A Dragnet for Pee-Wee | Hacker News Reader

A Dragnet for Pee-Wee

blog.priceonomics.com

168 pointsrohin54 comments

Looks like HN is cranky this morning.

I like it! A bike used to be my primary means of transportation back in the Bay Area, and I used to pay for good ones. Every single one of them got stolen. Every one. The last one I owned had a state-of-the-art lock on it, so the thieves cut the bike rack. People that don't rely on a bike seriously underestimate what it means to a bike owner when their bike is stolen; to a lot of people, it's just, "oh, you lost your toy, just go buy another one". To many bike owners, it's more like, "I just lost the ability to get around quickly."

The number one reason I don't own a bike right now is because I don't feel like putting up with it being stolen.

So this is one of those really big under-served pain points that everybody keeps saying you should look for when building a business.

priceonomics' approach makes perfect sense: make it easier to locate stolen bikes online, and build a new, centralized marketplace specifically for bikes that people will want to use (which also makes it harder for thieves to sell bikes online without the owner finding it).

Good job, guys.

I had a bike in the bay area too, and in broad daylight someone cut the lock as it was parked on Sansome. I put together a PHP script to scrape craigslist for "white" or "Giant" bicycle ads with images, but after two and a half months I stopped checking and moved on :(

If this service connects just one bike owner with their stolen bicycle then it's worth it, imo.

a lot of times bike thieves paint the bikes

Have you ever tried putting a GPS in your bike?

http://www.gizmag.com/spybike-gps-tracker/22999/

Neat! Back when I was riding, those didn't exist. I would probably get one now though, so thanks for sharing.

Or just buying a cheaper bike on the assumption that you'll need to get a new one sooner or later?

I don't know how it is in "nicer" climates, but where I am, my commuter bike has gradually accumulated various things:

- taillight which I don't bother to remove

- expensive headlight which I do remove when parked (but I leave the mounting bracket)

- pedal straps (a must, in my opinion, for safe riding in traffic; feet slipping off pedals can mean a crash)

- thorn resistant tires

- stronger wheel (I'm above-average height and not fat, but the cheapo wheels kept getting bent)

- fenders to reduce splashing in the rain

- rack to hold saddle bag

The bike itself is rather old and worth less than $100. All the accessories add up to maybe another $400. So, I do have a cheap bike, but it's still not so cheap to replace, and doing so is a rather big time commitment.

I mount head and tail lights on a helmet so I don't have to care about that part. You can also put lights on your bags too. The lights are often the most expensive part.

For stronger wheels & tires, I'd just get a thicker tire bike. For a strong frame I just go with cromoly. You don't need anything special then as far as strength goes. The rack, fenders and strap can be had for $50 total after all of that.

Cheaper bike is not the solution. I rode on a bike worth 50 pounds for two years. Replaced the rear tyre after a puncture with a 15 quid replacement and it was stolen the very next day. From outside the British transport police station at Victoria

    [...] I used to pay for good ones.
    Every single one of them got stolen.

When I didn't work from home, I biked to work. None of my bikes were stolen. But they were folding bikes that I carried indoors. ;-)

I'm not sure it's fair to say that every bike sold on Craigslist is stolen, which is pretty much what their "stolen bike finder" tool suggests.

To then offer a classifieds tool seems a bit off... especially since there's nothing to say that stolen bikes are not being sold their either other than their word. But then, Craigslist would surely say that they don't support selling stolen goods either.

Mostly, as someone who runs one of the largest bike forums in the world, I'm unimpressed.

But as I don't like commenting negatively without at least thinking how I'd possibly do it better.

Provenance.

I would love to see something like http://velospace.org/node that provides profiles of bikes, but with the capability of registering the components too.

Such that it becomes a database of bikes over time, you'd see what bits you changed when, etc.

If your bike gets stolen then you have a record that it was yours, and you mark it as stolen and it auto-alerts the police as well as auto-searching classifieds sites. And you'd have a record of anything you changed that helps identify it.

If you sell your bike, you assign the bike to the new owner, and the bike now shows who currently owns it as well as who used to own it... the bike gets provenance. A nice history of what it looked like when, and how owns it now.

With a bicycle provenance database you combine the best of buying a bike, owning a bike and selling a bike... whilst at the same time making it very easy for people to find the bike online if it gets stolen, and very easy to find it if it gets sold online. You have the ability to prove it was yours.

So what I'd like to see are sites like velospace expand into managing the provenance of bikes and for that to be used as a major deterrent to bike theft.

The "Stolen Bike Finder" doesn't list all stolen bikes, it lists all bikes for sale on online marketplaces everywhere. They're not all stolen.

If, however, your bike is stolen, you can use that tool to search for your bike among all the legitimate listings from every Craigslist and eBay.

RackLove is different from Craigslist and eBay because you are encouraged to post a story about your bike, and presumably the site owners will quickly respond to any complains about bikes with poor listings that may be stolen.

We considered the "registry" angle but decided against it since it only works if everyone uses it. We wanted to build a tool that could be useful without needing any network effects to kick in.

