Belgium hopes to combat bike theft with national register | Hacker News Reader

Belgium hopes to combat bike theft with national register

belganewsagency.eu

17 pointsgeox43 comments

Some remarks, as I live here

* Belgium used to have a bike tax, with license plates. I think it was abolished in 1991 when it was clear that the cost was higher than what it was making.

* The current engraving system engraved your national ID number in your bike, making it hard to sell your bike and causing privacy problems. The register would fix it

* A lot of bikes are stolen for 1 ride, then left behind, mostly in one of the big parking lots at e.g. the railway station. The current registration is mainly usefull when big bike parkings get their yearly cleaning: Found bikes with a registration are returned to the owner. Of course, different cities do hugely different amounts of work, varying from none to a lot.

Seeing how there are bikes that cost as much as a used car, I think is a good move. Even for bikes that cost 500 euros or more. Here in Berlin if your bike looks more expensive than 300 euros, is gone if you don't have a super good lock, and even then.

Biking smarts in Berlin is a combo of having a grungy-looking bike and simply not going by bike to certain places such as busy squares and main stations.

Yeah, I have friends who painted new bikes with horrible paint so that it looks used/old.

Even better, cover the bike on sticks and paint over them with painfully eyesore paint

Funny how not enforced laws push to more laws.

How do you suggest they enforce the existing law?

Non violent theft and most violent thefts aren't even investigated, that's probably what they meant. They're illegal and punished but the sheer amount of them mean the law is ignored in most cases

By actually investigating thefts. Me and my friends had several bikes stolen in a Belgian train station's bike park and police do not check cameras, even if you can timebox the theft within 3 hours. "No resources to investigate".

I mean, they really don't have resources. You need to significantly expand the police force (and spending) if you want this of thing.

And arguably, maybe that's not worth it? Or maybe it is. Either way, this is really a political problem, not a problem with the police.

You're right, I'd rather have them hiring dedicated detectives on this to enforce existing laws than making new laws and state infrastructure. Of course this is a political discussion.

Honeypots; sting operations.

Almost all crime is committed by an incredibly small number of people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/nyregion/shoplifting-arre...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3969807/

I would imagine that would be illegal in Belgium.

The police knows who they are, there is a decent size organization for stealing, stocking and reselling bikes but they won't do anything. Same thing for the drugs, but the Belgian way is to say it's someone else's problem and take it easy.

One of the main benefits of having an electric assist bike is that if you take the battery off with you it is most likely not worth stealing.

Some bikes even let you remove the little display that attaches to your handle bar, a replacement one for my bycicle was around 80 euros. When I park it out in "safe" areas during the day I take only that off.

I rode a bicycle everywhere for about 14 years. It was a 21-speed MTB.

I registered it with the city and they issued a sticker with a unique number.

I used two locks: a cable lock and a U-lock.

Furthermore, the bicycle had quick-release for both the front wheel and the seat. So what I usually did is secure the front wheel to the rest of bike and/or the stand, secure the rear wheel to the stand, and then I released the seat to bring it along with me.

I suppose that carrying the seat around made me look menacing, because it would be a good blunt weapon in a fight, which never happened. I imagine that thieves were deterred by not being able to ride off with a seat attached.

Someone did manage to steal only the seat once, which was only a minor annoyance.

When I was done using the bicycle, I wanted to give it to a friend. I'm not sure he really wanted it, but I wrote a letter of transfer so it would be known that the registered bicycle was legally handed over. By that time, the city had changed their registration procedures anyway, probably to an electronic method.

Bikes in Belgium (Flanders) for years already have a free engraving and registration service. If your bike is found after a theft you get a message from the police you can pick it up.

Talk to a policeman in Flanders or Ned about your bike being stolen hear their silent laugh as they suggest you fill out copious amount of paperwork for your insurance.

Modern carbon fiber bike frames can't really be engraved. They generally do have a metal serial number plate attached somewhere.

Did anybody said "tax" here? Did you think your electric rolling things would be riding for free on the road forever? Next, mandatory insurance and riding license.

Naive society...

ctrl-f "electric" 0 results

at this rate it is coming for sure!

That seems to be an unrelated discussion. There is no discussion whatsoever that bicycles would be taxed in Belgium. Bicycles have been in use for more than a hundred years at this point and no one suggests taxing them.

There is a clear cut off to distinguish bicycles (and wheelchairs, etc) from other vehicles. Any "pedal assist" that stops assisting when the bike reaches 25km/h is a bicycle, tax free and insurance is optional. The bikes with stronger motors going beyond this or that drive without pedaling need already for many years a license plate and insurance. Not sure it's universal but very common in Europea, probably based on some EU standard document.

