When I was a teenager I had to take a check to the bank for my mother. She told me to hurry as the bank was closed but the bank manager was waiting at the door for me. I got to the bank leaned my bike against the wall, looked at my watch to see the time, walked to the door and gave the manager the check. I went back to get on my bike and it was gone never to be seen again. Total time off the bike ? THIRTY SECONDS! Someone nearby must have seen me leave the bike unlocked and done a snatch and grab. A cable lock no matter how flimsy would probably have prevented that theft.

Cheers

I use cable locks because they are a helluva lot easier to carry and use than U-locks and take care of 97% of theft I'm worried about. I reserve U-locks for touring and leaving my bike outside overnight, to get an extra 1% of theft coverage.

I mean, I have powertools. I don't care what lock you have, I can steal your bike in a short period of time. Heck if I put on a hard hat and a fluorescent vest, I doubt anyone will even question me.

Not to mention a felony in many jurisdiction, setting of traps in public places (regardless of the legality of the actions of the 'victim') is generally frowned upon.

Cables are for all the rad shredders out there, they bring unreal steeze to the table.

The only anti-theft device I trust:

On that principle, the most secure lock is none at all---"That bike is totally not worth stealing even for a joy ride ... it isn't even locked!"

The real deal with bike locks is, buy enough lock to feel secure.Probably 90 percent of the time even a cable is enough, unless you park at a busy rack on a college campus. The rest of the time nothing is enough. Use enough lock/chain/cable to let you have peace of mind while you are doing whatever, then come back and get your bike.

Except for very rare occurrences, if you have half a brain you know when and where you can lock your bike.

Flip side: One guy on this site had his bike stolen out of his apartment. Guy broke in and grabbed his ride, while he was home, as I recall.

So .... how big a lock do you use at home?

You could always strap this on instead of a mundane saddle-bag (fyi it's evidently a 'funny' alarm clock)

In that case there was probably nothing you could have sold her save a Fahgettaboudit U lock or one of those square-link Abus lock-and-chain devices weighing 18 pounds which would have worked

Where and when you lock up is most of whether you get robbed, IMO. And what you lock is a lot of the rest.

A bike doesn't have to be a beater to look like just a bike---whereas anything obviously brand-new and a little flashy (giant manufacturer's logo on the down tube is a great attractant) is going to be a little bit more at risk.

it's not like most people carry a set of dikes in their pockets just ambling around .... and anyone looking for a bike can carry a set of 18" bolt cutters wrapped in a jacket and never attract attention, even as he is riding off on his (used to be someone else's) new bike.

But ... whatever. When I lived in a major city, i had three bikes stolen (one recovered.) When I moved to the sticks, I used a Really cheesy 1/4-inch cable with an in-line lock--I think it was one of the "Defeat-Me EZ" brand's products---with no trouble.

Well ... some trouble. I felt a little nervous every time I went out of the store, library, whatever .... wondering if the bike would be there.

I got a fat key-locked cable and a length of chain with a combo lock, and I now use one or the other or both, and feel much more secure. yes, someone could spend 30 minutes with nothing but a steak knife and saw through the cable and pick the combo lock (instructions are on-line ... sometimes on the sites of people who test bike locks (!!! )) but I feel like the combo (or even one or the other) is enough of an immediate deterrent to stop a joy-rider, and the time involved would be enough to stop a certain number of thieves. I don't ever lock up near crack-town (we are so far removed from life, I wouldn't even know where it wasn't safe to lock in this town .... but I don't go there,) and anyone crack- or meth-head could easily have a set of bolt-cutters, which would defeat anything except the $200/20-pound protection.

After all, I cut the hardened steel chain for my lock---with a set of 14-inch bolt-cutters in the self-serve area of the hardware store.

Buy enough lock to buy peace of mind, and don't lock up in stupid places or at stupid times.

LOL .... come back and the bike is there, and the thief is on the ground. You are all smiles ... until the cops slap the cuffs on you and you are charged with aggravated assault and reckless endangerment.

The thief gets off because he didn't actually steal anything. You get fines triple the value of the bike ... and a felony record.

There were a few break-ins around here a while back where high-end bikes got stolen out of the cars of people who had packed up the night before a big event. I have to hope it was by people who were trolling the neighborhood waiting for such an opportunity, because the level of tracking to know that "Julie is going to an out of town Tri on the 16th, so she'll probably have her BMC in the back of the station wagon the night of the 15th..." is very worrying.

That said, I use a cable lock all the time because it's a small town, with not a lot of crime, I only park my bike in high-traffic locations, and my commuter bike is a 30-year old cannondale SS conversion that even a collector probably doesn't want.

I've had cable-locked bikes stolen in big towns, and I still have my u-lock for if I ever need to take my bike there again.

I have, in the past, locked my bike in a big city centre by looping one of the disused locks on the bike rack around my frame and wheel. And returned from the movie and dinner to find it still there.

Irrespective of what kind of lock you do or don’t use it might be useful to cement an RFID chip inside one of the tubes so that if/when your bike gets boosted you have at least some hope of retrieving it.

