How to deter bicycle thieves: securing and locking your commuter bicycle

Intro

Before talking about securing a bike I’d like to put forward four ideas that might help you deal with bike theft more efficiently.



First, there is no such thing as complete “theft prevention“. You can’t “prevent” theft any more than you can “prevent” accidents or illnesses. You can minimize the chances of something bad happening, but you can’t prevent it entirely. Given enough time, skills, determination and the right tools anything can be broken into, cracked, cut, and stolen. Theft deterrent is a better term and a better strategy too. What you want to aim at is not a total elimination of any possibility of theft, since that is impossible, but at making your bike difficult enough, and undesirable enough, so that chances are the thief would pass it and move to an easier and more valuable target. Basically, a bike *will* be stolen, you just want to make sure it’ll be somebody else’s bike, not yours. It’s blunt, it’s harsh, but that’s what it comes down to.

Second, “security” and “convenience” are mutually exclusive. Just like in the realm of computing: as you increase security, raise login and password requirements, introduce biometric readers, etc., using computers becomes less and less convenient. So, there is often a need to draw a line somewhere, to realize how much convenience you’re willing to give up for the increase in security and how much is at stake. What is it that you’re trying to protect, how much is it worth, and how much effort, time and money you want to spend on protecting it before security itself becomes a bigger hurdle. Do you really want a $90 Super Duper Bicycle Lock to secure a bike you bought on Craigslist for $30?

Read the rest at nycbikecommuter.info