Note also that already now everyone's taxes pay for all roads from motorway to bicycle bridge and sidewalk. The income from road taxes for cars and other motor vehicles is tiny compared to the infrastructure costs involved.

>Next, mandatory insurance and riding license.

Excellent, my body is ready for this. Don't forget mandatory riding lessons as well so cyclists learn to walk their bicycle over the zebra stripes instead of zooming across in front of oncoming traffic.

They have this in Japan. I don’t know if they still do it, but police in Tokyo would stop any foreign looking bicycle rider and check human and bicycle ID

In France, it is now mandatory to have an unique identification number engraved for all new bicycles sold.

Officially it is to fight thefts. Unofficially it is just the surveillance society expanding little by little.

For example, wait a few years and they might use that to fine you if your bicycle is not attached in an official bicycle parking place.

Come on. I know the French are anti-system ungovernable people and I appreciate that, but it's an engraved S/N, not a RFID or any tracking device. No need to get paranoid about it. You could easily obfuscate it with power tools if you're comcerned.

Ok, maybe my message is not 100% clear. It is not only that manufacturer have to provide it but that it will mandatory to have a serial number on your bicycle even if we are still in the transition cycle.

So, it is illegal to use a bicycle that does not have it's licence plate...

Wow. Is this some new Macron or Elizabeth Bourne kind of law? Where do they put the licence plate? Any link, even in Fremch is appreciated.

It does not need to be like the plate of the car but still a similar logic.

More details here: https://road.cc/content/news/250271-updated-frances-transpor...

  The proposed law also provides that the bike’s registration number must appear in a “legible, irremovable and tamper-proof manner, in a locatable and visible place without manipulation of the bicycle.”

  It will be the owner’s responsibility to ensure the law is complied with, and no obligation will be placed on manufacturers to satisfy its requirements.

I wonder who's stealing the bikes? Maybe that's worth looking into, see if there are any patterns?

As another commentor said, this is a trojan horse. Next up is licensure and absurd taxation, while the theft rate stays the same.

Nobody should have to fking pay to ride a damn bike.

My bike has a different fork, saddle, cassette, cranks, ring, chain, and bars. It's laughable to consider "registering" it. What do I register, the frame serial number? Even that has been repaired...

If you want to prevent bike theft you need to get serious about criminalizing and prosecuting petty theft, but that would probably mean you need your police to actually solving crime... rather than writing tickets for stupid crap like speeding/parking tickets. Unfortunately the first does not generate revenue, but the second does.

>Nobody should have to fking pay to ride a damn bike.

Why not? If you use the road you should pay at least some road tax. Bikes should have license plates to better identify traffic violators as well.

because it's a bike.

Thanks, that explains so much.

Bikes are responsible for roughly none of the wear to the road.

If you use the fourth power law to calculate road stress, a typical car is on the order of five orders of magnitude more damaging to roads than a typical bicycle.

There's no way to sensibly scale this to licensing costs - if, like in my jurisdiction, car registration is ~$100/yr, proportional cost for a bike would be on the order of a tenth of a cent per year - and that's before you take into account all the other negative externalities of cars that bikes don't have.

I drive much more than I bike, but I'd happily pay increased car tax to actively subsidize bike users and to get more cars off the road.

> Bikes are responsible for roughly none of the wear to the road.

> If you use the fourth power law to calculate road stress, a typical car is on the order of five orders of magnitude more damaging to roads than a typical bicycle.

By this logic, shouldn't cars not have to pay anything either, since they're responsible for roughly none of the wear compared to semis?

Wear to the road isn't the only consideration. If there's no separate bicycle path, they take up space on the road and slow down traffic. Cyclists should pay for the privilege of sharing the road with more efficient vehicles.

Motorists should pay for the priviledge of pousoning the air. The taxes should go towards bike commuting incentives, including infrastructure.

We already pay our emissions tax in Germany.

Of course, we pay as well. It's in the fuel. And in the vehicle tax. But did you ever ask yourself where those taxes go to? I'd rather they went into sustainable transportation, for instance the new 45€ train ticket as opposed to the bureaucrats' salaries.

It’s not the cyclist’s fault there is so separate bicycle path though.

Moreover, cyclists don’t cause congestion; motorists do. The congestion + noise + safety issues mean motorists are causing orders of magnitudes more negative externalities than any other transportation methods.

Because the road is in the way of the biker in the first place.

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