the risk to bank robbers. Can anyone explain this? Kidnapping, if you're holding out for ransom, is like playing a game of hot potato but you have to wait for your opponent's go-ahead before you can toss it. Kidnapping (if you're looking for a random) is about aquiring something you don't want and nobody wants you to have so that you can make a risky deal that exposes you. You run the risk of being set up, and even if the deal is done successfully I'd imagine you'd run the risk of revenge, especially with any target worth a large value.
    • wisty 14y ago
      It's also a more violent crime, and one which gets more police attention. As long as you have a hostage, the police will hunt you like it's a murder case, but with more urgency.
  • citricsquid 14y ago
    The article links to a story about Igor Kenk, he stole almost 3,000 bicycles. He was caught, sentenced to 30 months and served 16. That's a few hours per bike, I think. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Kenk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Kenk This isn't an American thing apparently, it seems stealing a bike anywhere in the world has absolutely no real risk, even if you still 3,000...
    • pavel_lishin 14y ago
• slurgfest 14y ago
  If the price of bikes hadn't gone through the roof within the last 20 years there wouldn't be so much incentive to steal them. As it is you can hardly buy a new bike for less than $800 at most shops. Even if I could attach a weatherproofed Macbook to a pole with a U-lock, it would still be really unwise to do so. This is a pitiful commentary on our society and law enforcement
  • lambda 14y ago
    Really? I just went to a shop to look at bikes (and a real bike shop, not Wal-Mart), and there were options in the $300-$400 range. At Wal-Mart and Target and the like, you can get bikes in the $100-$200 range (or really crappy ones for even cheaper).
  • blacksmith_tb 14y ago
    Hmm, as a dedicated bike commuter I am almost inclined to agree, but I can't really get that excited about property crimes when rates of violent crime have been decreasing.
  • phishphood 14y ago
    That's not true. I bought a brand new Schwinn at Walmart for $140 after taxes. Its not a very good bike but its good for what I bought it for, i.e. trips to coffee shop without worrying for it to be stolen. My other bike is a $2.5k Specialized Tarmac which I don't use casually
• donpdonp 14y ago
  It would help if every purchaser of a bicycle checked the frame serial number against various online stolen bike databases. I'm not sure how fragmented the bike registration industry is.
  • pavel_lishin 14y ago
    I think most purchasers don't care, at least not for any bike that cost less than $100.
  • jiggy2011 14y ago
    I wonder how many people record their frame numbers, or even know that they exist? I have 3 bikes and haven't got the frame numbers written down anywhere. Although I will rectify this now!
  • akgerber 14y ago
    Quite fragmented, especially considering nearly every local police department has their own.
• dmm 14y ago
  Cities should levy a bike tax and use it to fund some snipers that shoot assholes who steal bikes.
  • tripa 14y ago
    How would the sniper be supposed to distinguish the robber from the owner?
    • dmm 14y ago
      The thief is using a battery powered angle grinder to remove the u-lock. The owner uses a key. The snipers will be well trained to distinguish between the two. Hmm. Maybe this would be a good application of unmanned drones?
      • rosser 14y ago
        And what happens when an owner who lost his key gets shot for cutting his own lock?
        • ketralnis 14y ago
          Call me crazy, but I'm going to guess that the sniper suggestion was in jest.
        • JonnieCache 14y ago
          We did that a couple of times with a mains-powered angle grinder and a mini generator. In the middle of the afternoon, in a shopping street. Got some funny looks, I can tell you. Nobody said anything though. Certainly didn't get shot.
        • pbhjpbhj 14y ago
          Colateral damage. It also encourages owners to keep a spare key ... so it's not all bad.
  • pilsetnieks 14y ago
    Although I believe that summary executions are in bad taste, I want to point out that, au contraire, the tax should be levied on car owners (to encourage cycling).
• sixQuarks 14y ago
  Does anyone actually use priceonomics.com? I'm sorry, but I don't find the service useful at all. They come up with viral blog posts all the time, but the service is not actually something that I would use.
  • daveman 14y ago
    When I was looking to buy an Aeron chair, I used it to learn the range of market prices, and even was able to negotiate the seller down with the information from the site. I wouldn't have been able to get such a comprehensive view (in any reasonable amount of time) by just reading through CL. So yes it has been pretty useful to me.
• mongonuts 14y ago
  "Open Letter to the Guy Who Stole My Bike Wheel" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m68-oWBh9Ow http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m68-oWBh9Ow
• desinerd 14y ago
  Some how bike stealing seems to have tremendous sentimental/symbolic value attached it ... the woman talking about her kid's bike reminds me of Ladri di biciclette [The bicycle thief].
• degenerate 14y ago
  Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:blog.priceonomics.com%2Fpost%2F30393216796%2Fwhat-happens-to-stolen-bicycles http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:blog.pr...
