[HN Gopher] VanMoof's team of 'bike hunters' appears to succeed ... ___________________________________________________________________ VanMoof's team of 'bike hunters' appears to succeed where the city doesn't Author : kaycebasques Score : 82 points Date : 2022-07-19 15:06 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (sfstandard.com) (TXT) w3m dump (sfstandard.com) | jillesvangurp wrote: | A pattern you see with these bikes is that people mostly don't | bother to mess with them after they learn about the counter | measures. Basically, there are several levels of protection. 1) | if it is locked, it will make some noise when people mess with | it. 2) When they don't stop, it will make a lot of noise. And it | escalates quickly to ear piercing levels. There is no way you can | pick this up and just walk way with it unnoticed unless you can | unlock the bike or dismantle it without setting off the alarm. A | light touch will do that. 3) if by any chance you do succeed in | stealing it while not drawing the attention of the entire | neighborhood, it has a tracker. 4) if you manage to disable all | of that, you basically have a product that is relatively hard to | sell because world + dog knows they might have to hand it over in | the likely case that they are caught by the bike hunters. Because | so few thefts escalate to that, VanMoof can afford to spare no | expenses on trying to track thieves down and keeping victims | pacified with a replacement bike. It's a simple insurance that | works and actually lowers their risk. | | It's not impossible to steal one of course but it adds up to a | lot of trouble and risk for not a lot of payoff. Most bike | thieves would prioritize easier, less risky, and more valuable | targets. | | I use Swapfiets, which is a Dutch bike leasing startup. I just | pay a monthly fee and don't worry about theft, repairs, etc. | There are many thousands of them across Berlin; hundreds of | thousands across many European cities. Nobody ever messes with | these bikes. They are so recognizable that there's no point in | stealing one. No bike hunters required for this. It has no | tracker or alarm. I've had one for two years in Berlin and nobody | ever messes with it. And it's a decent bike too. I park it | wherever I want including some places where I would never park | any bike I own like the train station, rough neighborhoods, etc. | It's great. I can go anywhere I like in the city, leave the bike | on the street for a few hours and it will still be there when I | come back. I do this every day. They have electrical ones too. | They are very popular with delivery services. | PcChip wrote: | >They are so recognizable that there's no point in stealing one | | What does this mean? why don't they get stolen? | tomklein wrote: | Swapfiets builds their own bikes and does not - never ever - | sell them. If one gets stolen, it can't be resold without one | noticing it's stolen, as these are not in circulation in the | first place and still owned by the company that built them | lom wrote: | Video of "the neighborhood being alerted" and... doing nothing | against a bike thief. https://youtu.be/UGttmR2DTY8 | dieselgate wrote: | Interesting article for me, from a couple angles. I had a bike | stolen about a week ago and dang, it sucks. Cool there is a | customer facing tool to help with retrieval! It's always weird | when thinking about "encountering" the person selling a stolen | bike, kind of scary to think of potential outcomes. Does this | service provide any "tools" for that? [edit: article says asking | for it back is usually sufficient but I'm still skeptical] On a | separate note I went to middle/high school with Ryan Eastman - | seem to remember he kind of disappeared from school because of | pursuing professional cycling. Remember looking up his race times | at one point and have always been kind of curious what became of | him. Sorry to hear about his crash from this article(!) but also | very glad he found something cycling related to work in. Good | luck to all involved. | | Edit: because this is HN I was initially thinking VanMoof also | had a service one could attach to any bike. Seems it's | proprietary offering for their bikes. Original text left unedited | above | notagoodidea wrote: | > article says asking for it back is usually sufficient but I'm | still skeptical | | Personnal and friends experience tends to agree with the | article advice. The intensity of the ask vary from "It's my | bike" to "It's my bike and we don't want to call the cops about | it, right?". Most of the time, they may try to sell it back to | you though. | clairity wrote: | a few weeks ago, i came out of a neighborhood cafe to find my | bike gone. on a hunch, i walked over to a nearby homeless | encampment and saw my bike sitting there. i walked up to it, | grabbed it, said "that's my bike", cursed the dudes out, and | rode off. it felt a little crazy at the time, but it worked. | the thief(s) didn't seem too fazed by it. | JoeAltmaier wrote: | If only disabling the GPS, also disabled the bike. Make it too | much trouble to steal. | googlryas wrote: | What happens if you take it into a parking garage with no | service? Do you need to carry the