// 261 Bicycles, 66 Locks
Posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009
The Oakland Tribune’s online edition sucked me in last Thursday with the headline “Bike Thefts on the Rise, Police Say.” I seem to have a thing for reporting depressing bike news lately, so I thought I’d see just what the Oakland Tribune had to say.
The overall message was that in bike thefts have been on the rise in Alameda. In fact, from January 1st of this year until September 1st, there have been 261 bike thefts. That number is up from 121 thefts during the same period of 2008. These statistics are bad news in and of themselves. But for some reason the bicycle news gods have been trying to give me really bad stuff to write about lately, so in addition to the fact that way more bikes are being stolen, I am given another super-troubling statistic: of the 261 bicycles stolen, only 66 were locked.
Seriously? That’s just a hair over 25%.
So what were the other 75% of people thinking? So many of these thefts could have been prevented if the bicycles were properly locked. It’s easy to forget to lock your bike when it’s resting comfortably in your backyard or on your porch. Even the Trusty Boyfriend had a bike stolen off our porch when we lived in Madison. The bike was on the porch, the Boyfriend was inside the living room that looked out on the porch. He fell asleep on the couch, the bike wasn’t locked. The next morning, the bike was gone–even though the Boyfriend was about 10 feet away from it at the time.
I’m fortunate enough to have never had a bicycle stolen. I grew up in a neighborhood where bikes were left all over, without locks, and it was no big deal. When I moved to Madison for college, the annoying people hosting the orientation sessions kept telling us “$10 bike, $50 lock! $10 bike, $50 lock!” like it was the official campus slogan or something. I can’t say I’ve ever spent quite that much on a lock, because a good u-lock and/or cable can be had for less. But I’ve always locked my bike. And I’ve always locked all of it. That means putting a cable lock through both wheels and the frame. And if I have a U-lock with me, I use that in addition to the cable lock. The only thing a thief could make off with is my saddle, and only if they had a wrench. If I’m locking a bike outside, it always has bolt-on parts, not quick-release! Another nifty thing is locking skewers–the Trusty Boyfriend has these. They require a special tool to open them–like a wrench that is unique to that particular pair of skewers. It’ll keep your wheels from getting stolen, so that you have the freedom to use a less cumbersome lock. The Trusty Boyfriend uses this handcuff-type thing (we get more weird, um, personal questions about that particular lock than anything we own. Minds out of the gutter, people!).
Long story short–lock your bike! At home, at stores, at restaurants, in parking garages, at your buddy’s place. Whatever. Lock it!