Most people don't bother physically locking their regular city bikes to anything (only using a ring lock on the bike itself), primarily cheap beater bikes but also there's a guy in my street with a €2000 Van Moof e-bike that I think is just leaning against his front wall.
Granted some of this is because of a culture of more expensive bikes but still if you used a beater bike it wouldnt be safe either
Cambridge too, which I think is interesting because it's otherwise often compared to NL et al. for density, relative friendliness, prevalence of attached buggies & wheelbarrows, etc.
No. You absolutely need to get a theft insurance for your bicycle.
All bicycles parked outside can be stolen. Any "security" measures you may take just tip the risk-reward calculation of the bicycle thief in your favour, and against the folk parked next to you who didn't know better.
Though at the premium required for that, I suspect locks would be cheaper.
Do you get to claim theft insurance on your house or car if you left it unlocked?
The "lock against a solid" requirement in Germany is unreasonable to fishy. Can one really prove or disprove that?
"Ah hahaha oh wait you're serious. Ok that will be £1k per month."
If you have no idea about who the bicycle is registered to then the police will likely make further investigations.
Of course it's a tiny ring lock. It's to stop unmotivated people and also people just taking the wrong bike. But works well enough.
Probably not 100% but "no one locks their bike" is incorrect.
No doubt many flaws with that, I don't know if it helped. But I got a sticker.
(3M home town... they are good at sticking things together.)
Even if your bike cannot be recovered, Van Moof gives you another one [0].
[1] also tells that the bike locks automatically when you open the kick-stand, and unlocks when you're around.
I thought about buying one but figured it was a bit much money for something I didn’t particularly need and would be fairly vulnerable to getting nicked, even with the security features. And I think the Bike Hunters thing where they retrieve a stolen bike for you is only for up to 3 years now, which is not really great, since you want to own the bike for much longer at that price.
I disable the Bluetooth proximity unlock - I often lock and leave it when I’m staying nearby (outsiding seating at a pub, for example) and I don’t trust that it’ll stay locked if I’m still within a relatively close distance.
Swapfiets rental bikes have become popular in Berlin. They have a frame lock with an integrated chain. But even if you don't use the chain, what exactly is the theft scenario? The bikes are rather heavy—which I guess is intentional. Someone highly motivated could lift the bike into a van, drive home, and then worry about cutting off the lock. It just seems a bit far-fetched.
[0]: It was an ABUS like this: https://i.imgur.com/ytfVtex.jpeg
>Swapfiets rental bikes have become popular in Berlin Same here in NL where they originated, in many cities a good 1/3rd if all the bikes you see (and that’s a lot of bikes) are a Swapfiets. Not too expensive, reliable, and less likely to get stolen than an average bike (good luck selling a Swapfiets inside NL, whereas other stolen bikes are much easier to offload for a few euros to drunk people late at night)
Your guy was probably being very careful not to damage your bike. With the right tool, even top-quality locks with hardened boron-carbide shackles can be cut in seconds: https://youtu.be/cbYVmRNzGLc?t=368
> Someone highly motivated could lift the bike into a van, drive home, and then worry about cutting off the lock. It just seems a bit far-fetched.
One mode of bike theft in the UK is: A white van pulls up to the university/train station cycle racks, men with bolt cutters grab as many as they can in 3 minutes or so, then drive off.
As they're going for volume rather than quality, the bikes with the worst locks are the first to go.
Still, I'm glad that most places have proper Sheffield stands at most one block away here.
The other factor, though, is that standard Dutch city bikes are not designed to be easily dismantled. If you have quick release wheels, you want to be able to lock the front wheel as well as the frame (and ideally also the rear wheel).