RabidUnicorn

What if you locked your bike up and was then hospitalized for god knows what? Maybe the owner of that bike is lying in the hospital unable to retrieve his bike. Sure, if it's been there for a few months, that probably isn't the case, but who just leaves a bike out and forgets about it? Maybe you should take it off the pole, then put an ad up on craigslist.

adaminlc

I have taken several abandoned bikes in the last few years. Again, always a situation surrounding a college campus. Once it was at my old apartment, and I could verify the abandoned state of the bike. Other times, I waited for the summer and usually donated them to people I knew needed a bike or goodwill or some such.

Mos6502

I took a Schwinn suburban once. It had been locked outside of my apartment for months. Then one day while walking home I found it laying on the sidewalk a few blocks away. I guess somebody cut the lock then decided they didn't want it after realizing it's impossible to make a quick get away on two flat tires.

I put a found ad on craigslist, but ended up giving it away after a couple of months passed.

clutchy

i'd probably call it abandoned, but there's an easy test to see if you're stealing it or not.

1. go down there and cut the cable.

2. If what you are doing makes you nervous you probably think it's stealing.

3. If you aren't nervous then it seems like you're ok and you got a nice piece of abandoned bike.

I hate bicycles

arcade

Listen to this fellow.
Glad to see there is someone with a brain on here who is capable of more than impulsive bursts of bull****.
In this case, I'd say take the bike and post your story on craigslist. See if anyone comes forward.

johnnytheboy

yep...so is this one:

lot's wife

I should've originally distinguished between abandoned abandoned and stolen.

The school is going to take the abandoned bikes all over campus in about two weeks. I guess they are stealing them, except they can get a court order for it.

stryper

Ask campus security about it, if they don't say you'll be arrested for stealing if you cut the lock, then do it.

If you are still feeling uneasy about it, turn it into the police station as lost property, and if nobody claims it within 2 weeks or something like that, it legally becomes your.

KrisPistofferson

It's funny, because I've got an Electra sitting on campus that I literally never ride, it's probably been sitting there since last fall. No one has touched it except to rip off my Obama spoke card. I thought it would be fun to have a "for campus" bike but I was wrong.

lot's wife

you in new mexico?

Scrodzilla

I honestly don't consider my friend taking what was left of that GTB to be stealing, as I did talk to a cop about it and he told me it was going to end up in the junkyard if the town had to remove it. It had been there for over 6 months. I've always wondered why someone left it there in the first place, though. It was a pretty nice bike.

ottothecow

+1

There are some cases where you just KNOW that the bike's owner is long gone. When you post it online, people who are not actually familiar with the situation are understandably hesitant to tell you to take the bike but sometimes you just know. As for involving the police...the real police down here will laugh at you and they don't have any sort of waiting period before you can claim it...if they come get it, it will be donated to the bike coop (and sold back to you at somewhat high prices)

I have rescued a few basement bikes (or helped friends fix them) from the student apartment ghettos although I have never had to cut a lock to do so. Around here, you end up with trash piles of old bikes in the dark corners of these 90 year old walkups. The management company has come around at some point and cut all of the locks on the bikes they deemed abandoned but not wanting to deal with disposal (or accidentally taking a bike that wasn't abandoned), they just throw them in the corner. It frees up the primo locking spots for current residents and leaves behind a bunch of secondhand bikes with rusty chains that were abandoned when someone graduated.

As another poster has mentioned...go take it...If you feel like you are truly doing something wrong and your heart starts racing, stop. If not, enjoy your new mediocre ride (realistically anything nice would have not been abandoned or already stolen so its probably nothing special) or give it to a friend who needs a bike.

not_jason

Back when I lived in a college town, I saw a lot of expensive bikes unceremoniously abandoned. I think the ethics of it hinge heavily on knowing that it's abandoned. After that, I think it's a matter of whether or not the bike is better off being salvaged. I personally think that bikes are meant to be ridden, not to rot away on bike racks. Still, I'd be absolutely positive that it's actually abandoned. That is the hard part.

Last spring, after all the kids had moved off campus, there was a fairly nice Trek mountain bike sitting on the rack with the back wheel missing. It had a tag on the handlebars saying that in less than a week it was going to be claimed by campus public safety. Not only that, but I realized that it was locked to the rack by the front wheel only. I could flip a lever and carry off the frame with no difficulty whatsoever. In the end, I stopped myself only because I had no need for the bike. Knowing that it's probably rotting away in an outdoor pen behind campus right now, I regret not taking it.