Cyclists ignorance about bike theft and our awful budgeting schemes are precipitating the crazy amounts of bike theft we bitch about all the time

It's time to take control.

So here's a response that I spammed somebody's post about bike registration with. They were talking about registering your bike with police, not stupid cyclist registration stuff. Registering your frame and the serial number and whatever so if it gets stolen you can deal with it. And so you can prove it's yours.

It's complicated. I'm not gonna be able to write about it perfectly. If you care, you're going to have to negotiate a shitload of words. It's gonna take longer to read this article than it would to register your fucking bicycle. But it is all interesting sociological stuff. So let's do this. So here's what I wrote on Facebook. Consider it an intro:

People have a kind of limited idea of what bike theft is like too, so they don't realize there's all these bikes sitting around out there that have been stolen and then abandoned somewhere else by the thief. Not for a joyride but because the best use of a bike thief's time is to bike around on whatever they've just stolen and try to either find a better bike to steal or find a buyer for what they're currently riding. So anytime they find a better bike to steal, there's a bike sitting there that's just been stolen, might never be used by the thief or resold or anything, and it's now industrial waste. They've been shuffled so they're not being used but it's not like the owner can just find it. This is why if you track your bike and it gets stolen, you might just ride up to it and it'll be sitting there with no lock on, and it'll seem like a joyride. It's not a joyride. The person found a better bike and hasn't come back for this one yet or never will. Yes, sometimes people do leave their own bikes unlocked leaning on a post-&-ring. But abandoned bikes have telltale signs to them and there's craploads of them lying around downtown. And scavengers, cops etc end up finding them, looking them up, and wishing people would register their bikes because it's nice to find free bikes lying around all over the place but it's so sad to know how they probably got there and that they've probably never been registered, and it's the ultimate missed connection, just because the person had no faith in the registration system or in other people or whatever it was. Or assigned no value to their bike, and this is what I notice. People decide their bike is valuable after it's been stolen. And then they avoid cycling for a year, and then they get around to buying another bike, and they make sure it's a worthless awful one so they can spend under $30 on the lock. I know most of the people on this board don't fall into this category so I'm not trying to insult anyone but I think a lot of the public is falling into this trap of assuming it's going to get stolen no matter what they do, and just getting a crappy bike so they can get a cheap lock but then it gets stolen and instead of getting a better lock next time they just get a crappier bike instead. I also find that in order to convince someone to get a lock that's over that $30 threshold, I have to remind them that it's their lock for themselves, not for just this bike. It's for this bike and the next bike they get when this bike craps out, and the bike they get after that, etc etc. Because it seems like everybody is assuming they're going to have to get a new lock like every year or every season or something, because that's what they've had to do so far, because they've been getting crappy cable locks so far. It's this cyclical cyclist trap.

So that's the part about bike theft. But it also gets into this trap that cyclists get into about spendthrifting on their locks. Spendthrifting is when you end up spending more in the end because you're cheaping out on stuff. Cheaping out is when you spend too little.

So here's what your cycling budget should look like. Or something like:

2017:
$40 U-lock
$30 bell and lights
$200 bicycle
$60 tune-up 

2018:
$60 maintenance
$50 gas mask 

2019:
$60 maintenance
$50 better tires
$60 better lights 

2020:
$300 2nd bike because by now the roads are actually smoother and I can use a racing bike on them and it's nice to have 2 bikes, yay
$75 better lock for my better bike
$100 maintenance for both bikes 

2021:
$50 + 20 hours maintenance for both bikes, because now I'm doing it all at bike pirates, bike sauce and CBN, yay
$60 tools so I can do more of it at home, yay

2021:
$10 + 10 hours maintenance on both bikes, because now I'm doing it at home without help, yay
$100 tools and parts, now I have everything mmm so elite

2022:
$30 + 10 hours maintenance on both bikes

2023:
$30 + 10 hours maintenance on both bikes

2024:
$30 + 10 hours maintenance on both bikes

2025:
$30 + 10 hours maintenance on both bikes
$200 electric conversion kit for one of the bikes, yay hill eraser

2026:
$30 + 10 hours maintenance on both bikes

2027:
$30 + 10 hours maintenance on both bikes

2028:
$30 + 10 hours maintenance on both bikes

Okay anyway you get the idea. Now here's what most people's bike budget looks like:

2017:
$100 shitty bike that barely works, hopefully it's so worthless that nobody steals it
$0 maintenance because why would I spend money on a bike that's just gonna get stolen anyway
$12 cable lock because why would I spend money securing a bike that's not even worth owning and doesn't work very well

2018:
$100 shitty bike to replace the one that got stolen last year
$12 cable lock

2020:
$100 shitty bike to replace the one that got stolen last year
$12 cable lock

2021:
$100 shitty bike to replace the one that got stolen last year
$12 cable lock

2022:
$100 shitty bike to replace the one that got stolen last year
$12 cable lock

2023:
$100 shitty bike to replace the one that got stolen last year
$12 cable lock

2024:
$100 shitty bike to replace the one that got stolen last year
$12 cable lock

2025:
$100 shitty bike to replace the one that got stolen last year
$12 cable lock

2026:
$100 shitty bike to replace the one that got stolen last year
$12 cable lock

2027:
$100 shitty bike to replace the one that got stolen last year
$12 cable lock

2028:
$100 shitty bike to replace the one that got stolen last year
$12 cable lock

2029:
$100 shitty bike to replace the one that got stolen last year
$12 cable lock

So really, obviously, what I'm saying is that your purchases timeline should be along the timeline of the life expectancy of the stuff. So a bike should last about a decade, so you should replace it every 8 years or so. Not every year or two. A lock should last like two or three decades, so you should replace it that often. A helmet lasts until it takes some kind of damage, like a significant drop or something, but it should last basically forever. But people spendthrift on the shit because they assume it'll get stolen no matter what. But it won't. The more ridiculous the cost of your lock compared to the cost of your bike, the less likely it is that your bike will be stolen. Especially relative to the surroundings. So just... get the lock that protects your bike better than the other bikes around it of similar value. That's your need when it comes to security. And when it comes to budgeting, budget what works for you in the long term, not just for this year. This seasonal cycling thing is wrecking our budgeting. Imagine if you only drove during the summer. That's crazy talk! Imagine if you were trying to get the cheapest, shittiest car you could find, because you didn't think door locks or security systems would work at all. Hey, in some scenarios they don't! Some luxury cars have security systems that can easily be hacked or whatever, but honestly, people don't do that with cars the way they do it with bikes. And that has to change. Start valuing your damn bikes, assholes!