I walked by this pathetic specimen of a bicycle on my way home today. Note that while it is still locked up with a sturdy lock, most of the rest of it has been stolen. It is an ex-bicycle, singing with the choir invisible. The only thing I wonder is whether it’s possible to lock a bike so it doesn’t get stripped this way.
It happens here in the Pacific northwest, too. Sad and petty. When I was in graduate school, I had two mopeds stolen, first one and, when I replaced it, the other. They were my transportation to and from the MCZ. I had almost no money (this was around 1980) and the thefts were devastating losses for me. It’s probably the same for the person who owned that bike.
A friend had a battery power & expensive E bike stolen while it was leaning on the table outside a cafe whilst having a coffee at the very same table. They chased but the thief was quicker.
Some answers to our host’s question, how do you stop your bike from being dismantled for parts.
You would have to chain all the major parts, wheels to frame independently, weaving around the front forks with the front wheel, and except that you may lose your seat and pedals.
That, along with the hassle of it all, might work.
Or “Get a crap bike… I have a old ladies bike. Said one person on the net.
How about “he used to detach his handlebars and let it swing loosely by the side of his bike making it look as though it had been tampered with already, it was never knicked in over the 10 years I knew him”
Years ago, I had a crap bike: tires worn; seat busted; brakes iffy; gear shift kinda worked; paint job banged up with rust showing in places. I used a cable type lock figuring no one would steal that hunk of junk. It was stolen. The person who took it actually did me a favor as the bike was getting dangerous to ride. I purchased a new bike and a thick, case-hardened steel chain that went through the frame and both tires.
On campus here, a crew would leave a nice bike unlocked at the top of a steep hill, having first disconnected the brake cables. Then the inevitable happened, followed I’m sure by much derisive laughter.
This is an important reason why people don’t use bicycles more.
Surrounded by vultures. Tired of hearing excuses for poor behavior.
I just purchased a new bike and bike lock. The lock is a U-lock meant to go around a tire, the frame, and something secure, like a bike rack. Also included was a cable to loop around the other tire and in the U-lock. It’s recommended to remove the bike seat, however.
No doubt it adds a bit of weight to your trips. Crazy we have to deal with this. Maybe electrify it via remote control, but the bad guys would just use rubber gloves…
Does not appreciably add weight, but the cable is slightly awkward and inconvenient.
Sure. I carried my seat everywhere I went when I rode. It’s too dangerous to ride a bike in Tucson these days. What a world! Businesses used to let people walk their bikes in, but not anymore. Yesterday, in fact, I walked into a convenience store/gas station and there was a big sign on the door saying, “No walkers allowed in store”… Any ideas what that’s about?
I’m offended.
Ha ha. Sorry about that, Mr. Walker.
Keeping out homeless people I suppose.
If I was being generous I’d assume it was a joke sign inspired by the zombie apocalypse shows ‘The Walking Dead’ /’Fear The Walking Dead’ in which the zombies were referred to as ‘walkers’.
I first assumed it was an expensive bike (with equally expensive components), but it’s $150.
Amazing to go through the effort for this.
I’ve owned 4 bicycles in my life, and 2 of them were stolen.
Many people suck. (not all)
I’m lucky that I’ve only ever had two bikes stolen, once in small-town Ontario at my parents’ house (they actually broke into a shed to steal it!) and once in Toronto when I foolishly lent it to an ex-boyfriend who lost it when his storage unit was broken into. Otherwise in years of living in Toronto, Ottawa and Melbourne I’ve never (so far) lost a bike.
The best you can do (outside of a bank of large enclosed armoured storage lockers, which no one will pay for) is a large U-lock with a reach big enough to lock the rear wheel, the frame, and the removed front wheel around a stout bicycle rack or one of the tall signposts they attach No Parking signs to. (Urban lore says that thieves determined to nab a nice Cinelli or Colnago of yesteryear would behead a parking meter by bashing it with a piece of heavy pipe and then lift the bike, lock and all, over the top of the post.) But a Sawz-All — cordless! — will cut through any bike rack material even if it can’t cut the lock itself. And vandals may still slash your tires for the hell of it. The wheels of a bike are the most usefully stolen. If you can secure them that deters a lot of thievery right there.
