Yes, I have 😞 . It was an old Giant MTB but I loved this bike. 27,5", 3x transmission. I upgraded everything: got a dropper seat post, a Rockshox air fork 120mm travel, 1x12 Shimano drive train, tubeless tires. I locked it in a place where there were many bikes around, even ebikes. When I got back mine wasn't. Reported to the police but never recovered it. I looked for it for months with no luck.
I had both my bikes knicked “professionally”. They found one AirTag and not the other. It went, from the Isle of Wight to Portsmouth was in east London the same day, it was in Dover the following morning and Romania by Tuesday after being stolen on Saturday. There’s nothing you can do about that level of commitment. There’s Romanian police actually recovered it after I sent them the AirTag screenshot. It wasn’t cost affected to get it back to the UK so I took the insurance money instead.
I had a bike stolen when I was a teenager in the 90s. When I went to report it, the copper laughed in my face. A few days later, the mechanic at the bike shop near my house saw it with a little thug, ran after him, slapped him around, and gave me my bike back.
I had a bike stolen last week in Nijmegen, in the Netherlands. Many larger stations have "secure" bike stores, where you pay money to have your bike "safely" stored and monitored by an attendant and cameras. Except, it was stolen, the attendant didn't care at all, just said "it's your own risk" and they would not look in the camera footage due to GPDA rules, unless the police formally requested it. Reporting to the police did nothing - they don't care. So the entire ruse is just a money-making scheme - the cameras, attendant were all for nothing. Speaking to the taxi driver that took me home from the station, it's even more targeted than the outdoor bike rack, because thieves know nicer bikes are stored below. Farcical...
this is the same in Cambridge. the most likely place for a bke to be stolen is Cambridge north station. the second most likely is the new improved bike park at Cambridge central railway station even though there is supposed to be cctv coverage. reporting to Police, unless you happen to witness the crime actually being commited is a waste of time
These documentary-styled videos are by far your best content! Please keep more like this coming. I'm happy your pain of not getting your bike stolen, quickly, can be our entertainment. Don't worry, they'll get you rapidly next time.
bullshit it only promotes there bias towards dark skin people was i the only one who noticed the 3 young african guys they showed when talking about the thiefs totally political bullshit but low and behold they felt sorry for the white homeless thief who did steal his bike and nothing total racist bullshit
Live in SW London. Someone attached a 6 year old Carrera MTB to our front railing with a pretty secure u-bolt. We waited 2 weeks and then I asked the builder next door (who was doing renovations) if I could borrow his angle grinder. Cut the U-bolt in less than 30 secs and discovered (when i turned it upside down) that the bike had been registered with BikeRegister. So went online and contacted the owner. She told me she lived in NE London and had reported the bike stolen 3 years prior and that she would come and collect. 2 weeks later and despite messaging her several times it was clear she couldn't be bothered making the trip (probably had a new bike on insurance) and ghosted me. I donated the bike to the Halfords Bike Scheme and hope thats someone, somewhere is now enjoying it.
You called it low level crime but I still think the police don't take it as seriously as equivalent value crimes. If a €1000 bike is stolen and a €800 car is stolen they'll take the car theft seriously but not the bike theft.
Takes a license to drive the car and it can cause more damage... But yeah, bike theft should be just as important if you want your city to be bike friendly.
In the US unless it's a pretty new car like less than 2 years old they don't go looking for it.. so be thankful they'll go looking for your 800 car there.
@@Randomness82they don't need to go looking for a car. Every time it goes through a PNC camera or in America every time it goes past a police car, it'll flag up if it's registered stolen cos the number plate is automatically read. Bikes not so much.
Having a bike stolen is a soul-crushing experience of personal violation. It leads to enduring nightmares, and I'm not exaggerating. I've had two bikes stolen. The first one was taken off a porch at nightfall, which was my fault for not taking it inside. I worked at a bike shop and a youth brought in my wheels with two flat tires -- sewups. The police searched the premises but didn't find the bike. More recently I went into a bathroom in a rural setting and a guy took my bike while I was in the loo. ALWAYS take your bike into the loo when you can. Hours later I returned to the scene and as I was riding my other bike along comes the thief with my bike! I accosted him and demanded the bike. He barely resisted with a verbal defense. I later found out he was a regular at the county jail. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Sorry to hear your story. Absolutely agree, it's more than a physical item in many cases. Especially frustrating when he's a regular, like for similar reasoning. They need to either help him (ideally) or arrest him, don't keep letting him steal bikes!
A couple of years ago I saw in Aldi bike locks and cordless angle grinders being sold literally alongside each other. The bike lock was marketed as ''thief proof'' and the angle grinder marketed as ''cuts through anything''. The angle grinder was half the price of the bike lock.
I got quite a chunky chain with integrated lock from Aldi, might've been £7. I'm only using it around a couple of cheap bikes and a ladder in the shed as a deterrent though. Anyway if you search YT for "bikemate picked", some open partly with a turn from a screwdriver and can then be yanked open by hand 🤦♂️
Was this in the US? this is American AF if you ask me :P I sometimes goto the hardware store on my bike cause it's only a few blocks away, The irony of locking up my bike outside a shop that sells tools perfect for stealing the bike was not lost on me.. I was in and out fast lol.
I had a bike stolen from my garden. It was a 10 year old Merida that was completely trashed from years of communting BUT it was white, just washed and had FOX stickers on the suspension. Value maybe 100€ because it was literally worn down to nothing. Next to it was my 3000€ Rose gravel bike, same bike lock, but thankfully, it was really dirty, and the mud-green frame and lack of expensive logos make it look rather inexpensive. So they didnt bother stealing it too. Moral of the story: dont wash your bikes 😄
this is why im afraid of getting new tires or cleaning my bike, once it stops looking worse than the average bike populated bike railings stop being so safe 😆
LOL! 😆 Sorry to hear about your bike being stolen. 🚲💨 The idea of keeping it dirty to deter theft reminds me of a book I read called Urban Bikers' Tricks & Tips: Low-tech & No-tech Ways to Find, Ride, & Keep a Bicycle. 📖 It has a section on "urban camouflage"-a technique for making a bike look less appealing to thieves. Some of the tricks include using grey duct tape, spray paint, or fake rust to make the bike appear older or less valuable, covering up brand names and flashy decals, and even swapping in mismatched or worn-looking parts. The goal is to make it blend in while keeping it fully functional and recognizable to you. I actually use a version of this myself! I cover up logos and flashy decorations on my bike. 🎨🚲 Sure, it’s not as pretty, but I think it helps reduce the risk of theft. 🔐
I remember reading a science fiction story by William Gibson. A charachter’s bike was fitted with some sort of high voltage capacitor. If someone grabbed the bike they’d get a deadly jolt of electricity.
Thank you! I've been looking for a while through these comments. Trying to find someone with sanity that knows that when you put anything that emits EMF inside a metal pipe it literally silences it. I posted similar things to what you said but it's nice to see someone has a brain
Metal or Carbon its still going to interfere with the signal. These tags produce very low power radio waves. They're best placed outside something or in a material bag (which obviously is porus). For further information a quick Google mentions that carbon fibre is partially conductive which will interfere with a radio signal.
A £7 Amazon combination lock literally saved my winter hack only a couple of weeks ago. I nipped in a supermarket for 5 minutes or less and when I came out a nice lady, out dog walking, was stood watching my bike. She informed me she was keeping an eye on it since a lad had walked up to it and scrutinized the lock, in his hand, before moving on. I can't tell you how many times I've nipped into shops without locking up. Mind blowing.
Simon's last assertion was the best: "Never ever ever buy a bike that looks too good to be true." Anyone who buys a bike that has any whiff of having been stolen is just as guilty as the thief him/herself.
Yea, each of us has to remember not to feed that bear. The same thing happens to construction workers: Some ass steals their tools from the job site or vehicle, and just like that, the poor worker has suddenly lost their ability to earn a living for his/her family, and even to be able to afford to buy replacement tools in order to get back to work. Despicable. Do not facilitate this criminal behavior.
Many years ago, my car was stolen with my bike in it. I eventually got the car back, but the bike was gone, which made sense because the bike was worth more than the car. I still wonder if the car was stolen just to get the bike.
I think that there’s a Rule in the vast rule book per the Velominati, which states that exact relationship, that the value of the bike MUST be greater than that of the car. I am genuinely sad for your loss of the bike, having had a few stolen from myself over the years.
The police wouldn't care if you reported it. Reported a motorbike that had been stolen minutes before to the police. They just said that they will be riding it at the sports centre along the road, they had no interest in catching them. Gave the police a clear closeup video of a thief pinching a topbag with £500 worth of gear inside. they just said they would put his picture on their website incase anyone recognized him, that's it.
Yeah, the police are worse than useless. My brother had his phone nicked, used the tracker to find out where he was, phoned the police and they just told him "bad luck". They're just criminals in uniform.
Here in the US if your car is more than a couple years old they won't even look for it, if they come across it in a stop or something they'll recover it but they won't spend time actively looking. It's just a sad fact that the police have so much stuff to deal with that property crime are given very low priority and a bike won't even register on their radar. It's understandable though it's not like i'd want them to go looking for my stolen property while a gas station gets robbed @ gunpoint or something.
It’s not the police wouldn’t care, they’re over loaded with cases and they’ve been told to prioritise the important ones first. Don’t blame the police, they’re doing a remarkable job with limited resources
You should have said you heard the thief make a derogatory remark of [insert protected group here], and they would have sent five cars round to apprehend him.
Part of why I love my current daily commuter is that it never was an expensive bike and now it it scratched and dirty. I still cringe every time someone comments "nice bike" to it bc it is specifically supposed to be not a nice bike, but it is also a bike that I know to be reliable and comfortable and everything you need in a daily commuter
Same here. I have two of such bikes. Making sure they are always maintained and ride nice but NEVER look like it. It also helps, if the bike model is very unremarkable in the first place, like no fancy colors, just grey and silver and black. A couple of times I myself didn't recognize my commuter bike between other bikes at the racks. I passed by without seeing it, turned around and searched, because I knew where I left it, and found it after giving it a closer look.
Had a bike stolen years ago and saw a kid in the neighborhood riding it around. Took photos of the kid riding it and went back to the police about it. They literally shrugged their shoulders and said “I guess it’s his bike now”.
In the Phoenix AZ Metro Area college town of Tempe the PD had been using a 'Lojack' device to try to tempt cars thiefs with no luck. So they bought a cheap dept store bike, Lojacked it & locked it up on campus. Almost immediately they busted a huge bike theft ring. Kudos to the Tempe PD.
Hi, I'm very sorry to hear that the name of my country was mentioned in this material. I am from Poland, and I ride a bike here and buy bikes. Fortunately, in Poland, buying habits are slowly changing, and we are increasingly asking for proof of purchase when buying a bike. So, I hope such situations will become less frequent, although it is still true that bikes are often stolen and bought from unreliable sources. United we stand. If we stay consistent and avoid buying bikes from unknown sources, I hope this problem will come to an end.
Poland sounds like one of the most amazing places in the world. I am genuinely really jealous because I feel like I am living in Hell over here in the Uk
Had my first bike stolen at 13, I saved up 2 years doing a paper round, went into town to buy a tennis racket. Come out to my friends bike in the middle of the road, d lock was cut in half and my bike was gone. This was in 1997, fast forward 20 years these guys have power tools that will cut through locks in seconds. My Moto now is good bikes do not get left unattended & must be locked inside.
Hi, thanks for the comment. In GCN MegaBae we have similar stories too. The original D-Locks came in so many different types and qualities. Decent battery power-tools are certainly the tool of choice for bike thieves it seems 😞
Grinder-resistant locks have been on the market for over four years now. Most grinders won't even get through the Hiplok D1000. There are ways to reduce the chance of theft. The information is readily available on the internet and in my post above.
