Dan The Man

There is a city bike unlocked down the street from me. It has been there for about a week now. The front tire is tacoed, and it looks like the front fork might be bent as well. It has a baby carrier on the back and looks like it was a nice bike that got abandoned after an accident or got kicked in by drunks.

Anyways, the bike has a nice Nexus internally geared hub and dynamo front hub. I'm thinking of getting an internally geared bike for winter riding. Would it be morally wrong to just go up to the bike and strip out the parts that I want?

itsthewoo

Yes it is. Get the police to pick it up and leave a note or something. The police will let you take it after a specified period of time.

billyymc

I do'nt know. What's the difference between that and finding and picking up things w hile you ride. If I find a nice Leatherman multi-tool on the road, it might have a value of $40 - am I supposed to turn it in? Sounds like that bike isn't worth much more than that. So where do you draw the line on keeping lost or abandoned stuff? The police will probably not pick up a piece of junk like it sounds like this bike is. So it will go into a landfill...which might be more morally wrong than salvaging what is obviously been junked by someone.

CCrew

So, if you were injured and couldn't get back to where your bike was for a week or so it's fair game? How would you feel to find it missing?

Do you also strip parts off of cars that have dents in the fenders that haven't moved in a week?


Thieves are the lowest form of scum. They're like the pedophiles of the bike world.

billyymc

Or, maybe, to not be so dramatic, they're like the thieves of the bike world. Drama queen.

abdon 

I love these easy questions.

Let's see... does the bike belongs to you? If the answer is no, then it would be morally wrong to steal from it.

Sounds like a stolen bike that got run into the ground. If you want to do what is right, turn it over to the police. With a bit of luck the owner reported it stolen and can be reunited with what's left.

For the sake of argument let's say that this is what happened. Put yourself into that situation; somebody steals your bike, breaks the wheel and leaves it on the side of the road. What would you call the person that turns it over to the police so you can have it back? Now, what would you call the person that instead finds it and strips the good stuff off?

Northwestrider

+ 1 to what itsthewoo said, just call the police.

billyymc

Where I live, being on the border between suburban and rural, the only law enforcement with jursidiction is the NYS Police. If I called them about a beat up bike that someone left in the street, they'd laugh at me and tell me to move it out of the street. Then they'd go about their more important business.

I guess the option to report it to police, or to some authority/agency who is responsible for stolen/abandoned bikes, is probably easier in urban areas. But the OP didn't say where he lives. On my street, if someone left a beat up bicycle in front of my house, I'd move it into my yard -- far enough from the road so the scrap metal scavengers wouldnt' take it. If nobody claimed it in a week or two, I'd salvage what I could off it and throw the rest to the scrappers.

drmweaver2

How about this - take the entire bike off the street and place a FOUND ad in the classifieds and on craigslist.
Repeat for 10 business days. No response? It's yours.

MMACH 5

I'm always baffled by the "moral dilemma."

Dude, it's not your bike. Yes, it's stealing. These are things I'm sure you learned in kindergarten. You're just trying to find a way around them.

Sheesh, I'm an atheist and think it's wrong. What does that tell you?

Dan The Man

This is in the middle of downtown. The police see this bike 20 times every day. I imagine they would pass it on to city garbage collection if someone complained.

mustachiod

I have found things, brought them to the station and asked if i could keep them after a certain amount of time.

when they call back and say the owner appreciated my honesty, i feel good
when they call and say I can come and get it, i feel good

pretty simple decision here

bobdell

pedalphile?

itsthewoo

You're just trying to justify circumventing the one possible obstacle between you and stealing--yes, stealing--the aforementioned bike parts.

xizangstan

Taking anything that isn't yours is called theft. What are you so confused about? Is it really that complicated?

Remind me to not leave my wallet laying out on my bedroom dresser when you come to visit.

JanMM

Removing something that has been thrown away/abandoned can be OK.
Is it on public space or private property? For whatever that's worth.