Sure, but registries don't have to just be focused on "find once stolen". Who wants to fill that in?

Velospace is a great example of a registry based on people loving their bike and wanting to share it. People use it even without the trace functionality. It didn't need to overcome any network effects, people love posting pictures of their bike online and talking about it only second to posting pictures of cats.

What I'm saying is:

Build something that has such a great utility without your bike being stolen, such that if that unfortunate event occurs you already have a record of the provenance constructed.

If someone builds that, then I will email my 22,000 London cycling contacts and tell them to put their details in. And then I will post on my forum, and then I will email other forum admins (and I know a fair few personally) and say... this is awesome, tell your users too.

And people will do it, because they love posting readers wives pictures of their bikes online and would love to do so yet again and talk about it.

And with all of the avid cyclists reached pretty quickly, the utility cyclists would follow naturally as more blogs, forums and magazines say, "use this awesome registry to keep your bike safe".

Seriously, I'd champion it. I might even build it... #4 on my list of startups to make if Microcosm fails.

I'm impressed by your transition from the blog post to doing this site, and hopeful that a site like this one will finally take hold. Good luck!

Likewise. Seems like a smart use of the pricenomics search/algorithm engine.

thanks :)

I don't understand what they are actually doing to prevent the sale of stolen bikes through their site? I don't see anything on the bike listing or stolen bike search pages that would help with this.

Primarily community driven to raise red flags about stolen bikes. That said, it's pretty easy to look at an advertisement for a bike and know if the seller actually knows anything about it.

2 ideas: 1. stolen bike finder button should stand out a bit more. maybe in red (btn-danger) 2. Dont have a stolen bike but is there a way to flag listings so that other browsers know they are browsing a stolen bike. Might auth with a social network and require a couple friends to flag it as well (so individuals dont do it maliciously). But would massively improve your data and would help the community self police.

How would people identify stolen bikes that are not their own?

My thought was - recruit your friends to flag it with you. When things get stolen you normally tell your friends, who tend to be sympathetic. Better than no flagging, though I admit this can be gamed quite easily of not policed well (one set of users flagging several bikes could be of concern for example)

I've seen suspicious craigslist ads in the past.

Many bikes photographed in the same spot. Poor-quality photographs (blurry, etc.) that make it difficult to pick out distinguishing marks. Very little detail about the bike's components.

None of these are proof of a stolen bike, but each is a useful flag, an indicator that the ad is worth further scrutiny, and flagging could help people looking for their bike.

Hmmm, now that you mention it, that'd make a great crowdsourced feature for CL or LoveRack... a flag button for "looks stolen."

They basically made a "craigslist:all" search engine for bikes. This helps you find your bike if someone is trying to sell it on craigslist in another city.

Then, they wrote a blog article filled with hyperbole about business theory, angry NPR readers, Pee Wee Herman, and photos of flying sparks.

One of the great frustrations of bike theft is that we know almost nothing about it. Auto insurers have an obvious incentive to research auto theft, which has led to numerous innovations in theft prevention. Things like locking wheel nuts, radio coding and immobilisers have hugely reduced automotive theft. With no such interested body in cycling, any efforts to reduce cycle theft are just guesswork.

We have absolutely no idea whether chains are better than D-locks. We don't know which kinds of bicycle are most likely to be stolen. We don't know what the most common methods of lock removal are. We don't know if any of the tracking products actually provide a deterrent or facilitate recovery. It's practically impossible to give good advice beyond the most basic aspects of using a good quality lock and parking in a busy area.

If anyone can think of a good approach to gathering this data then please let me know - I believe it's the biggest single solvable problem in cycling development.

With a little time and a little money it wouldn't be hard to get answers straight from bike thieves themselves. Give me a day and £200 and I don't think I'd have a problem getting taken along watching bikes being stolen while being talked through it all.

Let's say a bike would normally last you ten years, but it gets stolen every two. Each time you buy a new one. Therefore, there are now five as many bikes as needed. But then, why isn't the market saturated? How can it sustain such a high churn rate? It seems to me that bike thieves need a way to get bikes out of the market, too. They can do it in two ways: by hoarding bikes (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y171/FORDSVTPARTS/Bikes/bik...) or by destroying them. Couldn't something be done about that side of the equation? Reporting people who have abnormal numbers of bikes, or who sell hundreds of old bikes for scraps?

But then, why isn't the market saturated?

Because the price isn't fixed. If you dump a whole bunch of bikes on the market, you'll have to lower your prices to sell them.

Also, people need new bikes. Bikes break, people want a new bike, people stop riding and just store their bikes, and people whose bikes are stolen need new bikes. Neither supply nor demand is absolutely fixed.

You are ignoring the high demand for used bikes. I imagine a lot of people buy cheap used bikes because they now that there is a high likelihood of their bike getting stolen. Ironically, this behavior fuels the demand for the very same bikes that are getting stolen.

