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Comment by mgberlin | Hacker News Reader

Your bikes are going to be stolen, stripped, and scrapped.

Though I don't agree with how you're saying what you're saying, I am curious how this issue is planning to be addressed.

As a SF resident, let's say I took a bike home to hayes valley. I'd say there's a 90% chance your bike will get stripped/stolen each night (assuming it's locked well with a good lock) in this area. Would I be liable for this as a user?

Also I can't imagine this would be profitable if there isn't a revolutionary change in theft-prevention. Perhaps it's the GPS component will help discourage thieves?

Maybe somebody could make a business out of bicycle parking.

Gps helps and then I think its mostly down to design. The lock has to be so integrated that breaking it leaves the bike unusable, and wheels, saddles etc has to be non-standard so no one could use or sell a wheel or other part from one of the bikes. Also the bikes have to be recognizable in geometry so that it's very obvious to any buyer if a re-painted stolen one is sold.

Stealing and stripping bikes has only 4 reasons 1) selling it 2) selling parts 3) transportation 4) vandalism.

Vandalism is almost impossible to prevent. The other 3 should be preventable by good (and well-known) design. For the bikes to be well known enough you need a large exposure. You can't have just e.g 1000 bikes in SF.

Why is crime so horrible in SF?

What do you mean? We don't have any criminals here, we only have "victims" who are undereducated and "rebalancing privilege" when they sell your $1,000 bike for $50 bucks so they can buy a handle.

Hypothetical pie-in-the-sky thinking (not saying anyone is doing anything this crazy today):

You park your bike and use your phone to "lock it".

Bike locks-in its GPS location. Any attempts to move it will trigger multiple wide-angle/fisheye cameras to start recording and streaming to your phone (also recorded).

Remotely, with your phone, you review the footage. At your command, the bike can call the police to report a theft in progress, and reports its location as quickly as possible in street address/intersection terms.

With another command, built-in loud-speaker also warns passersby that a theft is in progress. The pleasant voice also encourages them to provide additional video coverage of the thief, and (at the user's option) may promise a reward. If the theft is thwarted, then the bike-savoir is can be rewarded (paypal, bitcoin, whatever) by the bike owner, who has seen the whole thing happen on camera, and the bike can use bluetooth/p2p to verify the that the paypal/bitcoin recipient is indeed the person you just saw save your bike.

More fun: at your command, the bike can spray a thick mist of semi-permanent/eventually-washable paint around itself; the exact color shade of the paint spray would always be slightly different in every canister, so one could precisely tie a bike to its thief, if they were perchance apprehended before the getting out of their paint-soiled clothes.

Even more fun: Any/all of these features could also be configured to trigger without any user intervention. For example, if (while locked) the bike detects removal of parts like the seat, wheels, etc., I want it to call the police and emit the paint spray.

At that point, if the bikes were clearly marked as having such technology, and were not super-fancy carbon-fiber bikes but were basic, decent, rideable bikes, then you have what "the club" effect brings to cars -- it becomes obvious that they are not worth the effort, and thieving sticks to non-hardened bikes.

You then get a ratchet-effect, like in a neighborhood with some crime, as soon as one house gets bars on the windows, it won't be long before the whole block does. Get ready for GPS and these kinds of features in every bike. It could be fun, hopefully you can run Linux on these bikes :)

This is awesome. :)

This is all predicated on the fact that police and passersby care about a bike being stolen. My experience in San Francisco has shown this to not be true.

This is why my approach is multi-pronged. Even if no bystanders intervene, you still have to ask:

  * What kind of thief wants their theft to be video recorded?
  * What kind of thief wants a loudspeaker blaring to everyone about their thievery?
  * What kind of thief wants to risk getting covered in paint?

Even if the thief is really, really desperate, and doesn't care about these things, surely there are easier bikes to steal that don't entail this level of risk.

You must not live in San Francisco.

Bike 'chop shops' operate in the open, disassembling stolen bikes outside the many tents that line the streets in the Mission district. Here's a good article on the problem: http://archives.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/fighting-sfs-mob...

Thieves will use 'angle grinders' to cut bike locks in broad daylight, on busy streets. Here's an example video: https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/4fcy9y/sparks...

These bikes have an uphill battle before they will survive unmolested in San Francisco, particularly the SOMA/Mission area. I wish them luck!

I have lived in SF, and I have worked in SF for years, and I most recently had a bike stolen last year, in FiDi, in broad-daylight. I know what it's like.

Thieves are smart and opportunistic. They're less inclined to steal a bike if they know it is being tracked. SFPD in fact have used "bait bikes" on occasion.

Go ahead and keep your attitude of smug resignation, that's entirely your right. I refuse to believe that nothing can be done to combat this rampant problem!

I would venture to guess that once a few people are inadvertently sprayed by paint while walking to work in the morning, destroying the bikes in public will be applauded.

It is pretty silly to basically leave money laying on the ground with an alarm that calls police when someone takes it.

A better approach would be to have locks which open for the users. If the user does not lock up the bike and it is stolen, bam, they get hit with the $1500+ fee to replace the bike just like the existing bike sharing systems.

Locked bikes can still be stolen, but it is a giant leap ahead of just leaving them laying around.

This will make for good entertainment on windy days.

you forgot to mention that the would-be thief is electrocuted by the bike and a net shoots out of the bike and traps him until the police arrives :)

That's only in South Africa

That's what everyone said about Citibike, but they seem to be doing fine. The biggest problem was their poor IT system which they had to replace.

Yup, over the past few years, station-based bikeshares like Citibike have done a great job at showing the bikes as a public resource can work, and help develop biking into a legitimate commute option.

This is a tough comparison since, as far as I can tell, you park the bike anywhere. So there is no incentive like most city bike sharing systems to get it to a kiosk that acts as a big lock. I'm done with my ride, I get off, stop my ride on my phone, and walk away leaving the bike where it is...

While the bike is docked, you can still trash the bike. People aren't doing that though, which is what's surprising. (Occasionally some stickers turn up. But surprisingly infrequently.)

In the Bay, absolutely. Almost every bike we had locked in public places for Spokefly had parts stolen.

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