Of the innumerable videos out there, showing the blight of bike theft, this is a rather comprehensive one, in showing all the major attacks on assorted defences sold in your local bike shop.

The good people at the City of London Police have kindly arranged a demonstration of assorted cable cutter, bolt cutter and angle grinder attacks on a variety of locks, from cable to D-lock/U-lock to more stout versions of the latter.

The cheerful PSA is capped by the perfunctory, tepid ‘solution’ to register your bike!

I am inclined to address the why of this happy impotence, for it is as ‘natural’ as Global Warming. But, that’d be a topic for another day/place.

In brief, and for the purposes of this site, the above video, and the comments beneath it, underscore the absence of protection, for bicycles, from theft. Some better mitigations suggested are:

• Use a folding bike, and take it indoors. This may be an option for work-places, so long as the employer and the building’s owner have clued-in to what is happening to the planet.
• Use two less-expensive D-/U-locks, rather than one very expensive one. That’s if you don’t mind carrying them…and using them!

And locking the bike using the top bar (as conveniently shown in the above video), instead of wheel+frame using a tightly-fitting D-/U-lock, would mark you as an imbecile deserving of the shirking governance that lets such a petty crime run rampant!

The main principle remains, however: The only hope, given under the current circumstances (in at least the Western countries I am familiar with), is to make your bike a more difficult, or less appealing, target than nearby bikes.

Herein comes the Bike Minder. It cannot stop thieves from breaking the lock(s), or from damaging itself (i.e. the Minder); but it aims to be another pain in the thief’s butt! Hopefully, a significant one.