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Comment by tjoff | Hacker News Reader

The problem of thieves is such a downer though. Against all kinds of bikes, really takes both the joy and the utility out of it. Same with owning a scooter and similar vehicles.

And even if you have good and safe parking at home and at the office (great!), which will cover the vast majority of trips it still limits the usefulness of a vehicle to be so tied up.

Yes, there are solutions/mitigations/compromises. But expensive and heavy locks suck and the ever present thought in your head planning a good parking spot etc. kills the joy of it.

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I feel that one for sure. I live in San Francisco and was a dedicated cyclist. I had 6 bikes stolen in my first years here. But I was stubborn, got cannier, and kept the 7th long enough for it to look scruffy. Which let me keep it for years. But then it got stolen while locked up behind a 12-foot fence and something went out of me. I just gave up.

I still make occasional trips on the Lyft bikes, which are fine. And I've been thinking about getting another bike. But especially with e-bikes, which are much more expensive and therefore much better theft targets, I just can't sign myself up for years of fretting about theft.

I haven't tried but I'm curious about them: would a foldable (e)bike do it for you? You just don't leave it outside at all!

I've been eyeing the Bromptons but without a commute it's harder for me to justify the cost.

Yeah, if I had a commute, I'd think about a foldable, although I struggle with the look. But a big use case for a bike for me is recreational distance riding, which is sounds like they're not great at.

I had a foldable e-bike for two months (was great) in SF before it was stolen. Someone saw me ride up to my house and enter the basement entrance where I kept it locked to a pole in a utility closet. Later on, they grabbed a food delivery bag, told another tenant they were making a delivery, got buzzed into the building, and stole the bike. They didn't get either battery, but I haven't bought a bike since.

Very sorry to hear this, but I appreciate the tale as a warning.

> You just don't leave it outside at all!

How practical is this really? You bring your folding bike into the restaurant where you're eating, into the bar where you're meeting friends, into the gym (it doesn't fit into a locker), into the little corner store with narrow aisles, etc? I feel like taking the folding bike indoors can work for a commute if your office doesn't have dedicated safe bike storage, but I think it falls apart as an overall response to "I'm inhibited from using my bike as my primary transportation b/c it is an easy target of theft"

A Brompton is really small when folded. Smaller than a carry-on suitcase by volume. It rolls on little scooter wheels on the rear rack when folded. I bring mine into all the places you just listed on a regular basis, except for a gym. For a restaurant, it typically will fit under a table. At a bar, if you are at a table the previous thing works. I've also had the bar staff offer to stash it inside the store room. If someone you are meeting up with is DD'ing a trunk works as well. I've never been in a store so small I couldn't roll it in, you can just pull the seat up a bit and roll it in front of you.

This is one of the most insane things I've ever read.

Is there a model made where the motor, battery and electronics are all easily detachable?

In theory it wouldn't be too hard to take the battery, controller, and a front wheel with hub motor. But I think in practice even the extra few minutes to unplug, remove and reinstall, not to mention carrying all this stuff, would raise the friction to the point where it would be quite a chore.

Maybe get a folder bike?

did u ever put an airtag on it?

This was all before AirTags. But thieves are canny, so I'd expect them to be very good by now at finding and removing AirTags.

Supposing I did have one, though, what do you imagine me doing? If I know where a criminal gang has taken my bike, help me understand what you see as the next step.

Dunno if it would work in SF but in London I have an old rusty bike, left outside with a D lock and not many problems - there are always more saleable looking bikes if the thieves are at it.

I think it depends on the kind of thief. The last one I had stolen was indeed a battered-looking thing with low resale value. But I'm pretty sure it was stolen by some low-end criminals who were not very bright or effective.

Having stuff stolen sucks, but with bikes I try to think of it as just a transportation cost. A year's worth of transit passes in my city will run me $1200, so if I buy a $1200 bike and it lasts me a year before it gets stolen, I'm breaking even.

I've had 6 bikes stolen in a quarter century of commuting, but I've saved about $17k over what it would have cost me to use public transit for the same period. More importantly: cycling is enjoyable, I look forward to my morning commute on a bike. Not so much with other transport options.

Unfortunately, I'm not particularly money motivated. What went out of me wasn't a will to spend. It was will to deal relentlessly with all the nonsense.