• webandy 14y ago
  The best workaround I know of for bike commuting is bike share programs. (US examples: "Nice Ride" in Minneapolis or "Capital Bikeshare" in DC). In these examples, the bikes are large, relatively unattractive, limited functionality (3 speeds), have distinctive designs, and these things to me I'm hoping remove the incentive to steal the bike.
• claytonp 14y ago
  What about bike parts? Bike seats, wheels, etc get stolen all the time. Are they just scrapping these parts out for 5 to 10 cents on the dollar as well?
• andrewtbham 14y ago
  My experience has been most bike thieves are kids. It's a training in a way for car thieves. They chop the bikes up, and paint them, then ride or sell them. bikes are a valuable commodity in bad neighborhoods cuz lots of people can't afford cars and public transportation might not take them where they need to go.
• markbnine 14y ago
  If Goldman Sachs didn’t have more profitable market inefficencies to exploit, they might be out there arbitraging stolen bikes. Funny how no explanation is needed for this line. Goldman Sachs (and hence, Wall Street) is now the poster child for risk-free crime.
  • kcl 14y ago
    It's a curious line, and while when I read it I let it pass with conditional assent, I now think it's incorrect. Wall Street has poorer-than-usual ethics, and does commit crimes for profit, but in general it is wary of the legal system. Wall Street tends not to exploit opportunities that run afoul of the legal system, even when they are risk-adjusted comparable to other opportunities. They would rather make money legally than illegally, if they can help it. To use the wording of the article, Goldman Sachs (Wall Street) typically does not commit crimes when "the potential revenue from the crime [is] greater than the probability adjusted weight of getting caught", even if you set the adjusted revenue to average profitability. In particular, Goldman Sachs (Wall Street) is gunshy with respect to the US legal system. From a charitable standpoint, perhaps this is out of an ethical respect for the law. From a cynical standpoint, perhaps there is another more involved risk calculation which takes into account long-term reputation and the unpredictability of political administrations and legal settlements. Given a long enough outlook cynical self-interest approaches ethics.
    • akkartik 14y ago
      The point of grandparent was precisely that you let it pass on a first reading. It doesn't matter whether it's true, it's a huge image shift.
• laserDinosaur 14y ago
  I've always wanted to buy a cheap bike and create a quick release bolt on the rear wheel that unspools as the wheel turns. I figure the culprit could get 3 or 4 revolutions before the back wheel falls off. Or maybe attach a length of wire to the front brake cable that wraps around the rear axel. Suddenly the wire snaps tight and yanks the front brakes. I figure it would make a good youtube series. My main fear is being stabbed to death by an angry bike thief...
  • mynameishere 14y ago
    Booby traps are usually illegal.
    • jlgreco 14y ago
      Would that really be a booby trap though? Both sound more like (funny) anti-theft devices, since neither are intended to maim.
      • pavel_lishin 14y ago
        It depends on where the brakes locked up. This could easily toss someone tumbling into traffic.
  • brendn 14y ago
    Being stabbed to death would be a less painful and drawn-out alternative to being sued for the thief's medical bills.
    • fosap 14y ago
      European here. I thought the thief would now(after obamacare) have insurance?
      • Cass 14y ago
        Insurance companies will generally be quite happy to sue anyone they might be able to unload a bill on. If you get someone deliberately or negligently hurt in Europe, their insurance won't just roll over and pay their medical bills, either.
• miccla 14y ago
  I love these Freakenomic-y types of articles. Really makes you think about very every day occurrences in different ways. I thought maybe I could add some game theory into the mix, just for the sake of it. For example... Following an economic perspective it could be viewed, given the suggestions made in the article, that for your average bike on the street it is almost impossible to protect against theft using a lock or by any other "practical" means. Therefore (bare with me) when you park your bike on the street you are in a sense "competing" with other cyclist in presenting the worst return for the criminal. Locks, paint jobs, parking locations etc. are just ways of saying to the thief "Hey, this is going to be difficult. Why not have a go at stealing that shiny looking bike next to mine." You are not solely competing against the criminals but your fellow cyclists!
• karpathy 14y ago
  One of the links hidden away in the article is actually quite amusing: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/opinion/bike-thief.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/opinion/bike-thief.html?_r... It is a video if a guy stealing a bike a few times with saw/crowbar etc. (Except it's actually a hidden camera setup and it's his bike. Spoiler alert: Many people walk by, noone cares)
  • sageikosa 14y ago
    The major deterrent in long public illegal operations is not the fear of a bystander taking action, but in the soon-to-be injured party (or a compatriot of such) taking notice. Someone trying to get into a car could have just accidentally locked his keys in. Someone trying to get into my car has nefarious intent.