Cable locks are much lighter.

I keep one in my bike bag all the time. That means I always have it. I have big u-locks that I drag around if I am going into the city, but I am not going to leave it on my bike all the time.

Cable locks do a pretty good job of preventing unplanned crimes of opportunity, which in some places is what most bike thefts are.

Yeah, that occurs to me every time I see one of those videos. I am pretty sure you could be in some deep do-do if someone got seriously hurt.

My biggest concern with those videos is that someone is going to try it themselves and end up in jail or financially wiped out from a lawsuit.

Zactly the point I made above. I know this from touring in a lot of places. It’s called situational awareness. For example, if I am the only person in a campground that’s not close to a public road and pitched in a site that you can’t even drive a car passed, I’m not going to bother even locking my bike.

The downside of that is if you'er asleep in your tent and your bike does get stolen by a hiker passing through, you have a loooooooong walk ahead of you...

This presupposes that said hiker would not have brought a bolt-cutters with him and so wouldn't be able to snip a cable lock. Whereas, the sound of him chopping it with his brush-axe would probably have woken you up.

I remember years ago about reading about a fellow who was a trapper. He had finished for the season and had his traps spread out around his basement after he had oiled the traps. The traps were open and set to allow the thick protective oil to penetrate into all the nooks and crannies on those traps. Some burglar broke into the trapper's basement via a basement window. When the burglar dropped to the floor from the window he landed on a trap and it snapped shut badly damaging the burglar's leg. The burglar sued the trapper and the burglar won. Even thous the trapper said if he had known the burglar was coming he'd have unset the traps. Yet another example of where the victim has fewer rights/protections than a would be thief.

Cheers

Do you have a location where that incident happened? If the burglar won, I'm thinking there has to be a court record.

I'm not sure where it was. I' not even sure wen it was. I do know it happened around 30 or more years ago; that is if my memory of the time is anywhere near correct.

Cheers

sorry this is an urban lawyer myth even if such a scenario occurred because johnny cochran and a band of 12 merry jurors in LA pulled this off the odds of it surviving appellate scrutiny would be less than 10% so assuming the burglar got a $150000 jury verdict his lawyer would settle for $8-15K & that would be pd to avoid additional fees & costs from the defending lawyers who charge genius fees to defend obvious loser cases

When I read about it , it was in a mainstream Toronto, Canada newspaper.

Cheers

I think she would have been been fine with the mid range u-lock but the cable was so easy to snap through a thief could get away with it more easily. It was locked outside of her Gym in a fairly busy area with people at the front who could see out where the bike was parked. The lock does matter. Yes some of these u-locks can be gotten through more easily but not like a cable.

Keep in mind "crack-town" is the worst place to steal a bike. All the bikes down there are crap or already stolen. People want bikes from the "nicer" areas of the city.

My wife and I used a cable lock to secure our bikes to this fence in a Swiss campground. Then before daylight we walked 4 miles to the train station in town and took 3 different trains to visit Grindelwald, a city I dreamed about since I was a kid. I had always wanted to climb the North Face of the Eiger, but on this day, at my age, I was just happy to see it. We got back well after dark, and the bikes were still there. It is all about situational awareness. I would not leave our bikes at the train station for more than 10 minutes, but felt pretty comfortable leaving them in the campground for the day.

We can imagine anything, no matter how unlikely. That's what I mean by irrational fear. I have been locking up bikes in the big city and leaving them unlocked in the woods for more than 30 years. Only place I have had a bike stolen was from inside my house, while I was home and awake. So either I am the luckiest guy in world, or, with appropriate precautions, the threat is just not as significant as many people imagine it is.

Yep. Several years ago I was locking up my LHT with a Kryptonite and thick cable. Next to me was a young woman locking up her older Trek road bike with a cheap chain and combination lock. This was on a Sunday outside a very busy, indoor farm market-type place with lots of foot traffic. Many people ride bikes there. She went inside the building. I walked a block away to purchase a Sunday paper. As I was walking back to the market I saw what appeared to be a meth addict (skinny with bad skin) riding the woman's Trek against traffic, small duffel bag over his right shoulder. Probably contained the tools of his trade. We are talking fewer than 10 min. Guy had clearly been targeting the bike racks and pounced on the lowest hanging fruit.

I found the young woman inside the market and told her what had happened. "Oh well. I didn't feel like brining my good lock."

You know that's the classic example of what people say when they're incorrectly believing an urban myth? "I read it in a newspaper, I don't remember when." Humans aren't very good at recalling where they read or heard something years ago, and Snopes is full of failed attempts to find these sorts of stories in the newspapers where people claimed they found them. I know that I have fallen prey to this trick of memory myself, I think most people have.

It's also quite possible that this is a misreporting of what actually happened. No question that setting booby traps is illegal and you can be liable to anyone injured by one even if they're trespassing. The idea that a trapper would leave a bunch out on the floor for oiling purposes sounds absurdly far-fetched to me, and the jury may have decided that it was more likely than not the trapper was lying about why he laid them out. Civil cases are decided by a preponderance of the evidence so that's all it would take.