I have insurance with a tracker. It costs about 10 Euro per month. If the bike is stolen, they first try to find it with the tracker. Bikes with trackers are usually put temporarily in public space close to where it's stolen during a cool-off period to check if the tracker is still operational/followed. Usually the insurance will just recover the bike from this cool-off spot. If the insurance company cannot find the bike through the tracker, they'll buy you a new bike.

Besides that, the rule is to always make your bike the least attractive to steal. Use two locks eg. a ring lock through the rear wheel and a chain lock through the front wheel, frame, and attached to something stationary (so they can't through the bike in a van and break the locks later). In general it's also good to put it in places where someone would notice if anyone tries to steal the bike, but not so busy that no one would notice and feels responsibility. Bonus points (remember the 'least attractive' rule), put it in some place where there are bikes that are much easier to steal (eg. not attached to a fixed object).

But expensive and heavy locks suck and the ever present thought in your head planning a good parking spot etc. kills the joy of it.

It's also a cultural/facilities thing. Eg. in The Netherlands many cities have bike parking with supervision and nobody minds if you attach your bike to eg. a lamp post. And most cities have plenty of lamp posts, so no real planning necessary :).

I haven't seen such insurance, looks favorable. Bikes here are pretty much uninsurable (my opinion) and while I happily get a tracker I have zero hope of it being useful.

If you don't want a crappy bike you are going to stand out, guaranteed, and double locks won't deter.

Lamp posts is exactly what I had in mind, you can only have one to two bikes per lamp post. So depending on your destination you have your goto and a few backups ready planned.

Yes, double locks and a lamp-post in a public place will probably be good enough during the day, it is still such a hassle.

That kind of insurance is easy to get here in The Netherlands, of course it may be more difficult elsewhere. Eg.:

https://www.anwb.nl/verzekeringen/fietsverzekering

Where is “here” for you? I’m a wa state resident and have rental insurance cover bikes no problem

I had a coworker have his bike stolen on 5th Ave in New York City while thoroughly chained and U-locked to scaffolding at 9am with hundreds of pedestrian passersby in the time it took him to go up the passenger elevator and down the freight elevator.

Portable angle grinders and certain kinds of jacks. A nail clipper with a bic lighter can get through a cable in less than a minute.

Nowadays if you’re willing to spend $300 dollars on a Hiplok D3000 or Litelok x3, you can have a lock that takes 10 minutes to cut with an angle grinder.

So that’s progress at least.

Murphy's law for bicycles: All bikes weigh 35 pounds, because the lighter the bike, the heavier the lock needed to secure it.

This rule doesn't work for ebikes that can weigh 70 pounds unloaded.

If you’re riding a bike you’ve actually weighed, the bike should be in your sight or locked up at home. If you’re leaving it locked up in public, that should be a different, far less valuable bike.

Oddly enough I'm the rare exception. I weighed my bike (21 pounds, hardly a lightweight), but it's thrown together from old parts, and hopefully not a theft magnet. But also, I'm conscious of the actual level of bike theft in my locale, and am not particularly worried about it. I can always park it next to a nicer bike with a less secure lock.

Although love of the new is gaining territory here too, let me share some once universally accepted Dutch advice: thou shalt ride an old clunker worth no more than the lock you secure it with.

There are many downers actually, none of which mentioned in that poem. People opening car doors right in front of you. Oil patches on roads. Dogs. Heat strokes. Inhaling all the nastiness that a car somewhat protects you against. But in countryside I imagine it could be very nice. Pity I never lived in countryside and never going to be.

Having rode motorcycles and an ebike scooter in the past, both of these have an integrated lock for the handle bars. This means a thief can't just cut the lock and roll the bike away because the handle bars are locked at an angle. The thief then has a choice of carrying the bike, breaking the handle bar lock, or awkwardly picking up the front tire and dragging it. All of which takes time and is obvious to on lookers and in the case of breaking the lock then the bicycle frame is now worthless.

I would like to see more ebikes include an integrated handlebar locks in their ebikes. Cheap and effective.

When my bike was stolen, they drove up with a large van, threw a bunch of bikes in the back, and drove away. A handlebar lock wouldn't do much here unfortunately.

Just put your bike on your renters or homeowners insurance. Mine is covered for theft with zero deductible.

If your bike is stolen and you actually make a claim, does that make your homeowners insurance more expensive going forward?

On that same vein, is there a limit of how many times you can make a claim on stolen bikes?

Not in my experience. Premiums only go up when I add more things covered e.g. specifically by zero deductible vs the general deductibles.

Have you tried a U-lock?

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