Anyone heard of this trick to nail a bike thief before;

Put an unlocked fixed bike without brakes on the top of a hill somewhere in a downtown area. Wait for someone to steal it and watch what happens. The most natural and quickest way for the bike thief is of course to go down the hill.

This happened in Stockholm I remember hearing of many years ago. It was an idea a fellow bikemessenger had. But I never actually heard what happened with the thief.

Have any of you heard of a similar thing? Do you know what happened to the bike thief? Do you think the owner ever could get charged for causing injury or even the death of the thief?

why tempt fate? seems like nothing good could come of this

Sounds like a good way to ruin a perfectly good bike.

I'd think it would work better if you put a brakeless freewheel at the top of the hill...

In the States, yes. In Stockholm, don't know. Here in the US, it could qualify as willful intent to cause harm, provided the prosecutor were good and there were decent evidence.

While someone might have actually done this I think you can chalk up this one up to messenger legend. Tell you what...loan me yer bike and we can try it out.

Well, nobody forced him to try to ride it...;-).
BTW, this has happened with a Hungarian messenger. He didn't lock the bike up while he handed in a package, and he saw from the glass-walled hall that a guy sat on his bike and sprinted away. He just chuckled and walked to the streetcorner to recover the bike. Sure enough, there it was.

I'm sure most bike thieves (if theyve been doing it for any amount of time) know what a fixed gear is by now...

but what if you put a crappy mountain bike up there with clipped cables? chances are you would bag pathetic old bum, not a young buck bike thief.

I don't think you'd ever actually get a good court case out of it. I am in law school, and I know that it would be virtually impossible to prove that you did this on purpose. Even the most rookie trial attorney would say something like that you just left your bike there for a minute while getting smokes or stopping to visit a friend. That the thief jumped on it and killed himself on your property was his own fault. That said, I think its a great way to kill bike thieves like flies!

This cracks me up! I still dont understand how people can ride a bike and smoke.

Isn't that why everyone's so into one-handed and no-handed tricks?

Sounds like something best left to those Jackass guys. But it would be funny to catch on tape.

Good to hear there's some fixie rideres in Stockholm. I was beginning to really wonder if there was any scene.

Va sager du for "fixed gear" pa svenska?

" don't think you'd ever actually get a good court case out of it. I am in law school, and I know that it would be virtually impossible to prove that you did this on purpose. Even the most rookie trial attorney would say something like that you just left your bike there for a minute while getting smokes or stopping to visit a friend"

that would be the rookie attorny's mistake. The experienced plaintiffs attorny would argue willful neglect on the part of the bikeowner (sans brakes), while his own client was merely the unfortuante victim of mistaken bicycle identity.

Spend an internship defending Ma Bell or Ford if you want to see what the experienced ambulance chasers come up with.

Ok, so this is what we do:
1 - obtain a chrome pista, they are all over so this shouldn't be hard
2 - mount freewheel on the pista
3 - ride up to Powell and California by way of the loin, while singing loudly about how cool the bike is
4 - lock bike with a combo lock and cable
5 - leave a brake lever on the bars, but take the caliper off, or take the shoes out of the caliper
6 - wait for hilarity and possibly bodily injury or death to ensue

I think by locking it up you can get around any claims of mistaken bicycle identity, no? I mean, that doesn't really hold up if the guy had to cut a lock off the bike in order to ride it away. Also, by putting a cable around it, you're pretty much guaranteeing that the bike will get stolen, nothing attracts thieves like a cheap bike cable, it must be great fun to cut through them with bolt cutters or something...

I have a few friends left in the messenger business and they told me, when I got the fixie, that there's one other messenger guy riding fixed in Stockholm and he's doing it without brakes(!!). Other than that what I've seen on the web and heard in bike shops, there must be only a handful that rides fixed in Stockholm. Like someone told me: Sweden is a third world country when it comes to fixed gear.

Fixed gear in Swedish(Svenska) is the same as in English because of the reason mentioned above. I reckon skitbraviking(kickassviking in English) has a history in Sweden?

yes.

Sure enough.

I am a dual citizen.
My dad's from Norrkoping.
My mom's parents are from Sodermalm and up near Sundsvall.
I also studied in Uppsala for the summer of '95.

I hope to be coming back next summer. I'd love to bring my bike but I don't knof if that'll be possible. But maybe, maybe.

Sweden... A third world country! LOL

Damn. Get all technical and sh*t.

Diabolical!

You're right about that!

i'll be forwarding this post to the IL state bar association, so you can be sanctioned for unauthorized practice of law by giving legal advice without a license. Congrats, you don't have to take the bar

They disclosed that they weren't a lawyer, so the legal advice wasn't "I'm a laywer" advice, and is only as good as my legal advice (which isn't worth anything), so I don't think you could claim they were attempting to practice law without a license. Law students discuss law with people, basically all day long, and thats OK.

peace,
sam

why don't you just shoot the guy? it's faster.

hmm.. sounds a lot like ted shred's bike..

he best way to nail a bike theif