Had my bike stolen from my garage when I was 14 . As I was walking home from school the kid went right past me riding my bike ! We ran after him and found my bike in his front yard . Called the police and the cop told me if it was my bike unlock the chain lock that was left in the bike seat bag . (It was 1980) I unlocked it and his mother said to arrest him. I got a new bike through insurance and had a recovered bike that kid trashed . 30 years later he walked into the place I worked and apologized, told me his father made him join the Army to straighten his ass out .
hate me all you want, I SPRAY PAINT my bike. spray paint the wheels, parts, everything. too old to care about looks, only performance. 10 years, left outside countless times. good carbon. never stolen. When I say spray paint, I mean with different colors and I try to make it look horrible.
I lived 10 years in Münster, Germany. A city that was renowned for its number of bikes and bike thieves. I never got any bike stolen. I even tried to give a solid 3-speed bike with functioning lights away by putting it out on without a lock. No one took it. My uncle, who lived 10 years before my time in that city got several bikes stolen. It is really a lottery. May your good bikes never get stolen and may the thieves sleeves slip down when they wash their filthy hands.
When your workforce makes good money, people have less need to steal. Germany is a leader in worker rights and unions. No coincidence. PS Love Münster! Lucky to have visited in-laws there and enjoyed their bicycle culture. Riding into town with grandparents in their 80's. In America, people would be aghast at such a though! When you're raised on car culture and sloth, walking or cycling anywhere is "impossible!"
It's about the value and the age of the bike. A 2nd hand 3 speed bike has no value, maybe 50 euros in perfect condition. That was my 1st thought as soon as this video started, thieves won't steal an old rim bike.... and they didn't, only an outsider would stole it after weeks, because there was no serious lock on it (locks with digits are incredibly easy to open).
I think it mostly depends on where you usually lock your bike. I leave mine mostly in front of supermarkets, where there is a constant flow of slow-moving pedestrians overlooking the bikes or at my workplace, where it's far behind a 2 meter fence with a constant stream of people overlooking the bikes. I wouldn't leave it just next to an open road like Simon did in both attempts. It either has to be visually concealed from random passer-bys or in a busy area, so people would unavoidably spot them breaking the lock. Whether they would do something about it is the other question...
I had both my bikes knicked “professionally”. They hey found one AirTag and not the other. It went, from the Isle of Wight to Portsmouth was in east London the same day, it was in Dover the following morning and Romania by Tuesday after being stolen on Saturday. There’s nothing you can do about that level of commitment. There’s Romanian police actually recovered it after I sent them the AirTag screenshot. It wasn’t cost affected to get it back to the UK so I took the insurance money instead.
Sometimes it's the unlikeliest places that have functional police. I recall over 20 years ago there was a case in Illinois in the US where someone in New Orleans had his Apple Powerbook Titanium that he was selling effectively stolen by a buyer in Chicago -- essentially, postal fraud via eBay over the internet -- and Chicago police simply refused to do anything about it. But the victim, via Mac support groups online, found a connection between the perpetrator and the south suburb of Markham -- one of Chicago's poorest suburbs -- and Markham police were only too happy to get involved and set up a sting operation. While they didn't recover the computer, they did arrest the perpetrator (with the arresting officer disguised as a delivery driver), lots of counterfeit checks and fake ID's and some likely stolen computer equipment, and in the process broke an electronics theft ring. What those law enforcement types that won't get involved don't acknowledge is how often something much bigger is going on. www.macworld.com/article/157188/scammer.html
I used an airtag in my saddlebag (hidden inside the inner layer) and it worked perfectly. When I put it inside the seat tube, the signal was gone, even when standing next to the bike. I think they’re just not strong enough, and admittedly, not built for this either. They are meant for things that you lose in your surroundings, like you keys or wallet (or pet), not necessarily taken away by someone else. But we’re tempted use them for theft protection because there is no better alternative.
That makes sense, although it must have had enough signal to broadcast its location at some point if the last known location was where they left it. And the airtag was put in away from that area. Really odd
You both are wrong. Sorry to say but the reason why I had an air tag work in my saddle bag and not the pipe is because when you put it in the pipe it becomes a faraday cage and with a faraday cage by faraday's law means absolutely zero. Electromagnetic frequency can enter or escape so you won't get a ping. The only reason the tile might have pinged is that he opened up or pulled out the seat and didn't notice it
Can’t believe he was expecting to be able to track an AirTag surrounded by metal tubing. A bit like trying to make a call on a mobile phone from inside a closed shipping container.
It is a joke that the solution is essentially "too bad, deal with it" rather than trying to actually force a solution. Yes a lot of them are drug addicts, people with issues etc but why should that mean hard working people that saved for these bikes should suffer. Maybe there's a broader requirement about drug rehabilitation and homeless aid, but surely it's not a solution to just not be able to lock bikes up outside. Hard working people squeezed in the middle again by both criminals and others who are already costing the system so much, nevermind adding their criminal activities on top of it. Either make the punishment harder or improve rehabilitation for criminals, not just leave things as they are.
Cause it's a societal issue. As seen in the video it's a lot of times people at the bottom of the society dealing with issue and theft being their only solution. Like even if the cops got the bikes back, is the societal issue of how unbelievably bad that the people at the bottom have it solved? NO! All the politicians that love to go "we'll be tough on crime" and what not, are at best dealing the dealing with the end effect rather than actual cause. Because who cares that there's a cop on every corner and the crime rate is basically zero, when the people at the bottom can't afford food
Left my brand new blue Raleigh in front of a thrift store window. Looked down for 15 seconds, and one of the clerks said: "Is that your bike?", but it was too late. Phoned the police, and they gave me a ride home, with the thief in the back of their van, apologizing profusely to me, saying he didn't know it was my only wheels. (At the time, I had no car.) Why it would have been ok to steal my bike if I owned a car, I don't quite understand. Two good D locks, locking both the wheel and frame, parked in a high visibility area, and still pray that it doesn't get abused or stolen.
We recall many years ago someone at GCN Megabase witnessed a bike being stolen 5m away from the owner! A thief just ran past and grabbed it and got on it - long gone 😟
@@gcn all these stories / incidents eyewitness-reports are reasons why I *NEVER* leave my bike unattended. Where I go, it goes* (even the damn loo) (and inside department-stores also). I don’t give a damn if they don’t let me in. The bike’s coming with me or I’m not coming inside. *PERIOD*. * (the bike *LITERALLY* never leaves my-side. everywhere I go, it goes. everywhere I walk, it walks)
After having had 3 or 4 bikes stolen in my life over the years, i never ever leave my bike alone or unwatched. Even on a mass sportive at the food zone I always stay close to it.
Hi All. Some two years ago I had two bikes stolen from my garage in the early hours. I had to stand and watch while four low lives broke in and I am on the phone to the police reporting an active burglary. No the police did not respond in time to save my bikes I watched as they rode away on mopeds with my loved items, they were not of great value but they were mine. The police did turn up ten minutes after the event took a statement and gave me a crime number. I think that if they can't turn up to an active crime there is not much hope of them worrying about are property once it has gone. Make sure you lock your bikes even if they are in your property as you can not be sure they won't get in and take what belongs to you.
Great Video. It would be very interesting to do the same thing at train stations. After having my bike stolen from Harpenden Station, a few months ago. Some light research found that the thefts there were very organised. Between the staff working at the station and the taxi rank, they told me that a van would turn up everyday around lunch time without fail. Quickly scan for cheap locks, use a pair of bolt cutters and grab what they could. I was unlucky that day as I had forgotten my usual D-lock, and used a back up cable lock. Thinking it would be fine as I'd only be leaving my bike at the station from 7.30am - 5.30pm on a Tuesday. It baffles me as to why they can't catch the people, or at least prevent them. Especially with 24/7 CCTV surveillance and around the clock station staff.
It's not station staff's job to confront criminals most likely. In fact that's probably something that they are encouraged not to do as they could get hurt. The only people who are really able to respond to a bike theft are: the police, or yourself playing vigilante.
@ I get that, but they could maybe take a note of the vehicles that are regularly hanging around, checking the bike locks and pass on that information to the police. Just a thought
Si and the GCN team, thanks for the great video! ❤ It brought back some painful memories 😁Five years ago, my first hardtail was stolen in broad daylight near Alexanderplatz in Berlin. The really shocking part was that it was locked up less than 200 meters from the police station - a police officer could have witnessed the theft, given the proximity. I'm not blaming the police, but it highlights how quickly someone can cut through a lock (even a good folding one, like mine) and disappear with a bike. I reported it and searched online for months, but it was never recovered. Berlin's proximity to the Polish border means stolen bikes often vanish within hours. Thankfully, I had insurance and was reimbursed, but it was still a huge hassle and meant weeks without my bike. The lesson I learned? Now I ride the cheapest bike I can find, one that nobody would bother stealing. It's proven to be the safest option. I wish I could ride the bike of my dreams in the city without having to resort to such a cheap alternative.
Had one bike stolen and another had parts stolen a few months ago in London. CCTV was available in both cases. In one case the police could see who it was but suggested I not pursue as it costs tax payers money. Yes they actually said that to me over the phone. In the other case they didn't attempt to look at the CCTV until 2 months later when it was no longer available so nothing at all was done. There's a serious gap here. Police won't help, and you're not allowed to help yourself. CCTV can only be accessed by police due to data protection, but they don't consider it important enough to use. "Bike thieves beware, we are watching you." Hardly.
"Sorry, mate, but it costs the taxpayers too much." "Oh, I forgot to mention someone thought he might have yelled a vaguely anti-gay slur." One hour later, the perp's head is being held against the pavement with four cops on him.
In a funny coincidence to this video, last year I built a custom Niner RIP RDO with and for my son. It was stolen from our basement and I also found it on OLX in Ukraine using image searches and checking the OLX platforms of several eastern countries...some of the sellers there even advertise "used bikes from western europe". I tried to reason with the seller and ended up threatening him with legal consequences. But eventually there was nothing I could really do. Even though the bike was worth at least 4k € it was not worth the nerves and bad feelings to go as far as Damien did. Much of my conversations with the thief happened around Christmas and I realized it all really made me angry and negative and threatened to ruin Christmas with my family. I just let it go. We had insurance but the bike meant a lot to me as I built it with my son and hunted parts for over a year. It's a sad state of affairs that our bikes get stolen and nothing can be done about it by the authorities. Even sadder that the people we are trying to support are robbing us.
The reason you could not find your bike through the air tags is because when you put your air tag in that pipe and then put the seat over it, you pretty much put a faraday cage around it, thus meaning it can't reach out. It needs to be open from any metal surrounding.
@@iknowzeverything2740 some how managed to disable the airtag (they work perfectly fine inside metal objects just the Bluetooth beacon range is reduced)
In the US it's difficult to get police action because you say a tracker is showing your stolen anything is somewhere because they're not 100% accurate especially if it's a high density area like an apartment building. Usually the best they can do is a knock and talk but even that's stretching it from what I understand. The flip side is if you're the one accused of having stolen property with only a air tag as proof.
Definitely, one of your best videos. ...I only lock up bikes with quick release wheels; lock the front wheel to the frame near the rear wheel and bike rack with a heavy-duty lock, taking the quick-release skewer with you. Sometimes I even take the front wheel with me if convenient.
I've had 2 near misses in the past 6 months. The first it was locked to a rack out the front of a university library - busy main entrance, lighting, lots of people around, even security guys. Thankfully my lock held out long enough against the angle grinder they were using for somebody to fetch a security guard who chased them off (and then secured my bike for me until I got back). I'm glad I had a decent lock. But I couldn't get over the sheer audacity of guys with a van and angle grinder stealing from that location. The second was more of a mugging, somebody had been lurking nearby (on a busy high street) waiting for the moment I unlocked the bike, ran in grabbed the bike and tried to get away with it. Thankfully I was holding on and close to the bike rack so he was unsuccessful. But it scared the hell out of me tbh. I don't know how to protect against that. again, daylight, busy shopping street, it's not like I was down some dark alleyway by myself. but, though those two things happened close together, they're the only times I've had a bike stolen (I am not counting the time I literally left my bike unlocked leaning against my garden wall that one time, because that's really on me. I basically gave that away)
@ well you’re welcome to try for yourself. It doesn’t work on my carbon frame. Do you know how a faraday pouch works? The carbon is essentially the same thing in this context.
