Bicycle safety

Although we prefer writing our own bike guides, we aren't going to shy away from pointing you in the direction of great advice on other sites. Quickrelease.tv has a fantastic article about bicycle safety, written by Brit cycling guru Carlton Reid. Honest, well written guidance on bike locks and not likely to be bettered by us, or anyone.

We've brazenly robbed some of the article below, but it's well worth reading in it's entirity for the whole picture.

SECURITY TACTICS
There are measures you can take do to reduce your chances of having your bicycle stolen.

1. Don’t ride a bike.
This is a very secure option. If you don’t have a bike, it won’t get stolen. But don’t think this is just a bike problem, even £50k cars are stolen. No amount of security systems guarantees immunity from theft.

2. Ride a rubbish bike
Or one that looks rubbish. Thieves are on the look-out for easy touches, bikes they can steal easily. But they are also on the look out for bikes they can shift on eBay or down the pub or on the street market. Branded mountain bikes are the easiest to sell on.

So, keep your sexy MTB for your weekend warrior trips, cycle in town on a hack bike.

This can be a genuinely crap bike – rust is your friend – or a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Disguise a good bike with tatty tape on the frame tubes but to go the whole hog you’ve got to disguise the components, too. Could you really bear to take a rasp to your Shimano XTR rear mech?

If your rubbishified bike still has the basic shape and look of a mountain bike, it could still be nickable. One of the best security devices on the market is the drop handlebar. Thieves, on the whole, give these a wide berth. Nobody down the pub wants a touring bike, even if the front and back racks are state of the art.

However, there are some thieves who know what a good road bike is when they see one so the drop handlebar trick isn’t failsafe.

3. Marry your machine
Travel light, forget the lock, take your bike with you wherever you go.

This is a very secure option but can limit the places you’ll be welcome in.

A folding bike can increase your chances of slipping under the radar but not everybody appreciates the allure of a grime-encrusted bike, even one that concentinas.

4. Use a lock
Even one you can cut with a Leatherman is far, far better than no lock at all. Yes, blindingly obvious, but thieves are, by definition, sneaky. You can’t trust ‘em.

This is a sorry tale, repeated across the land every day: a law abiding cyclist nips into the Post Office “just for a second”, keeps a beady eye on his unlocked bike, turns away for a moment and then, poof, his bike is gone.

Locks aren’t just for long-term parking. Clunk click every trip.

There’s also a good case for locking your bike to an immovable object when it’s stored in a secure place such as your garage or shed. Fit a ground anchor and make the local no-goods sweat to get your prized possessions.

5. Use a good lock
This article shows that a determined, professional thief can breach seemingly impregnable locks. Such thieves are relatively rare. They could get into Fort Knox. There’s not a lot you can do to thwart a tooled up thief with time on his hands and just your bike in view.

Your bog standard bike thief isn’t beefy and equipped with long bolt croppers. He (nicking bikes is a male occupation) is more likely to be in need of a fix, desperate to sell your £400 MTB for a tenner, and will be equipped with basic tools.

This type of thief can be thwarted with almost any lock thicker and stronger than a thin cable.

Nine times out of ten, this would-be bike thief will pass by those bikes locked with meaty chains and u-locks and will attempt to steal those bikes ‘protected’ with flimsy locks. It’s simple to cut a cable lock, even those that look tough. Some have thick plastic sheathes that magnify the thin cable within. It’s very easy to open a combination lock, even without tools.

A cheap u-lock is tougher to crack than a thin cable lock. But even some expensive u-locks can be smashed in seconds with a small bottle jack. This is a specialist tool. A five inch hydraulic jack can be extended to ten inches, smashing almost any u-lock after just a few pumps, if there’s wriggle room, that is.

6. Be time sensitive
It pays to be security aware at all times but, if you live in a university town, there are certain times of the year when the bike theft figures go into overdrive. Basically, whenever there’s a new influx of students, there’s a ready market for ‘secondhand’ bikes.

At these times of the year, bikes are stolen hand over fist and it’s best to employ ultra secure methods of securing your bike. If you usually use two u-locks, a motorcycle chain and a Doberman, consider upgrading to three u-locks, another chain, two dogs and a security guard.

7. Think like a thief
Bike thieves don’t like a challenge, they’re not Pink Panther style cat burglars. They prefer easy meat.

There’s a reason why Sheffield stands are hoops. Street furniture posts may look secure but could a thief hoist a locked bike over the top of the post? If they could, they will.

8. Lock everything
Specialist thieves thwarted by good locks attached down low and with few vulnerabilities can strip a bike of its components instead. Specialist tools required? An Allen key and wire cutters. That’s for half-inching the handlebars and stuff, for the wheels and seatpost all that’s generally needed is a palm.

Components attached with quick releases risk going walkies quickly. Consider switching to Pinhead skewers and seatpost retention devices. These ship with a special key which opens all the devices.

9. Add on the extras
Post-coding your frame or fitting a machine-readable chip the size of a grain of rice adds just a modicum of security but, remember, all you’re trying to do is buy a few seconds and, as Tesco says, every little helps.

10. Look out for white van man
He’s not only a menace to cyclists when driving, he could be watching your bike. Pro thieves often track their targets beforehand. Your bike is especially vulnerable in the two minutes after you first lock it. A team of thieves will employ a target tracker as well as a cutter and get-away driver.