The good news is that the pedals of a bike locked with one wheel off are pretty safe. Pedals tighten as you ride — the left pedal is left-threaded, thanks to Orville Wright — and need a lot of leverage to wrench loose. The job is best tackled with the bike standing on its own inflated tires. Ditto the crankset. Special tools specific for each brand are needed.
What you’re hoping is that the thief upon inspecting your lock will decide to steal someone else’s bike instead. If he wants your particular bike badly enough, he’ll get it. And what parts he can get off it will fetch a good price in the local homeless encampment which enables the trade in stolen everything. Bikes too (parts mostly — cheap frames are just thrown away after stripping either on the street as here or at leisure in the camping area. Drugs, sex, and bicycles are fungible and interconvertible.)
Mountain bikes and modern road bikes typically have long (and therefore valuable) seat posts secured with a quick-release pinch collar pressed onto the top of the seat tube of the frame. (This part has been stripped from the bicycle in the picture.) Off-road riders (and roadies with OCD) like to be able to adjust the saddle height on the fly to suit terrain. These have “Steal Me” signs on them. No one in 10 years of a commute I used to do ever stole my traditional road-bike saddle secured with a pinch bolt integrated into the frame, even though they easily could have with a 5 mm Allen key. Some bike locks have an auxiliary cable that goes up through the saddle rails to keep the saddle and post from being stolen.
But notice they stripped the front fork including the front brake, headset, and handlebar stem from this bike. This would have taken less than a minute with a 4 mm and a 5 mm Allen key no matter how well the bike was locked. The handlebars with integrated gear shifters are left behind but likely someone will steal them soon, just need wire cutters to separate them from the remaining cables that go to the derailleurs.
I’d be curious to know if this bike was stripped in a single day or if it spent a few nights locked up outside with no TLC from its owner before it was assumed to be derelict and fair game. The chain is rusty enough that it’s been out in the weather a while but some people ride around with rusty chains anyway, so that’s not probative. As Maya implies, if a bike gets stripped in a single day while the owner is upstairs at work in the office building, it is a strong disincentive against riding a bike to work.
I have seen armoured storage lockers at places like train stations, so they exist in some places and are apparently affordable.
I have also seen cycle garages, again at places like train stations, where one gets a receipt when taking in the back with a matching tag for the bike itself. Both must be shown, and match, to get it out.
A wasn’t aware that the “fair game if left outside for a few days”-assumption exists. My bike that got vandalized had its regular parking place on the street in front of our apartment house, just beside the cars of the other tenants. We had the attic apartment, in an 1750s house with no lift and no cellar, I couldn’t very well carry my bike upstairs all the time.
I had always wondered how anyone could do that to an innocent, obviously loved bike (I had painted it), and this happened in 1996 in a predominantly ethnic German area. Possibly the explanation is that some youngsters with too much energy thought the bike no longer belonged to anyone. A wheel was stolen, the rest was just mangled for the fun of it.
I have never owned a car and can sing a song about this, as we say in Germany. I have only ever had “crap bikes”, decades old second hand lady’s bikes with no or next to no gears, yet I had one bike vandalized to death (didn’t have a bike for years after that) and two stolen.
After the two thefts, which were one after the other after I had finally bought a bike again, I used a “bikes for rent”-scheme for a few years. Then the rental company, Deutsche Bahn, could no longer provide bikes to my part of town, as they all got vandalized or stolen, often only to use them for one single “joyride”. You saw the rental bikes lying around mangled everywhere. I then bought a second hand boys’ bike for ten year olds (I am tiny) which has now weathered two years in my possession without mishap. Friends say the gangs now prefer e-bikes and no longer bother with the others.
My husband needs some electrically powered three or four wheeled cycling contraption for the no longer fully able bodied (as will I one day not too far off ), but these things are expensive and the only reason we don’t buy one is that we are sure it will be stolen or vandalized in no time.
On a related subject, a train ride that should have taken me two hours took me four yesterday. Problems with the train service used to be rare in Germany, now they are the rule rather than the exception. In fact, it’s worse than Italy used to be in the days when German travellers liked to mock the unreliability of the Italian train service.
With a large enough Kryptonite-style (big U-bar) lock, you can remove the front wheel and lock through both wheels and the frame.
But that won’t stop them stealing your seat and everything else!