How do I properly lock my bike in a city where bike thefts are common?
How do I properly lock my bike in a city where bike thefts are common?
I want to go biking in cities, but from what I've read most police departments simply do not give a fuck about stolen bikes. How do I make sure my bike doesn't get stolen?
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Apologies for the lazy answer, but Lock Picking Lawyer on YouTube has a number of videos on bike locks. In addition to the lock itself, you want to secure both wheels with a chain or cable if possible, and take the bike seat with you if you can (or secure it in some manner). Thieves will remove any bike part they can quickly remove from the bike. Obviously take any bags or water bottles with you, too.
LPL is not a great resource on this since people aren't going to be discretely picking locks to not show signs of tampering. They are going to pull out a bigass pair of bolt cutters (and if you cut the pocket out of a pair of jeans you can fit some REALLY chonky bolt cutters in your "pocket") and cut through the cable.
In terms of protecting your bike from an actual attack? That is going to very much depend on where you live. Growing up, basically every thug had some good bolt cutters so chains and even cables were worthless and you needed the big fucking bar locks. I was visiting my sister on a business trip a few months back and saw someone literally pull out a battery powered angle grinder (ryobi) and slice through a bar like it was butter while I gassed up at a Wawa's.
Which is why all you can really do is lock your bike on crowded well traveled bike racks and hope that someone brought the road bike out.
You'd be surprised. Some locks can be picked very quickly, and you underestimate a bike thief's ability to casually look like they are just messing around with their own bike while they pick the lock. Most passerbys are not paying attention / don't care about bikes on a rack.
Of course most passer-bys don't really give a shit. But that is true whether someone is trying to look nonchalant while they mutter "binding on two" or if they are doing a smash and grab. Except the smash and grab says "Don't fuck with me" whereas someone holding on to a lock is how you get an owner starting to yell.
Which kind of sums up a lot of the, quite frankly nonsense, that LPL's channel is. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy watching him pick locks (and wince during his semiannual libertarian dog whistling) but all of the "masterlock is bad, lolz" meming kind of ignores the reality. MAYBE a thief will pick a lock to sneak in the back of your house or your shed. More likely they'll just smash a window, listen for an alarm, and then steal shit. And I know LPL knows this because of his commentary on really cool shit like the military base locks where it is very much about just having a chain of custody and being a slight deterent.
I dunno. I am always reminded of a Discovery (?) Channel show. "To stop a thief"? or some crap. Premise was former burglars run a security company. They inspect a family's home, upgrade every lock and install a security system, and come back a few weeks later to rob them as a way to reinforce good practices. The vast majority of episodes boiled down to "Yeah. you didn't lock the door, you dumbfucks" or "You have a giant tree right outside your daughter's window and she left the window open". But one episode that really stuck with me was where the family actually did follow every good practice. All doors and windows were locked, the trees were trimmed, etc. So they just crowbarred a window and got in that way.
Because Felicity and Perry Mason will pick a lock to photocopy some documents without you ever knowing the hot chick who banged you last night is actually a spy. The vast majority of thieves will just smash a window, grab what they can, and be gone long before the cops come to check on your alarm going off. And that is why "just don't leave shit on the seats of your car" go such a long way to prevent break-ins. Because, no matter the target, it is really about getting in and out before anyone tries to stop you. And you don't need a Covert Instruments 9000 lockpick set when you can just sparkplug a window.
Iirc he also tested bypassing the lock as well, at least for some locks.
I.e. Bolt cutters, grinders and pneumatics