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Bike security: the home front

PUBLISHED October 12, 2011
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Two-thirds of bikes get stolen in or around the home. What's the best way to protect yours when it's off duty? With an estimated half million-plus bikes stolen in the UK every year , it's no surprise that security is a perennial topic on cycling blogs and forums. Typically these tend to centre around preventing theft when you're out and about ? which locks (or combination of locks) are most thief-resistant, ways to make your bike less attractive, that sort of stuff. But there is another, often neglected side to this: what to do you do with your treasured machine when you're at home? This is, in fact, the more important part of the problem. According to the British Crime Survey ? the most valuable gauge of the subject given that it records people's experiences and not whether they reported it to the police, something many bike theft victims don't bother with ? well over two-thirds of cycles are stolen in or near the owner's home. The bulk of these, just over 60% of all the thefts, took place in the immediate area around the home, for example bikes left in a shed, in a garden or locked up on the street outside. There's a few of hard and fast rules when it comes to not losing your bike this way. To begin with, if at all possible, don't leave it locked up overnight on the street or somewhere else where it's visible from the street, like a front garden. A reformed former thief told the Bike blog last year how he'd roam the streets looking for suitably nick-able machines routinely left in the same spots. If they're there after dark they're easy pickings for an experienced gang in a van filled with bolt croppers and angle grinders. An addendum to this rule is that you should never lock your bike to the iron railings outside many Victorian homes, as shown in the photo above. As a friend found to his cost, a sharp hit with a hammer will generally snap the railing, another favourite thieves' trick. Of course, not everyone has the space (or the desire) to keep a bike or bikes inside their homes, and even if you're able to leave it in a communal hallway or corridor it's not necessarily much safer. There's no straightforward answer to this. Designers are busy working on creative new ways to keep bikes safe both inside and out of the home. A Home Office-sponsored Design Council competition earlier this year came up with some interesting ideas, though nothing astonishingly new: a few clever-ish widgets to lock bikes to a fixed item in hallways, plus a variant on the metal bike sheds which have sprung up around some front gardens in recent years. But it's worth thinking hard about what would be the greater inconvenience: sharing a bit of your flat or house with a grubby, oily bike or, quite possibly, not having a bike any more. The other rule goes for those who do have a garden, yard, or side lane in which to keep their bike: even if it's out of sight of the road, it still needs to be locked up to something. It's the bike thieves' other standard routine to trawl the gardens of an entire street, loading a van with unlocked bikes, or those locked just to themselves. This is where I'll offer up my own recipe for you (and your bike) to sleep securely at night ? take some tips from our friends in the world of motorcycling. If you're willing to spend the money on home-only security (and again, it's worth balancing the admittedly high cost against the financial and mental anguish of possibly losing your bike) then you can forget about weight and size and delight in locks hefty enough to anchor an average-sized battleship. I recently moved into a flat in a 1940s block where residents can rent garages on the site, a big selling point for someone whose bike collection now numbers somewhere between "several" and "a small fleet". My garage is tucked round the back, well out of sight of the road but, equally, far enough from the flats to potentially interest an opportunistic thief. I spent a recent afternoon installing a hefty ground anchor , to which my bikes are now attached with a very long, alarmingly heavy, motorbike chain . Both of these are certified by the Sold Secure industry scheme as gold motorbike standard, significantly more thief-proof than the bicycle equivalent. No security system is invulnerable, of course, but cutting the chain would most likely need a significant amount of time using power tools, something few thieves would risk for such a relatively insignificant haul. It also wasn't cheap, not far short of ?200 also counting the hire of a very macho heavy-duty cordless drill to install the ground anchor in the concrete floor. But a high proportion of this was spent on a particularly long chain, something people with a more sensible number of bikes won't need. And now, as we inevitably say on such posts ? over to you. What are your handy tips for bike home security? And have you made any costly mistakes? Cycling Crime Peter Walker guardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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