Yep. I have experience with airtags and I also think this. All is not lost though... 😉 All it needs is someone with an iPhone to get very close and the location will update. Also, because the signal is partially blocked the battery in the airtag will last longer probably 15 to 18 months
Thank you so much for this informative content, Richardson. A year ago, a friend of mine who runs a fancy bike store in suburban Paris had 20 e-bikes (including high-brand ones such as Cube, Moustache and Cannondale, etc.) stolen overnight by a professional thieving gang who had managed to witch off the alarm. The financial loss was so dire it almost forced him to shut down. After personally had 2 Décathlon entry-level bikes robbed in Paris, it incentivized to level up with a hydraulic disc heavy-duty urban bike (Giant Escape II) that I consider virtually theft-proof due to his 4 powerful locks: - NY KRYPTONITE for the top tube & city bike rack - AXA ring lock for the rear wheel - AXE cable to secure the seat post - AUVRAY 5-digit padded chain for the front wheel
Thanks for the comment. This is such a shame about your friends shop suffering so badly financially due to the theft, as well as your own bike theft experiences. It sounds like your Giant does the job now with its 4 locks!
I have not had a bike stolen in 40 years. All my expensive road bikes have never been left unattended even to go inside a washroom when I am alone. Insurance in Toronto costs 1/3 the price of the bike. Ergo, I deposited the first year insurance premium into a separate bank account and then each month topped it up with the insurance premium that i would have paid to the insurance company. After two years I had the replacement cost available if the bike was stolen. It is called self-insurance and is cheaper,
UK has an interesting channel from a service that tracks down stolen motorcycles and construction equipment. Amazing how little interested the police are in the apparent thefts despite the value of some of the equipment well in excess of $50k and how constricted the tracking service is facilitating the recovery. If the stolen item is on private property all they can do is wait for the police hours at a time and sometimes watch it being moved before the police arrive.
I'm a commuter. A few years back I rode my gravel bike (I'm now a fixed gear rider) to uni, where I found out I had left my lock at home. I asked a friend and classmate who had come in his bike as well if we could lock'em together. When the class ended and we walked out to our bikes his was gone, and yet mine remained. It was most definitely a bittersweet day.
Ex NYC prosecutor here again. If my experience taught me anything, it's that most crimes occur because of despair, greed, stupidity, or combinations thereof. Since society lacks the collective will to tackle the sources of despair, desperate people will continue to do desperate things. Greed is generally incurable (hence corporate wrongdoing, the fines imposed for which said corporations account for in their budgets) and stupidity is eternal. Also: Evil exists.
Bike security is a "feature" that should be taken more seriously by the bike industry, rather than pumping marketing money into "high end features that don't really benefit the majority of cyclists. As cars used to have exclusive door & ignition keys, maybe bikes also should have multiple locking (theft prevention) systems, one as part of the bike that can be unlocked (locking wheels/bottom brackets etc) with face recognition (via linked app or an on bike system) or some sort of air tag style device that can kept seperate on a keychain as well as a good old fashioned chain/lock. Lack of this kind of technology is preventing me from upgrading bike, whats the point of buying a bicycle or e bike for business and/or social if theres a good chance it will get nicked and thousands of pounds will be thrown down the drain, for a lot of people they may as well buy a car...
What bikes need is the equivalent of a VIN number, tracked by some central database. It's not like cops scour the streets for your stolen car, but that way if it DOES come around, get abandoned, get towed, tried to be sold etc. they will know. I think that's the main difference between bikes and cars. Apart from most cars costing a lot more, at least
My bike was stolen from my apartment garage several years ago at Christmas. I was out of town and didn't even realize it when I got back initially. The thief sold it to a pawn shop, someone bought it to flip it. I found it in February the next year, went to look at it and took it back. I'm omitting some details but I did it as legally as possible. The police didn't give a fuck even when I told them where the bike was so I had to either let it go or take it back. I definitely got lucky finding it posted online close enough to where I could retrieve it. The cops told me that the thief served time for this but I'm sure it was nothing for him and well worth the money he got but thankfully there wasn't a scratch on it.
One piece of advice... know your serial # .... my bike was stolen, a friend saw a guy in it so I went to retrieve it. The cops were called and because I didn't know my # , even though I had pics, they wouldn't let me take my bike. It went to the police station and a couple days later they let me pick it up. The problem also was the bike shop was closed for a month, so I couldn't get the # that they had on file. It was an addict who stole it, I now registered by bikes with Garage 529 .
An amazing story. Some of the stories you do are inspiring and gut wrenching as when Ollie took us along to Taiwan. Most of your stories about trying out crazy and fun ideas you come up with but we would never do. And a few like these are more sobering. Well done.
My guess is that the location of the airtag shielded it from the communication it needed to grab passing signals. If there was a consistently close signal, it would post a location, but shielded through the carbon near the bottom bracket, someone would need to be pretty damn close for an extended period of time. It would be interesting to see one mounted inconspicuously outside the bike like a bottle cage enclosure.
they sell air tag holders that are reflectors, or fit under a bottle cage, they even have one that will fit inside a tire under the stem.. meant to be used for tubeless setups. Problem with air tags is even androids will alert you after about 10 minutes that a tracker is following you. they will also make noise to alert people upon movement, so if you want to use an air tag you need to open them up and pluck out the speaker.
I think even you break the speaker the airtag will not update if someone iphone bt connected it and moving with it. Even the airtag is shared from you fd/family it will not update untill it disconnect from the phone+ there other iphone passing it. Maybe also there are some hiddern algorithm to detect is it in a public places. The iphone network decide is it good to post that location to the user.
@andyswinburn the bike looked stolen because it had a scruffy guy riding it. Coincidence that I then watched this vid and realised it was the same bike.
One of our riding group had two chained to the floor bikes stolen from a locked shed while he was home, as brazen as it gets. One was a Specialized ebike & when it was switched on a couple of days later, it checked in with Specialized, geolocating itslef in the process. Spesh gave the data to the Police who weren't interested. I get the cops are overstretched & have bigger fish to fry but this was still a £13k loss for a Spesh turbo Levo & an Epic xc bike.
Would have thought they would jump at an "easy collar" to pad their stats Someone I knew had a different piece of expensive sporting equipment stolen (ironically from the carpark behind the Police station). The Police weren't interested, even when they were given the name and address of the Perp! They only became interested, when she told them she was going to visit the Perp with several of her large male friends ............. and only then it seemed like all they were interested in was making sure the Perp didn't get a kicking. The Perp was known to the police, and they found other stolen items at the address.
Your mates who found your bike decided not to do anything but just phoned you to let you know they’ve seen it. Some mates, if that was me who saw your bike and you’ve positively identified it then I’d have tried to seize it, given the dangers around it or would have contacted the police and tried to stay with it to make sure you got your bike back and not just phoned you and do nothing.
no you tell em its a tv show the bikes got a tracker weve got footage of you , GIVE US the bike NOW and they would! Theses guys are weedlings , youtube makes these types popular for nothing, gritty lads have to throw themselves down a mountain to get half the promotion..
@@gmbn A camera operator?? You've all got iphones capable of high quality 4k footage. Saying the bike just disappeared and never came back online again is likely a flat out lie too. Just be honest and say you were worried about the optics of taking it back, cause we all know that's the most likely truth. Just seems really half-arsed to commit to the sting, then back off again TBH
Great show! Great sad content! We had our expensive bikes stollen from Downtown Oshawa Ontario Central Library, right next to City Hall, very high trafficked area. First clue should have been being met by security officer entering the Library. Noted security cameras on the building and thought we were ok. Came out hour later entire bike rack empty. Reported to the Librarian and she said "Oh,ya, it happens all the time!" We asked about cameras? "Oh, they're not pointed to the bike racks!" Asked her why there was no warning sign....just a shrug. Reported to police and friends and scoured socials and never got them back. Apparently even though security walks the block, the theives time it to clear the rack in the interim. They use a battery angle grinder and clear them all into a van. I think you should mention 529 Garage for North American watchers. Some successful recoveris there. Addiction is the hell that bike thieves live in every day but it hurts us too!
I've often advocated that instead or maybe to do as well, is to donate used bikes to the down and out and also provide a mobile repair service for houseless bike owners to reduce some of the demand for stolen bikes. Having a bike, as we know can improve your mobility and make a difficult life just a little bit easier. One last comment, we should ban cable locks, stop selling them full stop.
@@oliverchong2428 They could have small, a small, concealed weapon, possibly with a blade and the situation could escalate. In which case I recommend wearing a Hiplok lite around your hip. Makes for a great self-defender.
I had two emtb's a hardtail mtb and electric scooter stolen from my garage one night last year, probably £12000 in total. Even though a neighbour has numerous cctv cameras on his property and would have captured good evidence, the police weren't interested, they didn't even visit just issued a crime number for my insurance company.
Back before Apple Air Tags and such trackers were invented, we (law enforcement) used to suggest a method of marking one's bike that is still good today... in addition to using good locks and showing how to best apply them one of the things we suggested was to engrave the owner's driver license number on parts of the frame that are not readily visible, like the underside of the top tube and/or the down tube, and be sure to also engrave what state the DL number is from. In the United States, every state has a 2-letter abbreviation, so for instance if you have a Texas driver license you would engrave (without the quotes) "TX DL (insert driver license number here)." This might work in other countries as well, since an officer who encounters a bike with such a number can immediately find out on his computer or through the dispatcher who the number belongs to. The agency I worked for lent out engravers for this purpose and brought them to community meetings to use there, but these days one can buy them inexpensively and a person might want to own one and engrave more of their property with such identifying information. They are very easy to use - they look like a pen and you write with them the same way.
One question - did you actually test the AirTag once you’d put it in the frame? I know that inside a metal frame they would be essentially useless, and I’ve read that even a carbon frame can seriously affect their performance.
That’s what I was thinking, by putting it in the frame it reduced its range so drastically that it simply won’t be picked up by nearby devices so won’t update on Find My!
The fact that the tag and tile were still registering the original lock-up location of the bike suggests it was working originally because Si fitted it at home.
@@steveh9428 That is a good point, but it only demonstrates that the tag was registering someone who was right with the bike for an extended period of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s performance in registering with devices on casual passers by - which is exactly what you’re relying on in this situation - hasn’t been compromised. (All of which does highlight a serious limitation with AirTags anyway - for them to work properly, they do need to be mounted in a way that makes them easier to identify and remove. And that’s before you get into the conflict between their anti stalking features and their effectiveness as theft tracking devices).
Or the AirTag has not been in the range of any Apple device with Bluetooth on and find my network active. Given the AirTag doesn’t send any position or data, but relies on the device (iPhone, ipad, Apple Watch) data and position.
Such a good video Si, love the fact that you had multiple components and mini stories to it, this felt like professional journalism, a far cry from the “content” you see on some other channels!
If the government wants to promote sustainable transport it needs to take this more seriously. I'd use my bike more for things like shopping in town if I didn't think there was a good chance of it going missing one day. Thieves know there's no follow-up so there's zero deterrent.
I had a Brompton stolen from Exhibition Road in London on a weekday afternoon. A busy road with cctv from the Natural History museum. Never seen again. I was glad I’d not got round to fixing the slow puncture in the front tyre…
The police and the criminal justice system that we all pay for should sort this. I had a bike stolen from inside my van, parked in a caravan park, under a security camera and the police just couldn't give a fu@k.
Organized groups dismantle stolen bicycles and send them to Kaliningrad in cardboard boxes. There they are offered for sale on a Russian marketplace. There are a few documentaries about it on German TV here on YT.
