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Comment by an9n | Hacker News Reader

I live in NL a few years back, and when I asked a colleage about buying a bike he said: 'just go to central Amsterdam and wait for one of the [slang word for tracksuited petty thief I can't remember] to speak to you. They'll ask you what you want, even what colour, and bring something back within 15 minutes for €50 (or whatever)'.

A downside of everyone cycling there is that bike theft is absolutely rife.

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Yeah it's very common to hear "wanna buy this bike? It's yours for 10 our".. at a night out, in basically every city.

Heck, I know a homeless guy I talked to a couple of times and helped out with food and stuff, I know him by name. A couple months later I met him drugged of his ass on the Main Street, offering me a bike I'm like "nahh dude come on"

My pretty expensive bike got stolen at some point too :(

You kind of get used to it? My bikes were always secondhand though, so even if one disappeared I’d be out €20 or so.

Car theft is more common where cars are more common

Well tbh I would never leave a bike locked up in any kind of busy public place in the UK and expect it to be there when I got back either. But otoh I don't think bike theft has been turned into quite such a readily available service here!

I actually witnessed someone stealing a bike in the UK, followed them home and phoned the police. Guess what happened next - yes exactly, nothing.

I saw someone stealing a bike in Oxford once. There were two policemen just 50 yards away. They did eventually come over to find out why I was shouting at the guy to stop stealing the bike.

Punish the law-abiding - a pretty well known and used policy in the UK (sadly).

I've never lived somewhere where cars weren't the most common method of transportation and I've only heard about bikes being stolen. Probably because it's just so much harder to steal a car whereas you can feasibly just carry a bicycle on your back.

That's why it's bad to rely on anecdotes. Car theft is up in 2019 and 2020 in the US https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-auto-the...

There used to be a lot of casual car theft in the UK. Teenagers would steal the car and go off joyriding.

That has largely stopped as the cars have become more secure.

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