• Jun8 14y ago
  I think a useful tactic to curb loss of expensive bikes would be to legally target the people who buy them, these are the people that cause the market to exist and perpetuate the situation. My guess is that most of these people are not crooks, i.e. they are just young people who want to but can't afford a nice bike and they know exactly what they are buying. I don't understand anything about bikes so can't give an example there, but if a person would approach me to sell, say, a 2010 Prius for $5K, I just know that is a stolen car. If knowingly buying a stolen car carries even a small legal charge, most people wouldn't do it. Tangentially, and pardon my ignorance, I'm not a biker: I can't understand people who shell out thousands of dollars for a bike, are these so much better than a $500 one?
  • jiggy2011 14y ago
    That's assuming that they are selling the bikes at a far lower price than the market rate. Wise crooks probably know to offer a realistic price. The prices for second hand bicycles are all over the place anyway. There's a significant number of people who will buy a reasonably expensive bike and keep it in the shed for years and then by the time they decide to get rid of it they have no idea what it's worth so will just sell it for below it's value.
  • enraged_camel 14y ago
    How can you tell if a bike you are buying is stolen? It would be pretty easy for a bike thief to post an ad on Craigslist saying they are selling their used bike. >>Tangentially, and pardon my ignorance, I'm not a biker: I can't understand people who shell out thousands of dollars for a bike, are these so much better than a $500 one? It makes a huge difference. More expensive bikes are built from lighter and stronger materials (such as carbon fiber), are more aerodynamic and have better balance. Just to name a few of the benefits.
    • Retric 14y ago
      I would argue it's often more about falling into the same trap as 'audiophiles' as it is about direct benefits. Few people notice the added weight from drinking 2lb of water but people spend hundreds of dollars shaving 1/10th of that from their bike.
• nsns 14y ago
  And of course: the stolen goods are also your means of escape; an added advantage.
• derda 14y ago
  I dont know if its common in the anywhere else but in my town here in germany the stealing of bike-PARTS has become very popular. I guess the owners of high-value bikes use better locks, that are actually hard to break ( like those: http://ebay.muskelkater-sport.de/fahrrad/schloesser/bordo-granit-xplus-maximum-level15-2.jpg http://ebay.muskelkater-sport.de/fahrrad/schloesser/bordo-gr... ). But for Parts the risk is even lower and a good break or light system can yield a few bucks. I personally use a cheap ( 50€ ) used bike as a daily driver, in combination with a 30€ lock, there will mostly be an easier/better target for the thief and if it ever gets stolen, its just 50 (80) bucks and not 1000€.
  • pyoung 14y ago
    Yup, very popular here in SF. I recently just got my wheels stolen. Also had a few seats stolen as well. Stealing parts is probably more common than stealing entire bikes. And if you look at the pictures of the stolen bikes linked in the article, most of them are missing a front wheel, which to me, implies that the thieves were targeting bikes that were only locked by their front wheel (or they were selling the front wheels of the bikes, as those are pretty common theft targets as well).
    • BenOfTomorrow 14y ago
      Yup; recently had my REAR wheel stolen (a large pain to replace tire, tube, wheel, AND cassette). Now I lock both of them.
• rodolphoarruda 14y ago
  You are retro feeding the system when you buy an stolen item, even in good faith not knowing it has been stolen. A possible way out is to check the serial number of the frame. Most modern bikes have a serial number engraved in the bottom bracket. Before buying a second hand bike, check the serial number online, just Google it. See if the previous (sad) owner had posted a notice on the incident somewhere: blog, dedicated site to stolen bikes[1] etc. If you happen to find confirmation, you know what to do. [1] http://www.bicicletasroubadas.com.br http://www.bicicletasroubadas.com.br (Portuguese)
• elliottcarlson 14y ago
  There is a bike seller in Manhattan who uses an interesting system in reselling his (more than likely) stolen bikes. Once a buyer contacts him via craigslist, he finds out the persons general vicinity, brings the bike to the area and locks it up with a combo lock based chain. He will give you the address of the bike, and if you like it, can make the purchase online and you receive the combination. If you don't want it, he can pick it up who knows when - or leave it for someone else to check out. If the bike gets stolen, he hasn't lost anything on his bottom line and at no point is he in physical communication with the actual purchaser.
  • simba-hiiipower 14y ago
    interesting; i’d say that's pretty damn brilliant. then again, if the risk of being caught (and punished) is as low in NY as it appears to be in SF, that seems like a bit of an overkill; wonder what the scale of his organization is..?
    • elliottcarlson 14y ago
      This same concept was debated within the realm of drug trade - which obviously is at a different risk level. With special compartment style locks on a chain, the same concept is possible - without a dealer having to ever interact directly with the buyer. Same concept can also exist for hiding information (whistle blowers hiding a SD card with data, a key, who knows what). I don't know about SF, but it is not uncommon to see just a bike chain hanging on a post - it just fits in to the environment and no one will notice someone just walking up and taking their chain with the right combination.
      • simba-hiiipower 14y ago
        considered drugs in this case, but couldn't figure out how that would work; how would you prevent theft (from your would-be customer)? there’s no conceivable way i can think of to present a drug for someone to ‘check-out’ without enabling that person to steal it..