I cycle and lock my bike up a lot in London. When off out in the evening to gigs and pubs etc. I take my rim-braked hybrid. It wasn’t an expensive bike and is a few years old now but it seemingly looks less worth stealing to bike thieves. It’s such a useful bike because of that
I rebuilt my friends really crappy bike so it was actually rideable for the sole purpose of learning how to rebuild a bike. When I was done I purposely left it unlocked unattended outside his apartment building for someone to take. I had already bought him a refurbished bike so this one wasn’t needed. We went inside to play a board game and came back out 30 minutes later and it was gone. Fast forward about 6 months we were walking around the courtyard to the same apartment complex. And I swear I saw the same bike flipped over in someone’s patio area. We stood there looking at it for a minute and this guy walks up behind us and says “you like my bike?”. “Yeah” I said. “I used to have one that looked just like it.” The guy replies shadily “Oh?,well this ain’t it.” We walked away. Thing is I did a custom pain job on it swapped out the brakes. That was definitely the same bike. Shame I was really hoping a homeless person from the encampment down the road would have snatched it.
I have biked to work for over 35 years. I live in a town of about 25,000. I’ve had lights stolen off my bikes twice and once someone stole the seat and post with reflector attached, yet the bike was still there! Unlocked!
If you watch magnet fishing content, you will know that a large part of those are just thrown in a canal. I guess, you steal the bike, ride where you want to go, throw it in the nearby canal, no evidence, no problem. 🤣
Lots of stolen high quality bikes used to end up on Brick Lane market. And they weren’t being bought by people who wanted a bike to go to the pub on. Well done fellow riders. Bravo.
The reason that the AirTag and Tile didn’t work is because the bike frame acts as a faraday cage which limits the signal unless you’re practically on top of it with your phone, rendering it effectively untraceable and useless at long distances. Another thing you can do is remove the speaker in the AirTag (there’s many videos online of how to do this) then you can see where it is, and it takes thieves longer to locate
My trusty hybrid was stolen from my shed eighteen months ago, and of course, it was never recovered. The bike had done over 10,000 miles and was in dire need of vast quantities of money spending on it. So I like to think that I had the last laugh... Both sets of disc brakes were knackered and needed to be completely replaced as the adjusters had seized solid. Because the brake mechanisms were knackered, I hadn't bothered to replace the pads as I was considering upgrading the brakes to a superior model which took different pads. The chainrings were worn beyond belief to the point that I'm amazed the chain didn't slip over the teeth. The chain was due for a change too, but I held off because of the badly worn chainrings. All the cables needed changing as they were getting clogged with crap and had the said 10,000 miles under their collective belts. The front wheel was badly buckled (but rideable) thanks to an angry motorist who thought it was acceptable to kick the heck out of my front wheel. _Don't worry, I returned the favour on his driver's door!_ I'm also sure that the thief (or thieves) were unlikely to be wearing SPD-compatible footwear. I've ridden my bike wearing ordinary trainers and I can confirm that SPD pedals are not very comfortable to push against without suitable footwear. So, all in all, I wasn't too upset they stole the bike. The cost of parts would likely have been similar to what I paid for the bike in the first place. It was therefore, a great excuse to upgrade to something a little more expensive as a little treat to myself.
This happened to us in Bath when we were students there 2003-2007. My friends bike was stolen, I came across it locked up by Sainsbury's. We waited for the owner to come out. Not sure how good an idea that was. The seat was up high enough for a giant. We also called the police and we had already reported the bike stolen. The guy came out. He was tall. He was actually pretty nice and said he'd paid £120 for it in the last week. He also mentioned that he was known to the police and didn't want to hang about, but we could go to his flat in Twerton and pick it up. Can't remember exactly why he didn't give it back to us then and there. But astonishingly, we were able to visit his flat in Twerton, it was the right address, and he handed the bike back. We gave him a four pack of lager. He said thanks, but that he preferred weed.
Just a few weeks ago, I went out for a bike ride and locked the bike up outside a café. When I came to unlock it, the key just wouldn’t work this was one of those U locks. I asked the café if they had a bolt cutter or angle grinder, but they said no, so I just told them that I would be back in an hour or so, with my own angle grinder! When I came back the same person I spoke to wasn’t there, But clearly wanted my bike back, so I just started at it with a grinder; nobody said anything, nobody approached me, and worse than that, it took me less than 30 seconds to cut through the lock… Just goes to prove that in most cases locks are there to stop casual theft, but not stop those that have Real intent, and the right tools!
Thankfully, local to me, we have the Tees Valley Walking and Cycling Hubs, which are, I believe, run by Sustrans. They offer free, secure bike parking in 5 local towns and are a brilliant resource for cyclists as they also do free bike MOTs and give maintenance advice too.
I had my bike stolen from a rack on the Embarcadero in San Francisco back in 2010. They opened the U lock with ease and it was gone. While sad, I had insurance and they didn’t steal my wife’s bike that was literally next to mine. Her’s was a carbon fiber road bike, mine was an aluminum hybrid bike. But her’s is super small while mine was average size. Bike theft in SF has been rampant and organized for decades.
I am a bicycle mechanic, and when I purchased my new bicycle, I did the following 1) I wrote down the frame number on the original invoice 2) took a photo of the frame number on my phone. 3) I wrote my post code on the side post.
This is always a good idea to do, but obviously it doesn't stop your bike being stolen (and potentially never getting it back), it just means that, if necessary, you should then be able to prove to authorities that it IS indeed your bike.
Sy, I remember watching a video about air tags and bikes related to the best locations to put an AirTag. The video specifically found that AirTags located within the frame were blocked by the carbon fiber. AirTags needed to be located outside the frame. Great video on the video. Love what you do with the channel.
Really? A Pinarello road bike? What do you expect? What truly sucks is when your home made rubbish Aluminium 105/LX mix, properly locked is stolen by someone who unscrewed 5 street signs from a post to lift the bike with its lock over the 3m tall post!
Put a tracker in between your rear tire and tube. The pressure of the tire keeps the tag silent and the last thing the thieves do is remove the back wheel.
Personally it was disabled the moment he put it in the bike frame (or was disabled before it was installed maybe used Duracell cr2032 as the older ones have a too thick Brita bad taste coating making them unreliable or not work inside airtag due to the design of the airtag contact points are too soft ) or accidentally factory reset it by taking the battery out and in multiple times in a short period (when the bike was there he should have done a search nearby and sounder test it tell you if it triggered or failed) Or the thief was smart and actually found it on the spot and taken battery out and just dropped it behind the fence or in the nearest bin Tile is useless (just tells you where it was when it lost a signal to the tile it's reliant on other people to have the Tile app installed which is generally no one)
@@leexgx Firstly it was a carbon frame, secondly he did say it was irretrievable since it was lodged in the seat tube and he checked it was working after installing it.
@@bikeman123 it was presumed working (you press find when next to it and it makes a connection and press the sounder it tell you if it's sounding or can't connect) don't trust the previous location report (it was probably obtained just before it was dropped into the bike) or the bike thief removed it and taken the battery out of it
I don’t give a dam about who it is stealing the bike We all have choices in life ,you letting this bloke get away with it is wrong because you are passing on the misery to someone else. The blokes who found the bike should have taken it back or phoned the police They are what’s wrong with the UK today …. Soft touch and that’s why people exploit the country. Toughen up ! Oh great video though 👍
Absolutely agree. Walk over and take it back. Grow a backbone. People like this is why they continue to do it. Everyone is way too soft to actually fight for their own property.
nobody seems bothered by getting back a bike they paid £500 for and locked up outside with a £3 lock for weeks and they ponder why it happened then just accept it! drives me nuts.
I can tell you the name and address of an eBay seller in Trowbridge who sold my friends custom painted enduro frame back to him after it was stolen about 5 miles from your studio, GCN. Police took no action even given a name, address and evidence. We thought firebombing the house would be a bit extreme, but only a bit!
Have you ever got your bike stolen? If so, have you attempted to retrieve it? 👀
Yes. Lefted in the garden. Insurance paid. Air tag attached to it.
Not a bike but a moped. MF trashed 2 locks.
Left it unlocked for fifteen minutes forty years ago. Still think about it.
Yes, I have 😞 . It was an old Giant MTB but I loved this bike. 27,5", 3x transmission. I upgraded everything: got a dropper seat post, a Rockshox air fork 120mm travel, 1x12 Shimano drive train, tubeless tires. I locked it in a place where there were many bikes around, even ebikes. When I got back mine wasn't. Reported to the police but never recovered it. I looked for it for months with no luck.
I had both my bikes knicked “professionally”. They found one AirTag and not the other. It went, from the Isle of Wight to Portsmouth was in east London the same day, it was in Dover the following morning and Romania by Tuesday after being stolen on Saturday. There’s nothing you can do about that level of commitment.
There’s Romanian police actually recovered it after I sent them the AirTag screenshot. It wasn’t cost affected to get it back to the UK so I took the insurance money instead.
I had a bike stolen when I was a teenager in the 90s. When I went to report it, the copper laughed in my face. A few days later, the mechanic at the bike shop near my house saw it with a little thug, ran after him, slapped him around, and gave me my bike back.
Disgusting cop that
"slapping around little thugs" is my dream bike mechanic KPI
knighthood for the mechanic
@pureroadie Better than some of the knighthoods weve seen
I love a story with a happy ending!
I had a bike stolen last week in Nijmegen, in the Netherlands. Many larger stations have "secure" bike stores, where you pay money to have your bike "safely" stored and monitored by an attendant and cameras. Except, it was stolen, the attendant didn't care at all, just said "it's your own risk" and they would not look in the camera footage due to GPDA rules, unless the police formally requested it. Reporting to the police did nothing - they don't care. So the entire ruse is just a money-making scheme - the cameras, attendant were all for nothing. Speaking to the taxi driver that took me home from the station, it's even more targeted than the outdoor bike rack, because thieves know nicer bikes are stored below. Farcical...
DEI attendant?
Sad
this is the same in Cambridge. the most likely place for a bke to be stolen is Cambridge north station. the second most likely is the new improved bike park at Cambridge central railway station even though there is supposed to be cctv coverage. reporting to Police, unless you happen to witness the crime actually being commited is a waste of time
This is such a shame to read about your sad experience
Not just bikes makes it out to be that those bicycle stores are very safe?
These documentary-styled videos are by far your best content! Please keep more like this coming. I'm happy your pain of not getting your bike stolen, quickly, can be our entertainment. Don't worry, they'll get you rapidly next time.
For real! The “challenges” are ok, but these have meat on them
bullshit it only promotes there bias towards dark skin people was i the only one who noticed the 3 young african guys they showed when talking about the thiefs totally political bullshit but low and behold they felt sorry for the white homeless thief who did steal his bike and nothing total racist bullshit
Live in SW London. Someone attached a 6 year old Carrera MTB to our front railing with a pretty secure u-bolt. We waited 2 weeks and then I asked the builder next door (who was doing renovations) if I could borrow his angle grinder. Cut the U-bolt in less than 30 secs and discovered (when i turned it upside down) that the bike had been registered with BikeRegister. So went online and contacted the owner. She told me she lived in NE London and had reported the bike stolen 3 years prior and that she would come and collect. 2 weeks later and despite messaging her several times it was clear she couldn't be bothered making the trip (probably had a new bike on insurance) and ghosted me. I donated the bike to the Halfords Bike Scheme and hope thats someone, somewhere is now enjoying it.
Some people!
Crazy man, i would do anything to get back what belong to me if it's within reach.
Eiish...cared less about the bike😮
You called it low level crime but I still think the police don't take it as seriously as equivalent value crimes.
If a €1000 bike is stolen and a €800 car is stolen they'll take the car theft seriously but not the bike theft.
Takes a license to drive the car and it can cause more damage... But yeah, bike theft should be just as important if you want your city to be bike friendly.
It is probably easier to find the car, but yes, I see your point.
In the US unless it's a pretty new car like less than 2 years old they don't go looking for it.. so be thankful they'll go looking for your 800 car there.
That’s because many cars that are stolen, especially low value beaters, are used in the commission of more serious crimes.
@@Randomness82they don't need to go looking for a car. Every time it goes through a PNC camera or in America every time it goes past a police car, it'll flag up if it's registered stolen cos the number plate is automatically read. Bikes not so much.
