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Comment by Jerry2 | Hacker News Reader

Hmm... be careful not to use that locking feature when 'locking' it to a regular sign post. When I lived in NYC, my roommate's bike was stolen when a thief just removed bolts holding the sign and then he just lifted the whole bicycle and the lock over the post. He then bolted the sign back on. We saw the surveillance video from a neighbor's surveillance camera and the whole thing took under 3 minutes. We initially assumed the lock was defeated but this was a much more ingenious way.

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> He then bolted the sign back on.

Amazingly good citizen; if you can just look past the bike stealing behavior.

On the other hand, it might just be looked at as resetting the trap for next time.

Next move in the arms race: Quick-release sign bolts.

The punishment and civil liability for removing a traffic control sign is probably a lot greater than stealing a bike.

In some jurisdictions there is a statutory value of a road sign higher than the actual cost to replace it. It's usually enough to make stealing the sign a serious misdemeanor or minor felony.

As it should be. A missing stop sign can get someone killed.

Only someone who assumes they have the right-of-way through an intersection when they don't see a sign, and can just blow through without looking if anything is coming.

Even in stop-sign-happy North America there aren't stop signs everywhere there could be stop signs; every licensed driver must know what to do at an uncontrolled intersection.

> Only someone who assumes they have the right-of-way through an intersection when they don't see a sign

They deserve to live too.

And if they make a mistake, there could be other people involved in the accident.

So do people who mistakenly blow through a stop sign or make any other potentially fatal mistake.

I regret to say that I don't see the point of this remark.

As a licensed driver you're required to know what to do when approaching an unguarded intersection where you clearly do not have right-of-way, and not interpret the lack of a stop sign as a green light.

Some countries have a more finely developed concept of right of way than the USA and Canada. They have signs which indicates right-of-way paths through intersections via map-like diagrams. Also, signs which indicate a change in right-of-way status of the current road.

Removing a sign which negates a road's right-of-way status will likely cause an accident.

I agree it's a serious issue that should be taken seriously. The statutory value approach is one of many possible ways to address it, though. It leans on other laws for theft, larceny, vandalism, or destruction of property with a fictional sum rather than just making the theft or destruction its own offense. I'm not aware of places that take both approaches, but those may exist. Prosecutors do like having options, including bringing multiple charges for the same act.

I have learned that it is called a "sucker pole" in New York.

I believe you may still have a useless bike in the case of this design.

Depends on how pickable the lock is at that point.

You mean if it doesn't get stolen?

Stolen bikes frequently get tossed onto a truck full of bikes. Even if the frame is a goner, it'll scrap. The rest of the components can be resold / used to patch up another bike.

In Barcelona many "stolen" bikes are actually the council taking them because you are not allowed to park bikes against sign posts. You can get them back. Unless you have one of these bikes. Pity the folk that loose their keys. Some times a crap lock is useful as a deterrent but you don't want to make it hard to get your own bike unlocked by people authorised to do so, including yourself. Cool idea t'ho if your only problem is lazy thieves riding off with your bike.

This post is one of a long line of my "more security is not _necessarily_ better security" posts.

Nothing is impossible to steal; you just want to make it harder.

Unfortunately the rate of bike theft is so high that even with the best locks, if its left in view of the public, its going to be stolen.

In view of the public is substantially better than out of sight to avoid theft.

I've had thieves steal components off my bike in broad daylight on a busy street. I think it's best to park your bike in a place where there's not a lot of foot traffic.

My experience is that locking your bicycle publicly can be good for you – while locking your bike in an unexposed place can be bad.

The best place is one:

* which is not visible from the street

* still has some public traffic (aka "someone could exit the building at any time")

* the bikes next to yours are worse protected than yours

I am faring quite well with this strategy for 10 years now and haven't had a single bike stolen from me despite using the bike as my main mode of transportation. In the same time my collegues had theirs stolen roughly every 2 years.

The worst place is one:

* which people pass by alone

* which is still somewhat visible from the street

* where your bike is the only one there

That's exactly it, most locks (bike or otherwise) are to reduce thefts of opportunity, or to otherwise discourage things. Bike chains and locks and the like can be clipped within seconds with the right tool (you can even get battery-operated hydraulic clippers these days, see e.g. [0]).

But if it's noisy or visible, it's discouraging.

Anyway, instead of paying a premium for a bizarre frame contraption, buy a cheaper bike with enough lock to discourage a quick snatch. It won't be worth the effort to steal on the one hand, and it'll be cheap to replace on the other.

If you get an expensive bike instead, get theft insurance and make sure there will be visible evidence of theft if it gets stolen (e.g. clipped chains or whatever).

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMz89XjRXj0

All bikes+locks weigh the same. The cheaper the bike, the cheaper the lock. So as bike value goes up, the lock securing it gets heavier, therefore:

Bike+lock=constant

I once asked a construction worker (with the help of my former boss who worked in a supermarket and vouched for me) to help me cut open a friend’s bike (she went on a school trip, the day before the key broke in the lock, so she asked me to take care of it so no one can steal it). He used a gas powered angle grinder to cut it open. No one even seemed to look in our direction in the middle of the day in the city center.

My five-year-old once managed to change the code on my bike lock while I was locking it, without me noticing before I scrambled it. Couldn't get it open after many guesses. We were outside a supermarket, so I went inside and bought a hammer, and smashed the lock to bits. Nobody even looked at me twice.

Yeah but you can get away with pretty much anything in a construction safety vest. [0]

0. https://youtu.be/GyvRamX1VyA

I would be wary of insurances that require visual proof since that’s really never guaranteed.

The insurance my friend got only needed proof that he purchased a sufficient lock, which they do tell you beforehand, so you can just keep the bill as proof. Also, they need the police report. He got his money quickly. (This happened in Germany.)

He even had one of those fancy GPS tracking looks-just-like-a-normal-tail-light. Neither the police nor the insurance cared and since he didn’t want to confront the thief (or more likely the buyer) all on his own when he got a signal a couple of weeks later he just dropped it …

even better if it's less desirable and harder to steal THAN another bike nearby.

Why would the thief bolt the sign back on after freeing the bike?

To ensure that the thief's future suppliers would continue to leave their product attached to the pole?

I suspect removing safety signs may be seen more gravely than theft of personal property. Putting the sign back means you committed one crime rather than two.

Yeah for real, the city might actually try to do something about someone removing signs. Not even joking.

In my experience, they don’t. But it was just a street-name indicating sign that was removed to make way for a sidewalk cut, tossed aside and never re-mounted. Eventually some scrapper took it I bet.

Because a predator doesn't spoil the trap.

Isn't that also generally illegal? That is, kicking a bike to a sign post.

It's extremely common in NYC. If it's illegal, it's never enforced.

Stealing bikes is illegal too, but it's never enforced either!

is there a lock that can prevent this method of theft?

You mean a lock that holds on to an open ended steel stick of random thickness?

It could be a nice engineering/design challenge

yes, exactly. my point is, that this problem is not specific to the unusual lock described in the article, but is really an issue with any lock and therefore not really relevant.

You could use an Earth lock. They securely fasten your bike to the ground using a focused graviton beam. Works anywhere on earth, but requires a beefy frame.

that's what i am using now, if a dutch bike qualifies. plus a lock through the wheels to prevent the application of kinetic energy by causing a high amount of friction.

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