• kevinalexbrown 14y ago
  It makes sense that large-scale operations are common in locations with a big bike scene. These will likely require a distribution network, so fighting bike theft might benefit from focusing on infiltrating those networks. I had a friend who bought a bike lock that was insured against any thefts (whether they were quick with the insurance, I don't know). When he went to register it, he saw that there were two exceptions, one of which was the city in which he lived: Eugene Oregon, a town with tens of thousands of students. After asking around, he was told bike thieves there loaded entire bike racks onto trucks in a couple minutes, then removed each lock at their leisure in a storage facility. I find it hard to imagine that they sold them off individually: it's too suspicious to have a few people selling hundreds of bikes. Likewise, delegating to underlings to sell the bikes also seems too risky, as several people now know about the enterprise. I suppose they sell wholesale to used bike shops in other towns who are in the know. The solution in this case would seem to be turning criminals into witnesses, a la drug enforcement. Enforcement on an individual-basis wouldn't work: mere possession of a single stolen bicycle is unlikely to prove criminality. I doubt penalizing individuals for owning a bike (as with counterfeit money) would work either: if I go to a used bike shop to buy a bike, they're not going to give me the "stolen discount" - the shop is going to mark it up to the same price as legitimate used bikes.
  • pavel_lishin 14y ago
    > Likewise, delegating to underlings to sell the bikes also seems too risky, as several people now know about the enterprise. It seems to work for drug dealers.
    • greiskul 14y ago
      Well, but with drugs I assume a lot of purchases are from repeat costumers, so it's easier to call less attention.
  • wheeldonkey 14y ago
    i just had my bike stolen on 8/3 in portland. the thief tried selling it on craigslist up in seattle, and i made a youtube video about it... http://www.break.com/index/bike-thief-tracked-down-and-busted-2358904 http://www.break.com/index/bike-thief-tracked-down-and-buste... i've been looking into the thief... his usual m.o. is to take them down to eugene. he also picks up different ones while he's down there, and sells them here in portland and seattle. i think his theft ring has a couple of other people involved, but i haven't been able to confirm it. i am hoping to do a follow-up video about this.
• daveman 14y ago
  A few months ago I saw a tweaked-out guy at 6th & Howard in San Francisco (just outside the Techshop) literally trying to saw-off a U-lock in broad daylight. A bunch of other homeless guys were lazily watching with amusement. I really would love to build a pepperspray-bomb-in-a-U-lock, if only I could do so without being instantly sued by a litigious thief.
• frankus 14y ago
  Bike theft seems like one of those quality-of-life crimes (like graffiti and coercive squeegee-monkeys) that's begging for some kind of creative enforcement strategy. - If there's an open-air bike market at 7th and Market, it seems like you could use some of the same strategies that have been used to shut down open-air drug markets. - Police in the greater Vancouver area have had a lot of success with bait cars, but I'm not aware of bait bikes being used more than experimentally (cf. tocatchabiketheif.com) - If one could devise a concentrated enforcement strategy, one might not need to "take six guys off a murder" for very long. Basically the idea would be to tip a high-crime-low-probability-of-punishment equilibrium and into a low-crime-high-probability-of-punishment equilibrium that should presumably remain equally stable. One approach would be to target a geographic area and communicate (and follow through on) a threat to throw the book at anyone caught stealing a bike. (pretty much all of these are stolen from the book When Brute Force Fails).
  • mootothemax 14y ago
    I think the problem is not catching the bike thieves, more that the punishment given for stealing bikes is minimal, so it's not worth the police doing much about it.
    • aidian 14y ago
      In Cali, theft of anything under $400 in value is a misdemeanor...that means stealing your typical bike under about $1000 isn't a major crime.
    • ethermal 14y ago
      But you could make possession of stolen property (the bike) a major crime with prison and financial punishment and you weaken the demand side of things. Then using RFID or similar technology, you could embed a RFID tag somewhere in the frame. Then allow someone to report a stolen bike with a police report, very similar to a stolen vehicle report and then using remote scanners you could scan for stolen bikes very easily. All it takes is fear of a stolen bike to scare away potential buyers.
• deleted 14y ago
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• ChuckMcM 14y ago
  I love priceonomics, every time I read one of their articles I learn something new (for example I didn't realize you could exchange a stolen bike for sex). Approaching this as an economics problem seems like a good approach. I think if bike manufacturers built in ways to uniquely identify bikes, and those idents were economically infeasible to remove, then you could do a bitcoin style distributed database of the current 'real' owner of a bike, then the cops could periodically go into 7th and Market or where ever, collect all the stolen bikes and tell their owners they are recovered. If you remove 1/2 the bad dealers inventory every month its going to cut into their profits, and if they stop buying stolen bikes in bulk you make it harder to flip them etc etc.