Having a bike stolen is a soul-crushing experience of personal violation. It leads to enduring nightmares, and I'm not exaggerating. I've had two bikes stolen. The first one was taken off a porch at nightfall, which was my fault for not taking it inside. I worked at a bike shop and a youth brought in my wheels with two flat tires -- sewups. The police searched the premises but didn't find the bike. More recently I went into a bathroom in a rural setting and a guy took my bike while I was in the loo. ALWAYS take your bike into the loo when you can. Hours later I returned to the scene and as I was riding my other bike along comes the thief with my bike! I accosted him and demanded the bike. He barely resisted with a verbal defense. I later found out he was a regular at the county jail. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Sorry to hear your story. Absolutely agree, it's more than a physical item in many cases. Especially frustrating when he's a regular, like for similar reasoning. They need to either help him (ideally) or arrest him, don't keep letting him steal bikes!
It wasn’t your fault for not taking it inside. It was the fault of the person who chose to steal it.
A couple of years ago I saw in Aldi bike locks and cordless angle grinders being sold literally alongside each other. The bike lock was marketed as ''thief proof'' and the angle grinder marketed as ''cuts through anything''. The angle grinder was half the price of the bike lock.
I got quite a chunky chain with integrated lock from Aldi, might've been £7. I'm only using it around a couple of cheap bikes and a ladder in the shed as a deterrent though.
Anyway if you search YT for "bikemate picked", some open partly with a turn from a screwdriver and can then be yanked open by hand 🤦♂️
Was this in the US? this is American AF if you ask me :P
I sometimes goto the hardware store on my bike cause it's only a few blocks away, The irony of locking up my bike outside a shop that sells tools perfect for stealing the bike was not lost on me.. I was in and out fast lol.
Call out that store, it deserves a boycott
The irony is that thieves don't buy angle grinders. They steal them.
@@GeekonaBikethey literally said. ALDI.
I had a bike stolen from my garden. It was a 10 year old Merida that was completely trashed from years of communting BUT it was white, just washed and had FOX stickers on the suspension. Value maybe 100€ because it was literally worn down to nothing. Next to it was my 3000€ Rose gravel bike, same bike lock, but thankfully, it was really dirty, and the mud-green frame and lack of expensive logos make it look rather inexpensive. So they didnt bother stealing it too. Moral of the story: dont wash your bikes 😄
this is why im afraid of getting new tires or cleaning my bike, once it stops looking worse than the average bike populated bike railings stop being so safe 😆
LOL! 😆 Sorry to hear about your bike being stolen. 🚲💨 The idea of keeping it dirty to deter theft reminds me of a book I read called Urban Bikers' Tricks & Tips: Low-tech & No-tech Ways to Find, Ride, & Keep a Bicycle. 📖 It has a section on "urban camouflage"-a technique for making a bike look less appealing to thieves.
Some of the tricks include using grey duct tape, spray paint, or fake rust to make the bike appear older or less valuable, covering up brand names and flashy decals, and even swapping in mismatched or worn-looking parts. The goal is to make it blend in while keeping it fully functional and recognizable to you.
I actually use a version of this myself! I cover up logos and flashy decorations on my bike. 🎨🚲 Sure, it’s not as pretty, but I think it helps reduce the risk of theft. 🔐
I remember reading a science fiction story by William Gibson. A charachter’s bike was fitted with some sort of high voltage capacitor. If someone grabbed the bike they’d get a deadly jolt of electricity.
bait bike when people get hurt, broken legs and face-plants, those videos bring me much joy
A bike frame can be like a faraday cage blocking any signal from the airtag
Thank you! I've been looking for a while through these comments. Trying to find someone with sanity that knows that when you put anything that emits EMF inside a metal pipe it literally silences it. I posted similar things to what you said but it's nice to see someone has a brain
And if it is carbon?
Check the video the Pinarello was a carbon frame.
Metal or Carbon its still going to interfere with the signal. These tags produce very low power radio waves. They're best placed outside something or in a material bag (which obviously is porus). For further information a quick Google mentions that carbon fibre is partially conductive which will interfere with a radio signal.
I wondered if the AirTag fell so far into the tube that it got chewed up by the bottom bracket.
A £7 Amazon combination lock literally saved my winter hack only a couple of weeks ago. I nipped in a supermarket for 5 minutes or less and when I came out a nice lady, out dog walking, was stood watching my bike. She informed me she was keeping an eye on it since a lad had walked up to it and scrutinized the lock, in his hand, before moving on.
I can't tell you how many times I've nipped into shops without locking up. Mind blowing.
Simon's last assertion was the best: "Never ever ever buy a bike that looks too good to be true." Anyone who buys a bike that has any whiff of having been stolen is just as guilty as the thief him/herself.
Yea, each of us has to remember not to feed that bear. The same thing happens to construction workers: Some ass steals their tools from the job site or vehicle, and just like that, the poor worker has suddenly lost their ability to earn a living for his/her family, and even to be able to afford to buy replacement tools in order to get back to work. Despicable. Do not facilitate this criminal behavior.
This is fantastic content GCN! The quality has improved dramatically since you became independent
Many years ago, my car was stolen with my bike in it. I eventually got the car back, but the bike was gone, which made sense because the bike was worth more than the car. I still wonder if the car was stolen just to get the bike.
I think that there’s a Rule in the vast rule book per the Velominati, which states that exact relationship, that the value of the bike MUST be greater than that of the car. I am genuinely sad for your loss of the bike, having had a few stolen from myself over the years.
That’s why people are keeping there bike inside the house and let there car set anywhere outside…
The police wouldn't care if you reported it. Reported a motorbike that had been stolen minutes before to the police. They just said that they will be riding it at the sports centre along the road, they had no interest in catching them.
Gave the police a clear closeup video of a thief pinching a topbag with £500 worth of gear inside. they just said they would put his picture on their website incase anyone recognized him, that's it.
Had my R6 stolen in Bristol 2 years ago. Police didn’t even sound bothered. Refused to get a other motorbike now
Yeah, the police are worse than useless. My brother had his phone nicked, used the tracker to find out where he was, phoned the police and they just told him "bad luck". They're just criminals in uniform.
Here in the US if your car is more than a couple years old they won't even look for it, if they come across it in a stop or something they'll recover it but they won't spend time actively looking.
It's just a sad fact that the police have so much stuff to deal with that property crime are given very low priority and a bike won't even register on their radar.
It's understandable though it's not like i'd want them to go looking for my stolen property while a gas station gets robbed @ gunpoint or something.
It’s not the police wouldn’t care, they’re over loaded with cases and they’ve been told to prioritise the important ones first. Don’t blame the police, they’re doing a remarkable job with limited resources
You should have said you heard the thief make a derogatory remark of [insert protected group here], and they would have sent five cars round to apprehend him.
2:31, you bought the Pinarello for 500 pounds off of eBay and therefore it wasn't stolen. How do you know you didn't buy a stolen bike?
A carbon bike at that too 😅 has to be stolen
yeah that was absolutely stolen
Part of why I love my current daily commuter is that it never was an expensive bike and now it it scratched and dirty. I still cringe every time someone comments "nice bike" to it bc it is specifically supposed to be not a nice bike, but it is also a bike that I know to be reliable and comfortable and everything you need in a daily commuter
Same here. I have two of such bikes. Making sure they are always maintained and ride nice but NEVER look like it. It also helps, if the bike model is very unremarkable in the first place, like no fancy colors, just grey and silver and black.
A couple of times I myself didn't recognize my commuter bike between other bikes at the racks. I passed by without seeing it, turned around and searched, because I knew where I left it, and found it after giving it a closer look.
Had a bike stolen years ago and saw a kid in the neighborhood riding it around. Took photos of the kid riding it and went back to the police about it. They literally shrugged their shoulders and said “I guess it’s his bike now”.
You should have stolen their police car, and swapped it for your bike. "I guess it's his car now" .
you shouldve gotten your bike back from the kid
In the Phoenix AZ Metro Area college town of Tempe the PD had been using a 'Lojack' device to try to tempt cars thiefs with no luck. So they bought a cheap dept store bike, Lojacked it & locked it up on campus. Almost immediately they busted a huge bike theft ring. Kudos to the Tempe PD.
Hi, I'm very sorry to hear that the name of my country was mentioned in this material. I am from Poland, and I ride a bike here and buy bikes. Fortunately, in Poland, buying habits are slowly changing, and we are increasingly asking for proof of purchase when buying a bike. So, I hope such situations will become less frequent, although it is still true that bikes are often stolen and bought from unreliable sources. United we stand. If we stay consistent and avoid buying bikes from unknown sources, I hope this problem will come to an end.
It changed a lot. Poland has one of the lowest crime level in Europe.
Poland sounds like one of the most amazing places in the world. I am genuinely really jealous because I feel like I am living in Hell over here in the Uk
@@JamEZmusic86 you are more than welcome to visit😁
@@krzysztofwicher8418 Thank you brother ☺️
You seen like such a cool guy 😎
Had my first bike stolen at 13, I saved up 2 years doing a paper round, went into town to buy a tennis racket. Come out to my friends bike in the middle of the road, d lock was cut in half and my bike was gone. This was in 1997, fast forward 20 years these guys have power tools that will cut through locks in seconds.
My Moto now is good bikes do not get left unattended & must be locked inside.
My dad suffered the same experience back in the '50s. Saved up, got the bike, first day out and the bike was stolen. Never seen again.
Hi, thanks for the comment. In GCN MegaBae we have similar stories too. The original D-Locks came in so many different types and qualities. Decent battery power-tools are certainly the tool of choice for bike thieves it seems 😞
Been through the same type of situation at age 14. My bicycle was stolen from in front of church’s while I was inside attending service.
Grinder-resistant locks have been on the market for over four years now. Most grinders won't even get through the Hiplok D1000. There are ways to reduce the chance of theft. The information is readily available on the internet and in my post above.
Had my bike stolen from my garage when I was 14 . As I was walking home from school the kid went right past me riding my bike ! We ran after him and found my bike in his front yard . Called the police and the cop told me if it was my bike unlock the chain lock that was left in the bike seat bag . (It was 1980) I unlocked it and his mother said to arrest him. I got a new bike through insurance and had a recovered bike that kid trashed . 30 years later he walked into the place I worked and apologized, told me his father made him join the Army to straighten his ass out .
hate me all you want, I SPRAY PAINT my bike. spray paint the wheels, parts, everything. too old to care about looks, only performance. 10 years, left outside countless times. good carbon. never stolen. When I say spray paint, I mean with different colors and I try to make it look horrible.
On my steel frame bike in Boston in the 1980s, id cover paint scratches with clear nail polish to avoid rust, but let it look crap
Same here, my bike has no marques, looks thrashed but it's a flyer and never punctures ;-)
@@marklamourine3130smart approach, will use it too, thanks
I lived 10 years in Münster, Germany. A city that was renowned for its number of bikes and bike thieves. I never got any bike stolen. I even tried to give a solid 3-speed bike with functioning lights away by putting it out on without a lock. No one took it. My uncle, who lived 10 years before my time in that city got several bikes stolen. It is really a lottery. May your good bikes never get stolen and may the thieves sleeves slip down when they wash their filthy hands.
When your workforce makes good money, people have less need to steal.
Germany is a leader in worker rights and unions.
No coincidence.
PS Love Münster! Lucky to have visited in-laws there and enjoyed their bicycle culture. Riding into town with grandparents in their 80's. In America, people would be aghast at such a though! When you're raised on car culture and sloth, walking or cycling anywhere is "impossible!"
It's about the value and the age of the bike. A 2nd hand 3 speed bike has no value, maybe 50 euros in perfect condition.
That was my 1st thought as soon as this video started, thieves won't steal an old rim bike.... and they didn't, only an outsider would stole it after weeks, because there was no serious lock on it (locks with digits are incredibly easy to open).
I think it mostly depends on where you usually lock your bike. I leave mine mostly in front of supermarkets, where there is a constant flow of slow-moving pedestrians overlooking the bikes or at my workplace, where it's far behind a 2 meter fence with a constant stream of people overlooking the bikes. I wouldn't leave it just next to an open road like Simon did in both attempts. It either has to be visually concealed from random passer-bys or in a busy area, so people would unavoidably spot them breaking the lock. Whether they would do something about it is the other question...
