Keeping Your Bike Safe

It’s a sad fact: If something is easy to steal, somebody will steal it.

In the world of bicycles, theft is all too common, and the only thing any of us can do is make it more trouble to steal your bike than it’s worth.

There are three basic types of locks when it comes to bike security: Cables, Chains, and U-Locks.

Cables and light weight chains are very low security. With the right tool you can chop through these in less than a second.

They are really only useful if:
1. Your bike is not worth much and

2. You never leave it unattended for long.

The upside is that they usually don’t weigh much, often cheap, and are compact. If long enough they can be locked to a wide variety of items.

U-Locks are good all around locks. They are usually not too heavy relatively compact and pretty strong.

Heavy Duty Chains are super tough and if long enough will let you lock up to a variety of items. They are unfortunately very heavy and bulky.

Here is the thing: No matter how tough a lock is with the right tools it can be broken. Even if they can’t break the lock, maybe they can break whatever the bike is locked to.

If your bike is your main transportation you can’t afford to have it stolen. Here is a winning strategy:

Flashy bikes get stolen. Unless you have secure places to park it at every destination do not use a brand new high end bike as your main commuter!

Cables are nearly useless if your bike is important to you. Next time your next to a bunch of parked bikes look at all the shiny new bikes locked up with cable locks and other light duty locks. Those are the bikes that will end up on bikeportland.org in the stolen listings!

My advice: Get a quality u-lock!

They are the best all around lock. Assuming that your bicycle is not too “flashy”  and locked to something secure they are too difficult for the average thief to defeat. They will go find something easier to steal. For added security you may want to replace any quick releases on your wheels, seatpost, etc. with some form of  bolt or security skewer. This means you may need to carry a wrench of sorts but that is a small price to pay for a extra piece of mind!

High Risk Situations

If you fall into any of these categories you’ll need to put forth more effort to keep your bike secure.

High end flashy bike. Self explanatory

Regularly leaving your bike parked in public for long periods of time. The longer your bike is accessable the more likely someone is to mess with it

Parking in the same place every day.  For example if you can’t bring your bike inside to your job 40 hours a week a thief can scout and then attack you bike at leisure. They will know where and when to find your bike as well as exactly what kind of lock you have!

Parking in high theft risk areas.  Downtown areas are often bad, but to a certain extant any city area  may be considered high risk.

In these cases you need to replace all quick releases and then also lock your frame, wheels, seat, etc. with strong and multiple types of locks!

I stumbled across this video via a link in the comments section of bikeportland.org.  This experienced New York bike mechanic goes on a walk and critiques random peoples locking techniques. If you fall into a high risk category you are advised to pay attention to the bikes that earn A grades!

If you think that a busy street will deter thieves watch this . These guys experimented by staging broadaylight bike thefts on busy streets to see what sort of reaction they would get.