  • ljf 14y ago
    Most (all?) bikes have a serial number stamped on the bottom of the 'bottom bracket' the part that the pedals go into. These serial numbers are unique per bike brand, but not universally unique. The serial is pretty hard to remove, without it's removal being obvious to anyone that looks, though the brand can be removed or changed - if that happens the serial wouldn't show as stolen. If there was a lookup for serials then you could check if the bike was stolen, or if the bike was incorrectly branded (serial doesn't match brand), but there isn't a central place for this, unless the (ex)owner registers it on a service such as immobilise.com
    • kisielk 14y ago
      My fiance's bike was stolen a few months ago. By coincidence someone who was a friend of a friend of her's ended up buying it off of craigslist. We discovered this when he arrived at a BBQ riding her bike. When we asked about the details of his purchase, he sent us all the email correspondance with the bike thief. The thief had actually given him the serial number of the bike, which he checked in the online police database and it returned no hits. The catch was that the thief slightly altered the serial number so that it wouldn't yield any hits. When he went to actually look at the bike he didn't notice the subtle difference in the serial number and assumed it to be legit.
      • 14y ago
• rkalvi 14y ago
  I think there is a decent underground operation of used bikes: I recently bought a bike off a used car bike shop in mountain view ( off of shoreline ). You walked in and there were 500 bikes ( in all shapes and sizes ) available. From vintage to kids to racing. You name it. I always wondered where they got their bikes from. Most bike owners dont report, keep track of the bike ids. And police dont have incentives to track them. If the margins weren't there, people wont steal them.
• WalterBright 14y ago
  My bike is a nice 10 speed I bought 35 years ago. It still works fine, is an excellent bike, and is worth maybe $25. I doubt it's worth stealing.
  • billswift 14y ago
    Almost 20 years ago, I had a ten-speed junker I bought for $20 just for riding around town, only three gears actually worked, but it got me around. Somebody stole it off of my front porch.
  • akgerber 14y ago
    Vintage steel bikes have gone up in price quite a bit in the last 5 years or so, especially in big cities.
  • jarek 14y ago
    Every bike is worth stealing, unfortunately. I had beater bikes stolen, one had duct tape on the rims, another one with visibly busted rear brake. I probably couldn't have sold them if I tried to; but then I don't sell to sketchy characters for $10 or part of a hit.
• JoeAltmaier 14y ago
  If expensive bikes wouldn't work for the thief or their client, they would stop. RFID tag embedded in the frame, locking the headset? Just have to make it hard enough to not be worth it.
• Steko 14y ago
  I wonder if the large number of stolen bikes on the market basically depresses local prices to the extent that even if you have to buy a new bike you don't lose that much vs a world with minimal bike theft. The Japanese market might be relevant, as 10-15 years ago there was seemingly little bike theft and now it's rampant in certain areas.
• king-ink 14y ago
  Here in the Netherlands (with an average of 2 bikes per inhabitant) there is another big class of bicycle thieves: those whose bike just got stolen, and don't want to buy a new one (yet again)...
• mobweb 14y ago
  Around where I live there's definitely another factor to consider: Opportunity theft. A lot of bikes get stolen simply because it's very easy to do so, especially downtown. On the weekends when there are lots of drunk people around, a _LOT_ of bikes get stolen simply because people are too lazy to walk or they just find it funny to steal a bike. These bikes sure as hell don't end up at some kind of black market, instead they are simply left at some place and somebody else picks them up. It's like a never-ending cycle of bike theft. Also it doesn't help that most bike locks are ridiculously easy to break. Another thing that I've noticed (I'm an avid freeride-biker) is that there are actually gangs that target high-end bikes. They have spies at known bike-trails and follow people home. If they see an expensive bike they break into cellars, garages and sometimes even people's apartments just to steal a bike. The bikes are then taken apart and most components are sold right away (a second hand fork in good shape can still go for $1000+ in some cases) and the frame itself is shipped abroad and sold separately. I'm actually very paranoid because it's happened to two friends already... :/
• lostnet 14y ago
  I'm sure a significant portion especially in the high end can be explained by rational actors with pretty low prospects. But I'm suspicious that there isn't a lot more of the less rational going on. The hoarder mentioned in the article may not be an outlier and bike theft is also sort of a low stakes learning ground. In anything approaching an urban center I see a lot of abandoned bikes (locked and slowly vultured.) They are generally attributed to lazy owners, but a portion may be decaying inventories of hoarders, joy riders and/or thrill seekers. I'm reminded of inventories of locks on urban fences. Obviously the collections of not so rational (but social or antisocial) actors. I think a good urban experiment would be a collection system that pays ~$5 a bike (and gives immunity once you arrive) and charges ~$7.50 to a verifiable owner before selling back into the free market of "used" bikes. A little cross between a repo-man and the can man, to keep the things a little tighter and make it more likely lessons are learnt on the cheap.
