The Stolen Bike Registry, www.stolenbikeregistry.com, is a free resource for registering and tracking stolen bicycles. It is designed to allow the victims of bike theft a fighting chance at recovering their bikes. The website is, reportedly, run by tech-savvy people who love their bikes and hate bike thieves.
The majority of bikes that are stolen are sold to pawn shops or other “grey area” dealers within a few hours of being stolen. So while the bikes are re-sold and, frequently, re-stolen, they don’t often leave their home city or even home neighborhood.
Bike theft is a terrible problem with no real solution. It is too easy to steal and to resell bikes and too hard to register and to search for stolen bicycles. In addition, there is little incentive for police or pawn shop dealers to work to reduce the number of resold stolen bikes.
There are three main problems with recovering stolen bicycles.
- No incentive to look for or to report a stolen bike. A pawn shop owner, most likely, isn’t going to check to make sure a bike isn’t stolen as it would put a dent in his income. Police departments are, for the most part, overworked without hunting down bikes.
- The current stolen bike registry is lacking. The current registry is run by The National Bike Registry. While they may have some good ideas, they make the victims of bike theft pay to post the serial number of their bike for recovery.
- No easy way for people to check a serial number. This is a problem because there are conscientious people out there that want nothing to do with a stolen bike. With no way of checking if a bike is stolen, they can’t avoid buying stolen bikes.
If you have been a victim of bike theft in the past and want a lock that is more of a theft deterrent this time around, contact the online bike lock specialists of A&Js’ bike locks at 708-460-2999.