bike out now? | JoeAltmaier wrote: | Do they disable it by removing the antennae? Then sure that | doesnt work so well. | | If by destroying it, perhaps the bottom bracket could get a | pin released to freeze it when the circuit quits responding. | randyrand wrote: | I think they mean something like this: | | https://i.pinimg.com/564x/0b/fc/d6/0bfcd63b9e49a7da0ba1f9333. | .. | | The lock itself / the GPS cartridge itself is structurally | integral to the bike. | donclark wrote: | I thought these guys did a pretty good job of deterring bike | thieves in the area temporarily... | | Rope bike prank (2018) | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-OwjoP96Rc | mc32 wrote: | Those looks like set-ups? Are they actual thieves trying to | steal bikes? Wouldn't a thief notice the tether? I can see | trying to pretend you're just getting on YOUR bike and taking | off... | | Anyway, there is a difference in an insured bike recovery | system that has the right incentives and SFPD which does not | have the benefit of GPS tracking and profit incentive. Of | course their success rate will be dire in comparison. | evan_ wrote: | > Those looks like set-ups? | | it's certainly very lucky that the thief always went directly | towards the guy hiding behind a tree with a pie. Helpful also | that they stayed in the sightline of the camera, even though | several of them did have to look directly at it to be sure. | mc32 wrote: | One other thing that would point to those being staged is | the injury liability they could incur (the endos) --of | course they would have to know who tethered the bikes like | that. But the person running after the "thief" would be a | good candidate. | more_corn wrote: | Sf police don't give a shit about stolen bikes. I saw a homeless | guy pick up a bike (wheel locked to frame) prop it on a shopping | cart and run away. Called the cops. They didn't give a shit, | belittled me and refused to come. You'll note in the article that | it's impossible to get the police to show up even when there's | known stolen property inside and clear gps evidence. | | sfpd doesn't do anything about anything. Check out that great | video of the cops rolling up on a burglary in progress. Perp | comes out the door, gets in car and drives off. Cops do nothing. | | When vigilantism is the only justice available you're living in a | failed state. | corrral wrote: | Not just SF, and not just bikes. My experience is that cops | don't give a shit about _any_ theft unless it happens right in | front of them. No amount of evidence you can hand them will | convince them to spend so much as a minute investigating. | uoaei wrote: | Remember this when people say Chesa Boudin was the cause of the | spike in crime. | | In reality, police departments went on effective strike, | enforcing only the policies they wanted to, and leaving many | cases open so as to provide statistics for bad faith actors to | smear the reputation of the DA who has no actual control over | the police. | | This disturbed local populations, but those people were quick | to blame "criminals" because there seems to be an infinite | fount of good faith assumptions reserved for police, even in | the face of so much evidence of how bad they are at their jobs | (willingly or otherwise). | vkou wrote: | > When vigilantism is the only justice available you're living | in a failed state. | | What you're observing isn't a 'failed state'. The apparatus of | the state is working quite fine, and the state is completely | capable of enforcing its will on its subjects. [1] | | What you're observing is the police doing their job[2] (Which | is protecting the state), and not the job you want them to do | (protecting you and yours.) | | [1] The definition of a failed state is one that is incapable | of enforcing its will on its subjects. Which is what you see | in, say, 2021 Afghanistan, where the central government is only | theoretically in charge, with Taliban rebels _actually_ being | able to enforce their will on the country. There 's a | categorical difference between 'can't' and 'can't be arsed to' | - and you're observing the latter. | | [2] Why doing that job entitles them to half of your municipal | taxes is an exercise for the reader. | edm0nd wrote: | The side of effect of having too overly progressive policies in | place for theft and petty crime. SF citizens own fault really. | anewpersonality wrote: | SF police don't care period. It's a corrupt organization that | simply exists to steal funds from the state. It needs to be | burnt to the ground and re-created. | | https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/t2u3fq/guy_in... | slaymaker1907 wrote: | It sounds like a very similar situation to Seattle. While | living there, it was remarkable to me how useless and/or | hostile the police felt compared to the police in other | cities. I've been threatened multiple times while going home | late at night and it was never the police that actually | helped. I'm convinced we really need to get better at helping | each other as a community rather than relying primarily on | the police. | el_benhameen wrote: | I think it extends well beyond SF. There's a guy on my local | Nexdoor whose car was