• zurn 14y ago
  What kind of insurance options exist in the US for bikes? Over here your basic home insurance covers the bike theft minus a deductible (often something like 200e). Then you can get a separate bike insurance for 25e/year which will cover the deductible and also register the bikes serial number in a database and they (claim to) do some cooperation with the police and border officials to flag stolen bike serial numbers and return stolen bikes to owners. Your bike also gets a special sticker which probably repels bike thieves. Many retailers automatically preregister bikes with this service and include 3 months of free insurance, and include ads for the full service...
• marklabedz 14y ago
  While we're at it, bike lock advice from one of cycling's old grey beards, Sheldon Brown: http://www.sheldonbrown.com/lock-strategy.html http://www.sheldonbrown.com/lock-strategy.html
  • alexfoo 14y ago
    That's a flawed lock strategy. I wouldn't ever want to do that. I always include the rear wheel and the seat-tube (or seat-stays) inside my D-lock. "There is no need to loop it around the seat tube as well, because the wheel cannot be pulled through the rear triangle." The two simple methods I've seen for defeating it (based on seeing just mangled rear wheels locked up to railings/bike racks) is to:- a) Stamp on the rear wheel and fold it so that it fits through the rear triangle. (No tools required). b) Cut a bunch of spokes (easy to do with a pair of wire cutters) and press the rear wheel flat so that it fits through the rear triangle. The rear wheel on one of my main bikes is £100; the rest of the bike is £1500. No chance I'm going to risk that. Thieves won't care about not having a rear wheel if they're sticking bikes in the back of a van to sort out or sell off at a later date. Sadly Sheldon isn't alive today to discuss and review that strategy.
• Eliezer 14y ago
  I wasn't surprised by the drugs part, but learning that stolen bikes are considered street currency actually makes me more bullish on Bitcoin. It's still a terrible idea, but it's got to be more convenient than using bikes as currency. I wonder what would happen if the criminal world started experiencing hyperdeflation?
  • nrp 14y ago
    Sure, buy crack with Bitcoins, and wait around for 20 minutes for the block chain to verify. The same delay that makes it irritating for legal in person transfers makes it useless for hand to hand criminal transfers.
• stcredzero 14y ago
  > In 1968, Chicago economist Gary Becker introduced the notion that criminal behavior could be modeled using conventional economic theories. We need to start examining the motivations for cracking in the same way. Locks in the real world are far from foolproof, and work as much or more because of societal expectations and economics than they do because of their embodied technology. What most companies do with DRM ignores reality in two important ways: 1) Your own technological capability and manpower can be overwhelmed by the tech and manpower available to the Internet as a whole. 2) If you have something of significant monetary or prestige value, you are not going to secure it with a single supremely clever lock. Real world security consists of a defense in depth. Real locks and safes aren't burglar-proof. Instead, they are rated to delay thieves for a certain length of time. Their purpose is to increase the risk of the transaction thereby making it uneconomical. Crackers will always win if the payoff is worth the effort. Presently, any software downloaded to a user's machine can be cracked. Therefore, do not try to prevent that -- it's a losing battle. Refuse the things that you can economically refuse. (Server-side functionality, service and support, participation online.) Detection is 1000X as powerful, if the consequences are separated in time from the actual detection. If you give the game away immediately, you are providing your opponent data. If the consequences are delayed by 3 days or even several months, the economics of cracking become like the economics of fixing intermittent bugs and Heisenbugs. Security needs to focus on economic leverage. Since your opponents have more time and capability than you, you need to ensure that they are spending 1000X more resources to combat your actions. Instead of needing to catch them every time, or your game is lost, make them need to catch you every time, or their game is lost. (The robber needs to get away with the heist every time, while the police only need to catch him once. However, the guerrilla fighters only need to get away with a raid occasionally, while the occupiers need to catch them every time. Yet in both situations, the 1st party has far fewer resources. Something to think about.)
• dbz 14y ago
  My guess is that bikes will get GPS devices put in them eventually. Then people will be able to track their routes etc. Maybe when that happens, people will be able to track their stolen bikes.
• ffn 14y ago
  How about a bike with a combo lock built into its gears so that all the gears will only spin if the correct combo is given. The built-in combo lock can also be rigged to detonate some wired-in explosive if someone attempts to forcefully remove it.
• xfernandox 14y ago
  Some bikes are REALLY expensive. Look at the lengths this guy goes to recover his: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poBajFv-Dyk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poBajFv-Dyk Don't mess with bikers. Something that's your mode of transit everywhere starts to mean more than just the $ value.
• at-fates-hands 14y ago
  The one thing I would've liked to see was the age breakdown of the offenders. I remember vividly in junior high there was a kid who stole BMX bikes, soldered off the serial number and then re-sold them for around $300 a piece. He got to be like a professional car thief in that he would take requests if someone wanted something specific. It was a very lucrative side business for a 12 year old kid.