"Reporting people who have abnormal numbers of bikes"

There are a few well none spots in the bay area where most stolen bikes end up. The problem is it's hard to prove that these are the guys that steal the bikes, and the police don't really care that much.

Has anyone ever considered engineering a disable feature into bikes? What if there was, for example, a lock for the crank that would require too much work to defeat/break. The thief wouldn't steal the bike because his costs/time/difficulty would go up. Car stereo manufacturer's had this same issue a couple of decades ago. One brilliant solution was a removable faceplate for the the stereo. The owner just pulled that out (about the size of an iPhone 5) and took it with him/her when leaving the car. Another solution was to put a matching chip in the speakers...if the stereo was stolen and connected to an unmatched set of speakers, it wouldn't work. Let's get creative and end bike theft!

It's been done a few times. Biomega and Puma made a bike with a structural wire that could be used to lock the bike; cutting the wire made the bike unrideable. There's the n'lock, which lets you turn MTB style handlebars sideways for hallway storage, but also acts as a theft deterrent, since you can't ride the bike with floppy bars. Removable pedals (Wellgo QRD, MKS EZY, etc). And dozens more.

There's a problem with designs like this. Bikes are very portable; thieves can walk with them, shoulder them, stick them in a van. The designs do not discourage the thief from cutting your U-lock in the first place - they only discover the bike is unrideable as they try to leave, and your bike still has value in parts.

I've always thought that bicycles should have a standard ID number similar to how vehicles have a VIN (a BIN maybe?). This would go a long way in allowing victims to search for their bike in a registry, and also allow buyers to confirm the bike they're buying from some flea market wasn't nabbed the week prior somewhere. To me this would be the first step no-brainer to helping discourage this kind of theft.

I think this is clearly the easiest solution to the problem if we want to fix it in the long run. It requires people to boycott bikes with a scratched off BIN, but shaming can go a long way to adjust demand. +1

They do have a frame number engraved underneath the bottom bracket.

I like the concept - a good addition would be to provide reporting and/or policing tools if you find a stolen bike (notify the local PD perhaps, or automatically send CL a takedown notice). It seems like Craigslist would be the first place you go if your (nicer) bike gets stolen, so as it stands, the Racklove search engine doesn't provide a lot of extra value.

As someone who works to provide better access to bikes via bike-sharing, I've seen that it's actually an incredible way to prevent bike theft. Sharing systems are over-engineered to the point where they're very difficult to mess with. However, deterrence for personal bike theft is an interesting problem. Despite the prevalence of bikes, nobody has found a method to secure or track them that's better than a standard U-lock. We're close to the point where GPS units could be installed on many bikes at reasonable cost, but it's still not easy. Something to work towards, or perhaps there's an easier solution out there.

I'd propose another feature: you can upload a picture of your stolen bike (make one now!) and crowd-source finding a match. Like others have said here: even if one person finds their bike on this service it's worth it. I've had bikes and bike parts stolen all over the world and I won't buy another one as I can't keep it indoors where I live at the moment. This service won't make me change my mind to buy another one but I might spend a few minutes a week comparing bike pictures as a good samaritan.

More private garages that accept bikes would go a long way towards mitigating the problem. They've just started appearing here in NYC (the muni garages are/were free, but maintenance and sanitation seemed like major issues) so I've started using them. I've been using Parkfast (http://www.parkfast.com/) for about 6 months and have been very happy with them. Your bike gets some protection from the elements too. $20/month

The major problem with trying to locate a stolen bike is that it's quite likely not being listed as a "1995 Schwinn YZ123", it's listed as "MANS BIKE L@@K".

Makes me think of this:

25. A Craigslist competitor. Craiglist is ambivalent about being a business. This is both a strength and a weakness. If you focus on the areas where it's a weakness, you may find there are better ways to solve some of the problems Craigslist solves.

http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html

It seems like a good way to legitimize a bike market place is to require listings to prominently feature bike serial numbers to search for their bike, thus reducing the revenue potential for flipping stolen bikes (and playing into the market theory in the linked article).

Really awesome, not sure how Racklove will prevent thives from selling stolen bikes... Maybe if it will be integrated more with FB, it will be less likely that thieves will use their real fb profile.

spoiler alert:

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&noj=1&site=webhp...

Try doing that for trek and you end up with 67000 results. I don't think that would work.

It sounds like Priceonomics is pivoting... into a bike classified site.

Not likely. This was a self-contained project to scratch our own itch.

A rabbi visiting my house had an easier solution:

Every time he left his bike, he removed the seat and carried it with him. Annoying to steal a bike without a seat! Cost goes up!

Annoying if youre an amateur about to ride off on it, not particularly annoying if you have a van to load it into.

Weird. The story with the YouTube video of the bike theft sting has apparently been taken down for violating the YouTube ToS.

This is yet another Craigslist scraper, no?

So it's vulnerable to the same issue that Padmapper, Carsabi, etc. have met...

A similar service for London http://bikeshd.co.uk

The city should place closed circuit cameras near bike racks and prosecute the thieves seriously.

Found my lost bike the the basement of the Alamo.

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