Love It Lock It: Bicycle Security Tips and Advice

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Things to consider when locking your bike, whether at home or out and about:

• DON’T BE TEMPTED – LOCK IT NO MATTER HOW QUICK YOU WILL BE…
• Location
• What you lock the bike to
• How good is your lock?
• How to lock your bike

[horizontalbreak][lyb-box]TOP TIP: For just one pound, you can park your bike all day at the Manchester Manchester city centre secure hub, which includes changing facilities. Transport for Greater Manchester have opened a Cycle Hub at Bury and others are planned at Altrincham, Ashton and Rochdale. Annual membership costs £10.[close_div]

Location seems a little obvious, but simple things like level of street lighting and the distance of the nearest house or shop can make a thief think twice.

Ideally your bike needs to be in an area where it is well lit, where the general public will have a clear view of it or walking past it regularly. For example, transport interchanges and shopping precincts.

[horizontalbreak][lyb-box]TOP TIP: Location of all ‘Sheffield Stand’ bike racks in Manchester city centre. Solid thick metal cemented into the ground…[close_div]What you lock your bike to needs to be solid in structure and immovable. The classic mistake is to lock your bike to something that could be more easily hacked into than the lock itself, or worse still, an open ended post the bike can be lifted straight off.

[horizontalbreak] How good your lock is can be the difference between your bike being casually stolen by a passing thief and the thief moving on to another less secure bike. Of course no lock is unbreakable, but the longer it takes a thief to steal a bike, the more likely they will be caught and the less likely they will attempt it.

A general rule is, the more heavy and expensive the lock, the better it is. There is no point in buying a £5 lock for a £500 bike… A general guide is to spend 10% of your bikes price, on the lock or else as much as you can afford. And the difference in quality between a £20 lock and a £50 lock can be significant.

[lyb-box]TOP TIP: As recommended by CTC amongst other reputable bike related groups, www.soldsecure.com is a security product institution, testing various models of cycle locks and certifying them as bronze, silver or Gold standard.[close_div]The ultimate locks are D-locks, although even they can vary in price and quality. Both heavy and robust, a gold standard D-lock can take a professional bike thief much longer to break than a cheaper lock.

[horizontalbreak]How to lock your bike; Well there are good ways and bad ways. Let’s start with the good:

• Put the lock through the triangle of the bike frame and if you have a cable lock too, out that through the D-lock and the wheels.

 

 

 

 

• Secure any removable parts or even better, take them with you! The seat and wheels may typically have a quick release lever. The wheels can easily be locked, (see photo above) and the seat can be detached. Even better, exchange the quick releases for a permanent bolts. Nothing worse than riding home on a ‘seat-less’ metal stump…

And here’s some examples of what not to do.

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Likely to return to just the front wheel.

 

 

 

Thin wire locks are easy to cut with pliers and even a strong pair of scissors!

 

 

 

A set of expensive wheels up for grabs!

 

[horizontalbreak]Useful Links

Its a good idea to register your bike with the local police authority. Options for registering your bike are:

• National Bike Registry,
• Immobilise,
• SelectaMark
• Datatag your bike: available from Evans Cycles.