• greggman 14y ago
  When I was a kid (GET OFF MY LAWN!!!) We used to be able to register our bikes with the police department. They'd stamp a registration number onto the frame of the bike using lettered taps and a hammer. The only way to take off the registration is to either file it down or cover it over, in either case a clear indication the bike is stolen. I got a bike stolen 3 times. Twice I got one back when the police found it (once the bike had upgrades too. Better front fork, better grips and 2nd rider peddels had been added) Anyway, I'm sure someone will cite "budget cuts" but I certainly wish they still registered bikes. It seems like in a city like SF there are enough cyclists, revenues from registering the bikes could pay for a few bike police.
  • nrp 14y ago
    My local police station in San Francisco still does bike registration: http://www.inglesidepolicestation.com/#!__bike-registration http://www.inglesidepolicestation.com/#!__bike-registration The website looks like something out of the late 90's, and the form is a Word document, but it's nice that it exists. It evidently gets some use too, as they occasionally recover a stash of stolen bicycles and post pictures of the ones that weren't registered.
    • firebones 14y ago
      Bike registration would be a great service to outsource to bike shops. It generates foot traffic for the shop, costs almost nothing, and the local PDs can work with the bike shops in a fashion similar to how PDs work with pawn shops. Provide a national registry, sell ads, viola! YC 2013, baby! (Okay, maybe not, but a useful public service niche.)
    • btilly 14y ago
      The problem is that if the police do bike registration, but nobody actually expects bikes to be registered, then nobody cares that their stolen bike is registered.
  • busted 14y ago
    According to their website https://www.nationalbikeregistry.com/ https://www.nationalbikeregistry.com/, the SFPD as well as other police departments in the Bay Area use the National Bike Registry.
• cpeterso 14y ago
  In Berkeley, Karim Cycle is a "used bike" shop infamous for fencing stolen bikes. Everyone knows it, but proving it is too much work for the police. The Yelp reviews are funny but disheartening: http://www.yelp.com/biz/karim-cycle-berkeley-3 http://www.yelp.com/biz/karim-cycle-berkeley-3
• antihero 14y ago
  If I had more time I do believe I'd enjoy getting a fairly fancy bicycle, having a friend park it up, lock it with a fairly crap lock, and then just chill out at a nearby cafe watching it, waiting for some piece of shit to steal it, and then following them and seeing where they go with it/beating the everliving shit out of them.
• abecedarius 14y ago
  So the penalty is near zero if you're caught, this says. Does that also go for thefts of other items of comparable price, like TVs? If not, why the difference?
• rwallace 14y ago
  Crazy idea time: since the problem with the demand end is the difficulty of telling the difference between stolen property and legitimate secondhand sales, what would happen if all sales of secondhand bikes were banned? Would the reduction in theft be worth the loss of end-of-life revenue plus slight erosion of liberty? Not a rhetorical question, I don't know the answer.
• lkbm 14y ago
  > He had to learn a life lesson a little earlier than I had liked - that there are some people in the world who are just plain mean. We live in a complex world full of complex people with countless motivations. It's always tempting to dismiss someone as "just plain mean", but it's rarely accurate. I realize this is somewhat off-topic. Just stood out to me.
• Mc_Big_G 14y ago
  A woman at work had her bike stolen in SF (off the front of a bus if you can believe that) and decided to go to every flea-market she could find in Oakland that weekend. When she found the bike she just took it and dared the guy selling it to do something about it. She just rode away. :)
• 6ren 14y ago
  This is why I don't want to buy a second-hand bike.
• binarycheese 14y ago
  "Just because the risk of a crime is zero, that doesn’t mean that a criminal will engage in that crime. If that were the case, thieves would go about stealing dandelions and day-old newspapers" Now, that's classic.
• eightbitman 14y ago
  What happens to stolen bicycles? Seriously, what happens to them? This article doesn't begin to address the question within the first paragraph, and if they can't format their article properly I can't justify spending time reading it.
• rdl 14y ago
  With crimes which are lightly prosecuted, I wonder if having infrequent but very high severity punishment works comparably to having consistent but moderate punishment. In China, they do "Strike Hard" campaigns, where crimes which might normally be gross misdemeanor level (shoplifting, assault) are punished far more severely (sometimes by execution). This might be a way to raise the expected cost of committing the crime, while not raising the cost of anti-crime enforcement that much.
• etfb 14y ago
  A suitably sociopathic individual could probably have a beneficial effect on the bike theft rates in a city by just going around to the places where stolen bikes are sold and beating the sellers mostly to death with a baseball bat. That'd be an intriguing experiment for an economist with the right sort of anti-social personality disorder (which is all of them, so I feel silly making the distinction).
• hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
  "If Goldman Sachs didn’t have more profitable market inefficencies to exploit, they might be out there arbitraging stolen bikes." Ouch! LOL
• Emann 14y ago
  my friends bike being stolen: caught on tape in NYC. Lets find this guy!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1E1ck8LDlE&feature=plcp http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1E1ck8LDlE&feature=plcp
• tlb 14y ago
  The current police policy is to not investigate thefts under some threshold, say $2000. So you can steal bikes all day long and never get caught. A better policy would be to investigate thefts of value X with probability X / $4000. It's roughly the same total work, but doesn't create a safe haven for low-value thieves.
