1nterceptor

https://www.vancouversun.com/mobile/i...tEdHiQZPjmwEGT

More than a thousand bikes are stolen every year in Vancouver.
The Sun conducted an informal social experiment.

TheHen

I had a U-lock failure once. The key would just spin in the mechanism. Unfortunately, my bike was locked up at a store next to the University of Oregon at the time (hotbed of bike theft). A "Good Samaritan" went home and got a jack. We proceeded to take about thirty minutes to break the lock open. About twenty people just walked on by; no one said anything and no one called the police. The only person who questioned us at all was a woman who was about to lock her bike up next to mine. She believed our story, strange though it was. Perhaps it was our amateurish technique that convinced her we weren't real thieves.

fuji86

The woman came out and said it, confronting a thief with bolt cutters wasn't worth getting beat up with the weapon the thief was armed with.

cycle16v

Thanks for sharing the video. I will say, it really bums me out that people just watched and no one would do anything about it. It's discouraging to watch because if that was one of my bikes, and I love my bikes, that no one could care less about your property.

Maybe if it said BMW on it, someone might do something about it.

So given this example that no one does anything, what can we do to encourage people to be more aware or take action? I was thinking that every bike post should have a small sign above it that says something like:

Report suspicious activities around bikes"
"Call ### if you suspect..."
"Bike Awareness area"
I don't know but I guess all I'm saying is I wish there was something to enable people to do something about it and protect our property.

Anybody else have an idea?

B. Carfree

How about those people watching the "theft" while sitting in the coffee shop? I would expect at least one of them to own a phone. There wouldn't have been much risk of being beaten with bolt cutters for calling 911.

We don't just get the government we deserve, we seem to have gotten the culture we deserve as well.

sudoshift

Its probably fair to say that most of us on here would have at least called a cop or something. But for the average person walking on the street minding their business trying to get somewhere. Do you really expect them to do anything? Especially women. The "thief" has huge ass heavy bolt cutters and a chain. If you're walking with your girlfriend or a baby in a stroller. Its not very smart to attempt to do anything but perhaps phone the cops.

If its a thief, these people usually have records, warrants, etc. They might have a knife or a gun, its not worth the risk. Also, apparently there was something to be learned by this. Dressing like a normal person with clean clothes, offers success as a bike thief.

fuji86

Some of them probably saw the guy plant the bike with his bolt cutters on him ? But yeah, someone might've been able to find a safe spot and reported it by phone.

degnaw

I'm not sure I would do even that - don't most bike thefts take less than 10 seconds or so? The thief would be riding into the sunset before I can even tell the police what happened.

MMACH 5

If I was going to start stealing bikes, I'd just have a buddy stand nearby and shoot video. Then, if someone says something, we just do a quick interview with them and ride away with the bikes.

cranky velocist

In downtown Brooklyn, right across from Long Island University and under the Applebee's vestibule & entrence to Dekalb Station, my wife's bike had her decent shocks and ok rear wheel stripped right from the locked frame & front wheel. During business hours.

The area seemed fine - I worked nearby at the time - and then one day multiple bikes were stripped. It would happen periodically over the course of the next 18 months, and the theives were pretty brazenly stealing what seemed to be even a beaters' low end parts.

For what its worth, the local priecinct didn't even acknowledge to her the area was under video surveillance. We wondered if the fruit cart guy 20 feet away from the bike racks wasn't on the take.

Probably a hundred people are out on the street in view of that spot most times of the day. Nobody cared - I don't think most of the people who would have seen anything would have thought of bikes as high value, or important.

This was a small part of the reason we moved out of Brooklyn.

Flash forward a couple months, and that entire area is going through a pretty big crime wave of muggings.

threemonkeys

Doesn't surprise me at all. People are so apathetic.

buzzman

This video doesn't surprise me but it makes an event that happened to me in NYC even more mind boggling.

Years ago I was working near Astor Place in downtown Manhattan. As I pulled up on my bike I saw a colleague through the window of the Starbucks and we got in a pantomimed conversation as I was about to lock my bike to the parking meter. I always took extreme caution locking the bike there because bike theft from that location was off the charts. There were broken locks and chains littered around the bike racks and one would often see people staring at an empty space saying, "My bike!"

My friend came out of the Starbucks and off we went to work for 9 hours and as I left work my back pack felt oddly heavy. A sinking feeling over came me as it dawned on me why the pack was so heavy- that I had completely forgotten to lock my black Novarra Buzz and my heavy chain and Krypto Lock were still in the bag.

I ran to where I left it and, lo and behold, there it was. Still leaning against the parking meter. Unlocked. All day. The bike gods were smiling.

Chris516

+1