@ I had a bike stolen in front a crowded supermarket... 1 huge U-lock and another with reinforced steel cable.
10 minutes later it had disappeared!
I had both my bikes knicked “professionally”. They hey found one AirTag and not the other. It went, from the Isle of Wight to Portsmouth was in east London the same day, it was in Dover the following morning and Romania by Tuesday after being stolen on Saturday. There’s nothing you can do about that level of commitment.
There’s Romanian police actually recovered it after I sent them the AirTag screenshot. It wasn’t cost affected to get it back to the UK so I took the insurance money instead.
Thumbs up to Romanian police, then! Credit where due.
That's probably what ended up happening to my bike as well then, from the same area.
@@geirmyrvagnes8718 Lucky it went to Romania! If it had stayed in the UK the police would have done nothing.
@@Alex-to8eseastern Europe is now more functional than the UK. What a time to be alive
Sometimes it's the unlikeliest places that have functional police. I recall over 20 years ago there was a case in Illinois in the US where someone in New Orleans had his Apple Powerbook Titanium that he was selling effectively stolen by a buyer in Chicago -- essentially, postal fraud via eBay over the internet -- and Chicago police simply refused to do anything about it. But the victim, via Mac support groups online, found a connection between the perpetrator and the south suburb of Markham -- one of Chicago's poorest suburbs -- and Markham police were only too happy to get involved and set up a sting operation. While they didn't recover the computer, they did arrest the perpetrator (with the arresting officer disguised as a delivery driver), lots of counterfeit checks and fake ID's and some likely stolen computer equipment, and in the process broke an electronics theft ring. What those law enforcement types that won't get involved don't acknowledge is how often something much bigger is going on. www.macworld.com/article/157188/scammer.html
I used an airtag in my saddlebag (hidden inside the inner layer) and it worked perfectly. When I put it inside the seat tube, the signal was gone, even when standing next to the bike. I think they’re just not strong enough, and admittedly, not built for this either. They are meant for things that you lose in your surroundings, like you keys or wallet (or pet), not necessarily taken away by someone else. But we’re tempted use them for theft protection because there is no better alternative.
That makes sense, although it must have had enough signal to broadcast its location at some point if the last known location was where they left it. And the airtag was put in away from that area. Really odd
You both are wrong. Sorry to say but the reason why I had an air tag work in my saddle bag and not the pipe is because when you put it in the pipe it becomes a faraday cage and with a faraday cage by faraday's law means absolutely zero. Electromagnetic frequency can enter or escape so you won't get a ping. The only reason the tile might have pinged is that he opened up or pulled out the seat and didn't notice it
Can’t believe he was expecting to be able to track an AirTag surrounded by metal tubing. A bit like trying to make a call on a mobile phone from inside a closed shipping container.
@@jonjones2536even with a carbon bike?
Yeah you need a GPS tracker with it's own sim card so it can connect to cellular networks imo
Seeing a footage from Ukraine after russian airstrike at 24:34 when mentioning Poland was quite harsh
Showing three black guys and a Police car when talking about drug users... also great ethical reporting.
It is a joke that the solution is essentially "too bad, deal with it" rather than trying to actually force a solution. Yes a lot of them are drug addicts, people with issues etc but why should that mean hard working people that saved for these bikes should suffer. Maybe there's a broader requirement about drug rehabilitation and homeless aid, but surely it's not a solution to just not be able to lock bikes up outside. Hard working people squeezed in the middle again by both criminals and others who are already costing the system so much, nevermind adding their criminal activities on top of it. Either make the punishment harder or improve rehabilitation for criminals, not just leave things as they are.
It feels like stealing is actually normalised! How crazy is that?
Cause it's a societal issue. As seen in the video it's a lot of times people at the bottom of the society dealing with issue and theft being their only solution. Like even if the cops got the bikes back, is the societal issue of how unbelievably bad that the people at the bottom have it solved? NO! All the politicians that love to go "we'll be tough on crime" and what not, are at best dealing the dealing with the end effect rather than actual cause. Because who cares that there's a cop on every corner and the crime rate is basically zero, when the people at the bottom can't afford food
Mate, its not poor people who are putting the squeeze on the working class
Fantastic comment.
Unfortunately, the criminal justice system, police, prisons, etc require root and branch reform.
@@N1CKSOWell said.
Left my brand new blue Raleigh in front of a thrift store window. Looked down for 15 seconds, and one of the clerks said: "Is that your bike?", but it was too late. Phoned the police, and they gave me a ride home, with the thief in the back of their van, apologizing profusely to me, saying he didn't know it was my only wheels. (At the time, I had no car.) Why it would have been ok to steal my bike if I owned a car, I don't quite understand. Two good D locks, locking both the wheel and frame, parked in a high visibility area, and still pray that it doesn't get abused or stolen.
We recall many years ago someone at GCN Megabase witnessed a bike being stolen 5m away from the owner! A thief just ran past and grabbed it and got on it - long gone 😟
@@gcn all these stories / incidents eyewitness-reports are reasons why I *NEVER* leave my bike unattended. Where I go, it goes* (even the damn loo) (and inside department-stores also). I don’t give a damn if they don’t let me in. The bike’s coming with me or I’m not coming inside. *PERIOD*.
* (the bike *LITERALLY* never leaves my-side. everywhere I go, it goes. everywhere I walk, it walks)
After having had 3 or 4 bikes stolen in my life over the years, i never ever leave my bike alone or unwatched. Even on a mass sportive at the food zone I always stay close to it.
Hi All. Some two years ago I had two bikes stolen from my garage in the early hours. I had to stand and watch while four low lives broke in and I am on the phone to the police reporting an active burglary. No the police did not respond in time to save my bikes I watched as they rode away on mopeds with my loved items, they were not of great value but they were mine. The police did turn up ten minutes after the event took a statement and gave me a crime number. I think that if they can't turn up to an active crime there is not much hope of them worrying about are property once it has gone. Make sure you lock your bikes even if they are in your property as you can not be sure they won't get in and take what belongs to you.
Great Video. It would be very interesting to do the same thing at train stations. After having my bike stolen from Harpenden Station, a few months ago. Some light research found that the thefts there were very organised. Between the staff working at the station and the taxi rank, they told me that a van would turn up everyday around lunch time without fail. Quickly scan for cheap locks, use a pair of bolt cutters and grab what they could. I was unlucky that day as I had forgotten my usual D-lock, and used a back up cable lock. Thinking it would be fine as I'd only be leaving my bike at the station from 7.30am - 5.30pm on a Tuesday. It baffles me as to why they can't catch the people, or at least prevent them. Especially with 24/7 CCTV surveillance and around the clock station staff.
It's not station staff's job to confront criminals most likely. In fact that's probably something that they are encouraged not to do as they could get hurt. The only people who are really able to respond to a bike theft are: the police, or yourself playing vigilante.
@ I get that, but they could maybe take a note of the vehicles that are regularly hanging around, checking the bike locks and pass on that information to the police. Just a thought
Thieves are criminals. There is no gray area.
Did anybody got the joke - “We bought it for 500 pounds off eBay, so no, it wasn’t stollen” 🤣🤣🤣
Si and the GCN team, thanks for the great video! ❤ It brought back some painful memories 😁Five years ago, my first hardtail was stolen in broad daylight near Alexanderplatz in Berlin. The really shocking part was that it was locked up less than 200 meters from the police station - a police officer could have witnessed the theft, given the proximity. I'm not blaming the police, but it highlights how quickly someone can cut through a lock (even a good folding one, like mine) and disappear with a bike. I reported it and searched online for months, but it was never recovered. Berlin's proximity to the Polish border means stolen bikes often vanish within hours. Thankfully, I had insurance and was reimbursed, but it was still a huge hassle and meant weeks without my bike.
The lesson I learned? Now I ride the cheapest bike I can find, one that nobody would bother stealing. It's proven to be the safest option. I wish I could ride the bike of my dreams in the city without having to resort to such a cheap alternative.
Had one bike stolen and another had parts stolen a few months ago in London. CCTV was available in both cases.
In one case the police could see who it was but suggested I not pursue as it costs tax payers money. Yes they actually said that to me over the phone.
In the other case they didn't attempt to look at the CCTV until 2 months later when it was no longer available so nothing at all was done.
There's a serious gap here. Police won't help, and you're not allowed to help yourself.
CCTV can only be accessed by police due to data protection, but they don't consider it important enough to use.
"Bike thieves beware, we are watching you." Hardly.
"Sorry, mate, but it costs the taxpayers too much."
"Oh, I forgot to mention someone thought he might have yelled a vaguely anti-gay slur."
One hour later, the perp's head is being held against the pavement with four cops on him.
Criminals shouldn't be entitled to such protection.
You infringe on someone else's rights, you lose your own
We can just move to Japan and stay safe there… at least that’s my plan
I just want to say that this was an exceptional video. Well done GCN despite the sad nature of the reality of bike theft.
In a funny coincidence to this video, last year I built a custom Niner RIP RDO with and for my son. It was stolen from our basement and I also found it on OLX in Ukraine using image searches and checking the OLX platforms of several eastern countries...some of the sellers there even advertise "used bikes from western europe".
I tried to reason with the seller and ended up threatening him with legal consequences. But eventually there was nothing I could really do. Even though the bike was worth at least 4k € it was not worth the nerves and bad feelings to go as far as Damien did. Much of my conversations with the thief happened around Christmas and I realized it all really made me angry and negative and threatened to ruin Christmas with my family.
I just let it go.
We had insurance but the bike meant a lot to me as I built it with my son and hunted parts for over a year.
It's a sad state of affairs that our bikes get stolen and nothing can be done about it by the authorities. Even sadder that the people we are trying to support are robbing us.
Give that person's address to Putin.
He will crop up on Russian propaganda and know the truth.
The reason you could not find your bike through the air tags is because when you put your air tag in that pipe and then put the seat over it, you pretty much put a faraday cage around it, thus meaning it can't reach out. It needs to be open from any metal surrounding.
Glad someone came to say this. Silly GCN
It's a carbon bike smart guy
@@iknowzeverything2740 some how managed to disable the airtag (they work perfectly fine inside metal objects just the Bluetooth beacon range is reduced)
He put the AirTag in before he put ithe bike at the cafe, so, if it didnt work it would not have recognized being moved to the new spot.
I'm glad in switzerland police actually takes action when you bring them location of a tracker and gets it for you when you can proove it's yours
In the US it's difficult to get police action because you say a tracker is showing your stolen anything is somewhere because they're not 100% accurate especially if it's a high density area like an apartment building.
Usually the best they can do is a knock and talk but even that's stretching it from what I understand.
The flip side is if you're the one accused of having stolen property with only a air tag as proof.
Definitely, one of your best videos. ...I only lock up bikes with quick release wheels; lock the front wheel to the frame near the rear wheel and bike rack with a heavy-duty lock, taking the quick-release skewer with you. Sometimes I even take the front wheel with me if convenient.
I've had 2 near misses in the past 6 months. The first it was locked to a rack out the front of a university library - busy main entrance, lighting, lots of people around, even security guys. Thankfully my lock held out long enough against the angle grinder they were using for somebody to fetch a security guard who chased them off (and then secured my bike for me until I got back). I'm glad I had a decent lock. But I couldn't get over the sheer audacity of guys with a van and angle grinder stealing from that location.
The second was more of a mugging, somebody had been lurking nearby (on a busy high street) waiting for the moment I unlocked the bike, ran in grabbed the bike and tried to get away with it. Thankfully I was holding on and close to the bike rack so he was unsuccessful. But it scared the hell out of me tbh. I don't know how to protect against that. again, daylight, busy shopping street, it's not like I was down some dark alleyway by myself.
but, though those two things happened close together, they're the only times I've had a bike stolen (I am not counting the time I literally left my bike unlocked leaning against my garden wall that one time, because that's really on me. I basically gave that away)
This was excellent. So glad GCN has figured out how to stay in business, and continually improve. Thank you for what you do!
