There's not really an equivalent for that in bicycles - a vital electronic component that, if removed, makes the bike unusable. Sure, you can get a bike tracker on ebay, but if trackers were making a significant dent in bicycle theft, thieves would just look for them and remove or disable them. For trackers to get a signal the antennas have to be exposed, making it a simple enough matter to put a nail through the patch antenna.
> Step 4
> Recover Your Property
> If the police or a good Samaritan find your lost or stolen assets marked with our microtag technology and contacts MyDataTags, we will inform you and give you their contact information so you can recover your personal property.
So it's a serial number that nobody will notice (1mm black dot) or be able to read (I would assume it's gunk to be scratched off, not taken to with a magnifying glass).
Maybe I'm missing their key point, but on a bicycle the reasonable responsible buyer will just run the serial through whatever stolen registry is most popular in their area, not scour the bike for tiny secret illuminati codes.
The economics are extremely simple: There is a significant market for "don't ask, don't tell [if they're stolen]" bicycles. The same probably exists for cars which is why it took immobilizers (not frame/engine serial numbers) to curb theft.
A further complication makes a bicycle immobilizer impractical: It is trivial and not even very conspicuous to carry a bicycle quite far, or stick it in a car. That allows you to remove the bicycle to a private location where you can remove or destroy the immobilizer - if you could do the same with a car, I'm sure immobilizers would be less effective.
Only solutions I see are, having secure parking for bikes offered for pay, as benefit of employment, or venue provided. What makes a bike a pain to store besides length is the handle bars and foot pegs stick out. So design a handle bar with a pin so it can be rotated alone the bikes axis when parked and folding pedals. Then you can box store them narrowly akin to bus lockers.
Still the primary deterrent to theft is putting it where its at risk and if that means not taking it, well.
Stealing a bike is not just taking $300 or whatever from the owner. It's robbing that cyclist and would-be cyclists of the confidence to use their preferred mode of transportation, and deteriorating their health in the long term. This is a lot more damaging than non-cyclists often intuit, and insurance cannot cover it. The penalty for stealing bicycles should be closer to the penalty for stealing a car and intentionally injuring someone. Currently it's close to zero.
Also, interestingly, deterrence is not the primary reason most people push for harsher penalties. Rather it is punishment for its own sake: http://www.law.asu.edu/files/!NoTemplate/why%20do%20we%20pun...
Really? Do you have any evidence to back up that claim?
If that was the case they would not be whipping, beheading, stoning, maiming and executing people in these countries. (spoiler:they are doing all of these things).
It's like saying because of the death penalty there are no murders in states that enforce the death penalty. When in actual fact it looks like it poses no deterrent at all.
I think (this is anecdata from some bike theft victims, including myself) that there are folks who steal bikes to ride them, potentially for transportation to work/school, and those who steal bikes to sell them elsewhere.
We should find a way to deter both groups but putting someone in jail for a $300 (let's say $600 to cover some of the unintended effects you mention) probably won't stop the commercial thieves as they'll find other lackeys to do the theft.
On a more important note, I feel uncomfortable having someone locked up, costing taxpayer money, for committing a non-violent crime whose damages are less than two weeks' pay at minimum wage.
But it's not the violence or the financial damage. It was the fact that I stopped feeling safe in my own house. That the area that I once though was friendly and safe is now filling me with dread and I was so worried about living there that year later I had to move out. That every time I heard noises in the back yard I had to get out of my bed and look out of the window. I shrugged off the financial loss of my bike very easily - but the physiological damage was much greater. Now if you asked me if I want the bike thieves to be put in prison, I would say - absolutely, positively yes. I hate and despise people who steal and I understand how deeply theft can affect a well being of a person, regardless of the value of stolen goods.
Crime occurs when penalties make it more profitable to commit the crime than not. The cost to society is paying to prosecute, reform, or lockup, people who do not adhere to the standards of the society they live in.
How about community service, at minimum wage until the work equals the value of what was stolen even if even the items were recovered? It will cost society money to manage it but it keeps the person off the street for part of the day and might teach them something useful, like being polite in a polite society
Or, it's a bicycle - keep things in proportion. Sure it sucks to have stuff stolen (I've been a victim too) but crazy disproportionate sentencing has made criminal justice in the US just insane.
Your proposal sounds great, just like all the other get tough on crime initiatives over the past 40 odd years but it has left the US with what looks like the craziest most vengeful 'justice' system outside of the Sharia introduced by ISIS.
It's all great until you happen to fall foul of these get tough initiatives - see lots of previous HN stories for examples.
I thought this would be obvious, but I am not arguing for 16 year sentences for stealing food. Food theft is one thing for which the penalty is a real conundrum (maybe the guy was really hungry).
As long as we're trading anecdotes, I live somewhere with very lenient penalties for crimes and what you describe is also true here. People typically don't even bother with a cable lock, they just use an O-lock [1] that locks the rear wheel to itself, whose main purpose is to make it inconvenient to ride off with the bike.
Then why don't we just give every crime the death penalty? Boom, overnight there's no more crime!
We could start at the start: increase the risk of getting caught at all, to something not zero.
It would not surprise me at all if something similar was at play here with bicycles. If every bicycle had to be micro-doted (or chipped etc) and registered and bicycles were subject to spot checks, bicycle theft would fall hugely, but where is the incentive?
Can't imagine anyone would object to that smart idea :)
I wouldn't really object if the government knew when I cycled into town, and when I visited friends etc... if it would get my stolen bike back. There could also be a rule that only bikes reported stolen could be logged and alerted, but there could also be benefits if this rule was let slide. For example, popular cycling routes could be studied for prioritising path repairs, or the building of new cycle lanes.
And your 90% estimate is as offensive as wrong.
I doubt the thieves go to so much trouble, though, I expect my bikes that got stolen -- happened a few times -- ended up resold in the same city or in a neighbouring town. Wouldn't be totally shocked to recognize my own (well, formerly) bike in the local classifieds.
Also there are actually two types of bicycle thiefs: organised groups that load them by the truckload and opportunistic folks that know most locks are trivially broken and just want a cheap ride. You'd be surprised how many times I witnessed guys just carelessly dropping "their" bike once arrived.
Unless you hand them GPS corordinates and a photo of the person taking it, they aren't going to do anything.
I read a cute news bulletin from the police the other day that they arrested a 60-some year old bike thief using a 'lure bike'. They do that regularly actually: https://www.google.com/search?q=lokfiets+site:politie.nl
Ahem. Anyway, point is, over here we adjusted by not owning expensive bicycles for the daily commute, so that's another way to deal with it.
The last time one was stolen the thieves left the back wheel (locked to a stand) behind, unscrewed it and cut through the cable that was holding the frame. AIUI bike theft is mostly organized, they take a whole load and throw them in the back of a van, rather than carrying them around.