• jvdh 14y ago
  I live in the Netherlands, and bikes here are omnipresent. They also get stolen. A lot. Which is why most bikes you see in cities tend to be not too great looking. About 10 years ago in the city of Utrecht the bike stealing was a really big problem. Here also the stealing of bikes is really hard to get caught with. The police used decoy bikes to catch thieves trying to steal those, but also this only catches small parts of them. Ultimately this has been solved by also changing the way people handle this. If your bike got stolen, you just went out into the city, found a junkie, and often he had a bike for sale. If not he would have one 10 minutes later. The police changed their approach to this, and started cracking down hard on the selling of bikes on the street. Not only the people selling them, but also the people buying the bike. Even going so far as police officers going undercover and trying to get people to buy bikes. Within months the stealing of bikes dropped to near zero.
  • hessenwolf 14y ago
    Freakonomics discusses the exact same factor with drug dealing and the oldest profession - adding risk to the seller results in increasing margins which attracts more sellers; whereas adding risk to the buyer results in the margins dropping too low to be worth even a small risk for the seller. Also, when I see somebody on a re-sprayed bike, that hasn't obviously been re-sprayed with purely artistic intent, I want to beat them in the face until they die (lost too many bikes myself).
    • eru 14y ago
      My bike has been re-painted because the old paint was coming off. I guess that counts as another excuse.
      • hessenwolf 14y ago
        Well, luckily I wouldn't hurt a fly, so none of your type have been harmed :).
• jawr 14y ago
  A Dutch friend once told me that bike theft in Holland was pretty ripe, but it was more of a social norm; people wouldn't feel bad about stealing a rubbish bike and then leaving it somewhere for someone else to steal.. the bikes would almost become communal bikes.
• adrianhoward 14y ago
  One of the things I noticed when I was in Copenhagen for a week earlier this year was that people don't lock up their bikes as much. I saw lots of people leaving bikes unlocked when going into coffee shops, etc. when in the UK they'd be locking 'em up. There were many bikes that were locked - but they looked more like "commuter bikes" near the metro and office buildings. Folk using them to get around during the day often seemed to leave them unlocked.
• deleted 14y ago
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• gadders 14y ago
  Slightly off topic anecdote: A colleague of mine has his bike stolen from Ham House in Richmond, but fortunately the police quickly identifed the thief from CCTV footage. It was a particularly hot day, and they could clearly see where the thief had his name tattooed on his back.
• metdos 14y ago
  Even though I locked it, my bicycle also was stolen in Barcelona in 15 minutes in middle of city.
• OllieJones 14y ago
  When I was a college student, I had my bikes stolen so often that I did two things: First, I started buying hot bikes cheap because, hey, legal bikes were expensive. Second, I wrapped the frame of one bike in masking tape and smeared grease and paint on it. I kept that one for years; not even the local junkies wanted it. I guess they didn't notice my servicable Campy brakes and shifters, or didn't see the value in them. I'm not sure the rational-actor theory applies to bike theft. UNLESS it's the bike dealers behind the theft rings doing it to create demand, and they're just crushing the old stuff. Bwahahahahahaha. There's a batman movie in that villain theory.
• bigeric23 14y ago
  In NYC most stolen bikes are resold to delis and pizza shops for their delivery guys. Ever wonder why the minimum wage delivery guy is riding a $800 cannondale? They usually wrap the frame in duct tape so you don't recognize it. Get flat or a Bent rim? Just buy a new one from your local crackhead for $25 and you are on your way.
• kiterow 14y ago
  I know of someone who would steal bikes just to get back home from the bar. He was too cheap for a taxi. He had a huge stash of them in his basement because he didn't know what to do with them. So when he had parties at his house he started giving them to people so they could get home.
• Raleighwood 14y ago
  This piece makes excellent points, as do the comments. If thieves can't sell/move the bikes, then they will not steal. This provides a better solution -- theft deterrent, marks multiple parts, recovery component, cost effective, simple to use: http://www.identidots.com/IdentiDotsInAction.aspx http://www.identidots.com/IdentiDotsInAction.aspx
• Jhansen 14y ago
  We have the same problem in the major cities of Brazil. I live in Curitiba and i lost 9 bikes stolen 'till now. Jhansen - www.ciclismo.esp.br
• Catsy 14y ago
  This seemed timely, so I thought I'd share: an electric bike company, OHM Cycles (http://ohmcycles.com http://ohmcycles.com) is running a free contest to win a really high-end bike lock worth $200. You can enter here: http://www.facebook.com/ohmcycles/app_143103275748075 http://www.facebook.com/ohmcycles/app_143103275748075