Thank you so much for the feedback
The carbon material of the frame blocks the AirTag signal - this is why they make external mounts for AirTags!!!
Bump this comment!!!
That makes no sense - carbon should be transparent to radio waves. Steel or aluminum tubes might block the signal though.
@ well you’re welcome to try for yourself. It doesn’t work on my carbon frame. Do you know how a faraday pouch works? The carbon is essentially the same thing in this context.
@ and FYI the AirTag works fine in my aluminium and steel cars haha
Yep. I have experience with airtags and I also think this. All is not lost though... 😉 All it needs is someone with an iPhone to get very close and the location will update. Also, because the signal is partially blocked the battery in the airtag will last longer probably 15 to 18 months
Thank you so much for this informative content, Richardson. A year ago, a friend of mine who runs a fancy bike store in suburban Paris had 20 e-bikes (including high-brand ones such as Cube, Moustache and Cannondale, etc.) stolen overnight by a professional thieving gang who had managed to witch off the alarm. The financial loss was so dire it almost forced him to shut down.
After personally had 2 Décathlon entry-level bikes robbed in Paris, it incentivized to level up with a hydraulic disc heavy-duty urban bike (Giant Escape II) that I consider virtually theft-proof due to his 4 powerful locks:
- NY KRYPTONITE for the top tube & city bike rack
- AXA ring lock for the rear wheel
- AXE cable to secure the seat post
- AUVRAY 5-digit padded chain for the front wheel
Thanks for the comment. This is such a shame about your friends shop suffering so badly financially due to the theft, as well as your own bike theft experiences. It sounds like your Giant does the job now with its 4 locks!
I have not had a bike stolen in 40 years. All my expensive road bikes have never been left unattended even to go inside a washroom when I am alone. Insurance in Toronto costs 1/3 the price of the bike. Ergo, I deposited the first year insurance premium into a separate bank account and then each month topped it up with the insurance premium that i would have paid to the insurance company. After two years I had the replacement cost available if the bike was stolen. It is called self-insurance and is cheaper,
UK has an interesting channel from a service that tracks down stolen motorcycles and construction equipment. Amazing how little interested the police are in the apparent thefts despite the value of some of the equipment well in excess of $50k and how constricted the tracking service is facilitating the recovery. If the stolen item is on private property all they can do is wait for the police hours at a time and sometimes watch it being moved before the police arrive.
I'm a commuter. A few years back I rode my gravel bike (I'm now a fixed gear rider) to uni, where I found out I had left my lock at home. I asked a friend and classmate who had come in his bike as well if we could lock'em together. When the class ended and we walked out to our bikes his was gone, and yet mine remained. It was most definitely a bittersweet day.
Well done! Thisnis tthe type of GCN content i love: thoughtful, smart and beautifully produced!
Ex NYC prosecutor here again. If my experience taught me anything, it's that most crimes occur because of despair, greed, stupidity, or combinations thereof. Since society lacks the collective will to tackle the sources of despair, desperate people will continue to do desperate things. Greed is generally incurable (hence corporate wrongdoing, the fines imposed for which said corporations account for in their budgets) and stupidity is eternal.
Also: Evil exists.
That’s very well put! Thanks for the comment.
Well done for getting your bikes back. I can see you’re a honest lad. What a horrible world we live in. Good luck for the future.
Bike security is a "feature" that should be taken more seriously by the bike industry, rather than pumping marketing money into "high end features that don't really benefit the majority of cyclists.
As cars used to have exclusive door & ignition keys, maybe bikes also should have multiple locking (theft prevention) systems, one as part of the bike that can be unlocked (locking wheels/bottom brackets etc) with face recognition (via linked app or an on bike system) or some sort of air tag style device that can kept seperate on a keychain as well as a good old fashioned chain/lock.
Lack of this kind of technology is preventing me from upgrading bike, whats the point of buying a bicycle or e bike for business and/or social if theres a good chance it will get nicked and thousands of pounds will be thrown down the drain, for a lot of people they may as well buy a car...
This is why I have a beater bike that I leave locked for errands and stuff, my nice bike never sees a lock.
bike security needs to be taken more seriously by bike owners too.
What bikes need is the equivalent of a VIN number, tracked by some central database. It's not like cops scour the streets for your stolen car, but that way if it DOES come around, get abandoned, get towed, tried to be sold etc. they will know. I think that's the main difference between bikes and cars. Apart from most cars costing a lot more, at least
My bike was stolen from my apartment garage several years ago at Christmas. I was out of town and didn't even realize it when I got back initially. The thief sold it to a pawn shop, someone bought it to flip it. I found it in February the next year, went to look at it and took it back. I'm omitting some details but I did it as legally as possible. The police didn't give a fuck even when I told them where the bike was so I had to either let it go or take it back. I definitely got lucky finding it posted online close enough to where I could retrieve it. The cops told me that the thief served time for this but I'm sure it was nothing for him and well worth the money he got but thankfully there wasn't a scratch on it.
One piece of advice... know your serial # .... my bike was stolen, a friend saw a guy in it so I went to retrieve it. The cops were called and because I didn't know my # , even though I had pics, they wouldn't let me take my bike. It went to the police station and a couple days later they let me pick it up. The problem also was the bike shop was closed for a month, so I couldn't get the # that they had on file. It was an addict who stole it, I now registered by bikes with Garage 529 .
More advice: In the US, put your DL# on your bike. It makes recovery WAY easier for LE.
An amazing story. Some of the stories you do are inspiring and gut wrenching as when Ollie took us along to Taiwan. Most of your stories about trying out crazy and fun ideas you come up with but we would never do. And a few like these are more sobering. Well done.
thanks for the feedback Alan! We really value it
You definitely should have reported it to the police. Bike theft is rife. And this is a rare example where there’s more proof…
If people don't report crimes Police funding gets cut because it all looks rosy.
Encouraging crime and then not reporting it just sucks.
My guess is that the location of the airtag shielded it from the communication it needed to grab passing signals. If there was a consistently close signal, it would post a location, but shielded through the carbon near the bottom bracket, someone would need to be pretty damn close for an extended period of time. It would be interesting to see one mounted inconspicuously outside the bike like a bottle cage enclosure.
they sell air tag holders that are reflectors, or fit under a bottle cage, they even have one that will fit inside a tire under the stem.. meant to be used for tubeless setups.
Problem with air tags is even androids will alert you after about 10 minutes that a tracker is following you.
they will also make noise to alert people upon movement, so if you want to use an air tag you need to open them up and pluck out the speaker.
Exactly, it’s almost like dropping the tag/tile into a Faraday cage.
Airtag will not update if it is moving with iphone(maybe androids too). It is for prevent anyone stalking people with it.
Exactly what I was thinking, the bikes bottom bracket shielded the signal, it was a clever concealment location but it impeded the signal.
I think even you break the speaker the airtag will not update if someone iphone bt connected it and moving with it. Even the airtag is shared from you fd/family it will not update untill it disconnect from the phone+ there other iphone passing it. Maybe also there are some hiddern algorithm to detect is it in a public places. The iphone network decide is it good to post that location to the user.
I saw a scruffy bloke on that bike in Bath last weekend in that same part of town. Pointed it out to my mate that it looked stolen!
strange comment .....how does a bike look stolen......you mean you recognised the bike from this video and knew it was stolen
@andyswinburn the bike looked stolen because it had a scruffy guy riding it. Coincidence that I then watched this vid and realised it was the same bike.
One of our riding group had two chained to the floor bikes stolen from a locked shed while he was home, as brazen as it gets. One was a Specialized ebike & when it was switched on a couple of days later, it checked in with Specialized, geolocating itslef in the process. Spesh gave the data to the Police who weren't interested. I get the cops are overstretched & have bigger fish to fry but this was still a £13k loss for a Spesh turbo Levo & an Epic xc bike.
Would have thought they would jump at an "easy collar" to pad their stats
Someone I knew had a different piece of expensive sporting equipment stolen (ironically from the carpark behind the Police station).
The Police weren't interested, even when they were given the name and address of the Perp!
They only became interested, when she told them she was going to visit the Perp with several of her large male friends ............. and only then it seemed like all they were interested in was making sure the Perp didn't get a kicking.
The Perp was known to the police, and they found other stolen items at the address.
Your mates who found your bike decided not to do anything but just phoned you to let you know they’ve seen it. Some mates, if that was me who saw your bike and you’ve positively identified it then I’d have tried to seize it, given the dangers around it or would have contacted the police and tried to stay with it to make sure you got your bike back and not just phoned you and do nothing.
Haha like the UK police would do anything!
no you tell em its a tv show the bikes got a tracker weve got footage of you , GIVE US the bike NOW and they would! Theses guys are weedlings , youtube makes these types popular for nothing, gritty lads have to throw themselves down a mountain to get half the promotion..
We called so that they could arrange a camera operator, and then the bike was gone.. 🤷♂
@ Ok, I understand
@@gmbn A camera operator?? You've all got iphones capable of high quality 4k footage. Saying the bike just disappeared and never came back online again is likely a flat out lie too. Just be honest and say you were worried about the optics of taking it back, cause we all know that's the most likely truth. Just seems really half-arsed to commit to the sting, then back off again TBH
Great show! Great sad content! We had our expensive bikes stollen from Downtown Oshawa Ontario Central Library, right next to City Hall, very high trafficked area. First clue should have been being met by security officer entering the Library. Noted security cameras on the building and thought we were ok. Came out hour later entire bike rack empty. Reported to the Librarian and she said "Oh,ya, it happens all the time!" We asked about cameras? "Oh, they're not pointed to the bike racks!" Asked her why there was no warning sign....just a shrug. Reported to police and friends and scoured socials and never got them back. Apparently even though security walks the block, the theives time it to clear the rack in the interim. They use a battery angle grinder and clear them all into a van. I think you should mention 529 Garage for North American watchers. Some successful recoveris there. Addiction is the hell that bike thieves live in every day but it hurts us too!
Bike Index helped my Trek get returned to me after it was stolen! Totally worth the time to do the free registration, and a donation to them.
I've often advocated that instead or maybe to do as well, is to donate used bikes to the down and out and also provide a mobile repair service for houseless bike owners to reduce some of the demand for stolen bikes. Having a bike, as we know can improve your mobility and make a difficult life just a little bit easier. One last comment, we should ban cable locks, stop selling them full stop.
Hold on, when the Pinarello was seen in that doorway, why wasn't it taken hold of & recovered?
idiots. that's why. Just because they're homeless doesn't make them above the law. His friends should have taken the bike.
They should have just gone up to the geezer and taken it, what’s the homeless geezer gonna do? Fight you for it in broad daylight? 🙄
@@oliverchong2428 They have been known to attack people here in the US.
@@oliverchong2428 They could have small, a small, concealed weapon, possibly with a blade and the situation could escalate. In which case I recommend wearing a Hiplok lite around your hip. Makes for a great self-defender.
Thanks!
Thank you!
I had two emtb's a hardtail mtb and electric scooter stolen from my garage one night last year, probably £12000 in total.
Even though a neighbour has numerous cctv cameras on his property and would have captured good evidence, the police weren't interested, they didn't even visit just issued a crime number for my insurance company.
Back before Apple Air Tags and such trackers were invented, we (law enforcement) used to suggest a method of marking one's bike that is still good today... in addition to using good locks and showing how to best apply them one of the things we suggested was to engrave the owner's driver license number on parts of the frame that are not readily visible, like the underside of the top tube and/or the down tube, and be sure to also engrave what state the DL number is from. In the United States, every state has a 2-letter abbreviation, so for instance if you have a Texas driver license you would engrave (without the quotes) "TX DL (insert driver license number here)." This might work in other countries as well, since an officer who encounters a bike with such a number can immediately find out on his computer or through the dispatcher who the number belongs to. The agency I worked for lent out engravers for this purpose and brought them to community meetings to use there, but these days one can buy them inexpensively and a person might want to own one and engrave more of their property with such identifying information. They are very easy to use - they look like a pen and you write with them the same way.
