“Bike Thief” – NYTimes.com – A guy in New York conducts an experiment where he attempts to steal his own bike in broad daylight in a number of locations – including right outside the 9th Precinct Police Department. Needless to say, nobody stops him. This is why I’m so nervous about parking my bike outside. At home we bring them in the house, and at work I take it in the office (up two flights of stairs). I’ve only parked on the street a couple times, and mostly where I could see it. This past weekend, I rode to Surry Hills for the Guild meeting and parked my bike at the racks behind the Library. It was out of my sight for over two hours. Happily, it didn’t get nicked… but I’m sure it could have happened just as easily as it did in NYC.
Interestingly, the video mostly shows him using chain locks. Are the U-locks or steel cable locks any stronger? I have a Knog lock, and it feels pretty hefty. Just wondering if maybe the type of lock is more of a factor than I thought…)
One response
They’ve done that longtime ago in Geneva. It was a test for the Locksystem. They’ve done the test on one of the must busy place of Geneva and even when someone used a massive bolt cutter, nobody in the street react. Impressive.
Here in Newcastle, I am not so afraid to let my bike on the street, but I am swiss, so sometime I am a lot naive and I have a second-second-second-hand bike.