Monster Pete

Exactly. If it's obviously been abandoned/dumped and has been there for a very long time (like some of the siezed up bikes dotted around my university) then it's not such a big thing to take some bits, as in this case I would class it as salvage. By abandoning it, the owner has effectively given it to whoever wants it. I would make sure it's definately abandoned though, by telling the police about it. If no one claims it, it's fair game.

The abandoned bikes here are mostly left behind by foreign exchange students going home and leaving their bikes here. The chains get completely solid with rust, the tyres rot, the whole bike generally acquires a layer of dust and cobwebs, before getting picked clean down to the frame by people scrounging for parts. In your case, the owner might have just left it for a while and forgotten to lock it. I'd make sure no one wants it before you claim any parts.

CCrew

You've clearly never had a bike stolen. And considering that pedophiles are about the scum of the normal human population comparing them in the bike world is a pretty solid analogy.

Or you can pile on with the rest of the posters here that think taking it's just fine..oh, wait, there aren't any

xtrajack

+1 Win all the way around.
Last fall my wife and I were on the way to her daughter's, I noticed a bike in the woods, no houses near, I told my wife if it was still there when we came back I would stop and pick it up. It was, I did. I then called the police told them where I found it, they sent an officer out to pick it up.

It got returned to the rightful owner, I felt good. I felt almost as good as I felt when I recovered my bike, after it was stolen

Dan The Man

I have had my bike stolen before and I know it's not fun. Anyways, there is no doubt that this bike was abandoned. Nobody accidentally leaves a bike with a trashed wheel and frame unlocked for a week (almost two now) downtown. The ethical dilemma I was talking about was just taking the parts that I wanted and leaving the rest where it was. I never got around to it in the end, and the bicycle disappeared sometime last night between 11 pm and 8 am. I figure that the city workers came by in the morning and trucked it to the dump.

itsthewoo

It doesn't matter whether or not you had a doubt. For all you know, the owner could have come back to pick up his bike for the same salvage you were intending to do.

Hask12

MMach 5 is right. You shouldn't even need to be asking this. Example. My friend owns a second, old beat up house he uses for paint ball competition. He drives by the house the other day and he sees two guys pulling old beat up appliances out of the old beat up house. When he asks them what they think they're doing the two guys apologize saying they thought the house was abandoned. The two guys are now waiting for their court dates. If you need parts go buy them.

Fizzaly

In my experience it's theft if you strip it, if you go the route some others have said reporting and what not that "may" be allright. The company i work for sometimes gets contracted to remove bikes from lockups on streets our parent company "owns" (its complicated) and even then they have to wait 60 days before they can remove them from property they control. Mind you if the police get involved they can cut the lock on the spot bring it in, run the numbers, then like said before they have a set amount of time they wait if no one claims ownership they would probably give it to you.

abdon 

Yeah, but by whom?

Was it the owner? Be honest with yourself; if the bike has expensive parts on it, how likely is that? How badly you may want parts for the bike does not have a bearing on how likely that is...

What makes the most sense if that it got stolen, trashed, and dumped. Less likely but more likely than the onwer abandoning the bike is that the person got so hurt that he wasn't able to retrieve it.

This is what the utmost level of honesty looks like; here in Japan, last year or the year before, somebody was leaving the equivalent of $100 dollar bills on public restrooms, with a note of 'take this money and enjoy it'. I don't know how many times the person did this but it must have been quite a few, because quite a few people took the money and turned over to the police.

Not even an anonymous note telling them to take the money left in the open would convince some people to take what wasn't theirs. This is why I can afford to own an expensive bike, park it anywhere, anytime, overnight outside of a hotel, and not worry about it.

Honesty, it is priceless.

billyymc

So, just to pose this question again --

If you found something on the street while riding -- lets use the example of a flashlight, or a nice leatherman tool -- would you:

1) Pick it up and keep it?
2) Turn it in to police?
3) Leave it where it is?