One question - did you actually test the AirTag once you’d put it in the frame? I know that inside a metal frame they would be essentially useless, and I’ve read that even a carbon frame can seriously affect their performance.
That’s what I was thinking, by putting it in the frame it reduced its range so drastically that it simply won’t be picked up by nearby devices so won’t update on Find My!
The fact that the tag and tile were still registering the original lock-up location of the bike suggests it was working originally because Si fitted it at home.
@@steveh9428 or was that the location it registered before it went in the bike?
@@steveh9428 That is a good point, but it only demonstrates that the tag was registering someone who was right with the bike for an extended period of time. It doesn’t mean that it’s performance in registering with devices on casual passers by - which is exactly what you’re relying on in this situation - hasn’t been compromised.
(All of which does highlight a serious limitation with AirTags anyway - for them to work properly, they do need to be mounted in a way that makes them easier to identify and remove. And that’s before you get into the conflict between their anti stalking features and their effectiveness as theft tracking devices).
Or the AirTag has not been in the range of any Apple device with Bluetooth on and find my network active. Given the AirTag doesn’t send any position or data, but relies on the device (iPhone, ipad, Apple Watch) data and position.
Such a good video Si, love the fact that you had multiple components and mini stories to it, this felt like professional journalism, a far cry from the “content” you see on some other channels!
If the government wants to promote sustainable transport it needs to take this more seriously. I'd use my bike more for things like shopping in town if I didn't think there was a good chance of it going missing one day. Thieves know there's no follow-up so there's zero deterrent.
I had a Brompton stolen from Exhibition Road in London on a weekday afternoon. A busy road with cctv from the Natural History museum. Never seen again. I was glad I’d not got round to fixing the slow puncture in the front tyre…
The police and the criminal justice system that we all pay for should sort this. I had a bike stolen from inside my van, parked in a caravan park, under a security camera and the police just couldn't give a fu@k.
Dont blame them. what do you expect them to do? They arrest people everyday and watch corrupt judges give them slaps on the wrist.
Too busy on FB and X looking at speech crime.
If they aren't going to worry about thousands of girls being serially tortured, they aren't going to bother with a bike.
Amazing video! it took me back to quality GCN days! please do more, love and felt the passion!
Organized groups dismantle stolen bicycles and send them to Kaliningrad in cardboard boxes. There they are offered for sale on a Russian marketplace. There are a few documentaries about it on German TV here on YT.
I cycle and lock my bike up a lot in London. When off out in the evening to gigs and pubs etc. I take my rim-braked hybrid. It wasn’t an expensive bike and is a few years old now but it seemingly looks less worth stealing to bike thieves. It’s such a useful bike because of that
This is the most interesting video you guys have produced in a long time. I
thank you, what else would you like to see us make?! Let us know 👇
cheers
I rebuilt my friends really crappy bike so it was actually rideable for the sole purpose of learning how to rebuild a bike. When I was done I purposely left it unlocked unattended outside his apartment building for someone to take. I had already bought him a refurbished bike so this one wasn’t needed. We went inside to play a board game and came back out 30 minutes later and it was gone. Fast forward about 6 months we were walking around the courtyard to the same apartment complex. And I swear I saw the same bike flipped over in someone’s patio area. We stood there looking at it for a minute and this guy walks up behind us and says “you like my bike?”. “Yeah” I said. “I used to have one that looked just like it.” The guy replies shadily “Oh?,well this ain’t it.” We walked away. Thing is I did a custom pain job on it swapped out the brakes. That was definitely the same bike. Shame I was really hoping a homeless person from the encampment down the road would have snatched it.
Unfortunately you effectively put your tag in a faraday cage with the tube placement. So they'd only update if someone was practically touching it.
I have biked to work for over 35 years. I live in a town of about 25,000. I’ve had lights stolen off my bikes twice and once someone stole the seat and post with reflector attached, yet the bike was still there! Unlocked!
175000 in the us? thats rookie numbers in the Netherlands its between 468000 and 772000!
There are no bikes in car country
that number is huge in The Netherlands!
If you watch magnet fishing content, you will know that a large part of those are just thrown in a canal. I guess, you steal the bike, ride where you want to go, throw it in the nearby canal, no evidence, no problem. 🤣
@@geirmyrvagnes8718that or they throw a locked bike over the railing for “fun”.
Lots of stolen high quality bikes used to end up on Brick Lane market.
And they weren’t being bought by people who wanted a bike to go to the pub on.
Well done fellow riders. Bravo.
The reason that the AirTag and Tile didn’t work is because the bike frame acts as a faraday cage which limits the signal unless you’re practically on top of it with your phone, rendering it effectively untraceable and useless at long distances.
Another thing you can do is remove the speaker in the AirTag (there’s many videos online of how to do this) then you can see where it is, and it takes thieves longer to locate
Does carbon act as a faraday cage?
@ it has the possibility too, especially if the seat post is metal
@@spence12334 Carbon fiber is electrical conductive, contains carbon, and that's why acts as a faraday cage
@@spence12334
Carbon, Steel, Iron, Copper, Aluminium - anything conductive will make a Faraday cadge.
@@cristibaluta everyday is a school day. Thanks
My trusty hybrid was stolen from my shed eighteen months ago, and of course, it was never recovered. The bike had done over 10,000 miles and was in dire need of vast quantities of money spending on it. So I like to think that I had the last laugh...
Both sets of disc brakes were knackered and needed to be completely replaced as the adjusters had seized solid. Because the brake mechanisms were knackered, I hadn't bothered to replace the pads as I was considering upgrading the brakes to a superior model which took different pads. The chainrings were worn beyond belief to the point that I'm amazed the chain didn't slip over the teeth. The chain was due for a change too, but I held off because of the badly worn chainrings.
All the cables needed changing as they were getting clogged with crap and had the said 10,000 miles under their collective belts.
The front wheel was badly buckled (but rideable) thanks to an angry motorist who thought it was acceptable to kick the heck out of my front wheel. _Don't worry, I returned the favour on his driver's door!_
I'm also sure that the thief (or thieves) were unlikely to be wearing SPD-compatible footwear. I've ridden my bike wearing ordinary trainers and I can confirm that SPD pedals are not very comfortable to push against without suitable footwear.
So, all in all, I wasn't too upset they stole the bike. The cost of parts would likely have been similar to what I paid for the bike in the first place. It was therefore, a great excuse to upgrade to something a little more expensive as a little treat to myself.
This happened to us in Bath when we were students there 2003-2007. My friends bike was stolen, I came across it locked up by Sainsbury's. We waited for the owner to come out. Not sure how good an idea that was. The seat was up high enough for a giant. We also called the police and we had already reported the bike stolen. The guy came out. He was tall. He was actually pretty nice and said he'd paid £120 for it in the last week. He also mentioned that he was known to the police and didn't want to hang about, but we could go to his flat in Twerton and pick it up. Can't remember exactly why he didn't give it back to us then and there. But astonishingly, we were able to visit his flat in Twerton, it was the right address, and he handed the bike back. We gave him a four pack of lager. He said thanks, but that he preferred weed.
Luckily it wasn't me as he wouldn't have got the Lager but might have got a few extras for taking my stuff in the first place.
Just put a nice strong lock on it and a note asking them to remove theirs
Just a few weeks ago, I went out for a bike ride and locked the bike up outside a café. When I came to unlock it, the key just wouldn’t work this was one of those U locks. I asked the café if they had a bolt cutter or angle grinder, but they said no, so I just told them that I would be back in an hour or so, with my own angle grinder! When I came back the same person I spoke to wasn’t there, But clearly wanted my bike back, so I just started at it with a grinder; nobody said anything, nobody approached me, and worse than that, it took me less than 30 seconds to cut through the lock… Just goes to prove that in most cases locks are there to stop casual theft, but not stop those that have Real intent, and the right tools!
Thankfully, local to me, we have the Tees Valley Walking and Cycling Hubs, which are, I believe, run by Sustrans. They offer free, secure bike parking in 5 local towns and are a brilliant resource for cyclists as they also do free bike MOTs and give maintenance advice too.
That is a fantastic service they offer!
I had my bike stolen from a rack on the Embarcadero in San Francisco back in 2010. They opened the U lock with ease and it was gone. While sad, I had insurance and they didn’t steal my wife’s bike that was literally next to mine. Her’s was a carbon fiber road bike, mine was an aluminum hybrid bike. But her’s is super small while mine was average size. Bike theft in SF has been rampant and organized for decades.
I am a bicycle mechanic, and when I purchased my new bicycle, I did the following 1) I wrote down the frame number on the original invoice 2) took a photo of the frame number on my phone. 3) I wrote my post code on the side post.
This is always a good idea to do, but obviously it doesn't stop your bike being stolen (and potentially never getting it back), it just means that, if necessary, you should then be able to prove to authorities that it IS indeed your bike.
Numbers don't really matter. And if someone gets scared by numbers, they just disassemble the whole thing and sell parts.
Sy, I remember watching a video about air tags and bikes related to the best locations to put an AirTag. The video specifically found that AirTags located within the frame were blocked by the carbon fiber. AirTags needed to be located outside the frame.
Great video on the video. Love what you do with the channel.
Really? A Pinarello road bike? What do you expect? What truly sucks is when your home made rubbish Aluminium 105/LX mix, properly locked is stolen by someone who unscrewed 5 street signs from a post to lift the bike with its lock over the 3m tall post!
Put a tracker in between your rear tire and tube. The pressure of the tire keeps the tag silent and the last thing the thieves do is remove the back wheel.
Not a good advert for AirTags and Tiles . Great video guys. thanks
Bloody marvellous bit of documentary. Particularly love Rich randomly finding it in a shop doorway!
When you put an AirTag into a metal enclosure such as a bike frame it limits its range significantly
Personally it was disabled the moment he put it in the bike frame (or was disabled before it was installed maybe used Duracell cr2032 as the older ones have a too thick Brita bad taste coating making them unreliable or not work inside airtag due to the design of the airtag contact points are too soft ) or accidentally factory reset it by taking the battery out and in multiple times in a short period (when the bike was there he should have done a search nearby and sounder test it tell you if it triggered or failed)
Or the thief was smart and actually found it on the spot and taken battery out and just dropped it behind the fence or in the nearest bin
Tile is useless (just tells you where it was when it lost a signal to the tile it's reliant on other people to have the Tile app installed which is generally no one)
@@leexgx Firstly it was a carbon frame, secondly he did say it was irretrievable since it was lodged in the seat tube and he checked it was working after installing it.
@@bikeman123 it was presumed working (you press find when next to it and it makes a connection and press the sounder it tell you if it's sounding or can't connect) don't trust the previous location report (it was probably obtained just before it was dropped into the bike)
or the bike thief removed it and taken the battery out of it
Nice to see Simon has recovered from his experience in Colditz, following his exploits in leading the SAs Rogue Heroes as Major David Stirling…..
I don’t give a dam about who it is stealing the bike
We all have choices in life ,you letting this bloke get away with it is wrong because you are passing on the misery to someone else.
The blokes who found the bike should have taken it back or phoned the police
They are what’s wrong with the UK today …. Soft touch and that’s why people exploit the country.
Toughen up !
Oh great video though 👍
Absolutely agree. Walk over and take it back. Grow a backbone. People like this is why they continue to do it. Everyone is way too soft to actually fight for their own property.
nobody seems bothered by getting back a bike they paid £500 for and locked up outside with a £3 lock for weeks and they ponder why it happened then just accept it!
drives me nuts.
Incredible story that poor guy…must have been out of his mind. Great video 👍🏼
I can tell you the name and address of an eBay seller in Trowbridge who sold my friends custom painted enduro frame back to him after it was stolen about 5 miles from your studio, GCN. Police took no action even given a name, address and evidence. We thought firebombing the house would be a bit extreme, but only a bit!
😳
Really good balanced summary. All made total sense. We need to look at the Netherlands to see how to deal with ebikes and scooters
I don't understand why you would put "How We Got It Back" in the video title when you DIDN'T get it back