stolen in Oakland; after waiting for | more than 6 hours to file a report, he was told by an officer | that they prefer to avoid reports as they have to do | paperwork each time one is filed. | | (As a counter anecdote, I'm further out in the East Bay, and | when I caught a guy taking my bike from my garage, the cops | stayed on the phone with me as I chased him down and actually | arrested the guy when they caught up with us. I was | surprised.) | bluGill wrote: | Make sure you tell your city representative. City level | elections are generally easy to change if you put in effort | to knock on doors. | Gibbon1 wrote: | You are correct. As a rule SF police do not live in San | Francisco. So it's just a cash cow to them. | exabrial wrote: | > vigilantism | | Cops and the city council WILL retaliate against you though for | embarrassing them. | bee_rider wrote: | Depending on the type of vigilantism, that could be the most | reasonable move. | chaostheory wrote: | This alongside with Citizen's gig security signals the decline of | local government police forces. I would argue that the prevalence | of Ring is signaling the same thing. | uoaei wrote: | The prevalence of Amazon Ring is in large part because local | police subsidize them and give them for "free" to underinformed | citizens, and then access their private data without their | consent pretty much at will. | michaelt wrote: | Was there a glorious past when bike thefts were taken | seriously? | | Or is there also an element of a widening gap between rich and | poor here, where the rich will be further insulated from the | impact of failing public services? | Eric_WVGG wrote: | this line rankled me: "baffled city leaders for years" | | as if city leaders have ever considered cyclists anything | more than an annoyance | bsder wrote: | The police are there to protect the rich and oppress the | plebians. Any crime that the police prevent or resolve for the | general public is only an aftereffect of protecting the | privileged. | | It has _always_ been thus throughout history. | | This is why the vast majority of police need to be disarmed. | praxulus wrote: | I'm rich, the police still didn't do anything when someone | broke into my car. | uoaei wrote: | "Rich" is not merely "high income" nor "upper class". | | You're not in the club if you have enough free time to | spend commenting on HN. | ceejayoz wrote: | There are commenters here who are _definitely_ rich. | dahinds wrote: | Not rich enough, evidently. | pnathan wrote: | That's my take as well. Police have carved a lack of | accountability for themselves, and so the social system is | starting to route around them. | leke wrote: | As bikes go electric, it would be good to have them all required | to have transponders. We just have to make it a requirement to | have them on all the time, then we won't be plagued with this | bike theft. | thinkling wrote: | As bikes go electric, you can make it so the motor blocks when | your phone is not in range. | lief79 wrote: | So you can end up with a dead phone and a nonfunctional bike? | praxulus wrote: | If you have a charged ebike, it ought to be easy to charge | your phone. | | There are still other problems with that approach. VanMoof | currently lets you _unlock_ your phone with your bike, | rather than requiring a constant connection, which seems | like the right balance. | amelius wrote: | Sounds borderline illegal. What if the person riding the bike | bought it secondhand? | GauntletWizard wrote: | There's two possibilities to your question: That the person | riding it bought it secondhand from someone who stole it, and | that the person buying it bought it from the (first) owner, who | then calls in Vanmoof to steal the bike back for them. | | 1) Receiving stolen property is illegal, and the bike is still | property of the original owner and they can take it back | anytime. The person riding it is culpable to the extent that | they knew it was a shady deal, which can range from "Not at | all, but stuck holding the bag of having to sue the thief for | fraud for selling them a stolen bike" to "Charged in | conspiracy". There's a big range there, but as it's incredibly | hard to prove if they were found riding it around, they | probably just lose the bike. If they are found with it in a | chop shop... that's a different story. | | 2) Selling someone something with the intent to steal it back | is fraud. If you have a receipt from the seller, you can tell | VanMoof to fuck off, or surrender the bike to them and sue in | small claims court. VanMoof doesn't want to deal with that and | will roll over fairly quickly. The (fraudulent) first owner | will be very easy to find because they have a contract with | VanMoof. They can probably pull this scam once without | repercussions, but VanMoof will, presumably, quickly turn over | evidence to your police report of the scam to avoid ruining | their reputation. | bink wrote: | They aren't forcing anyone to surrender the bike. They're just | asking them if it's stolen and if they'll give it back. In any | case, buying stolen property doesn't entitle you to the | property. | wl wrote: | If its stolen property, the original owner still has superior | title to the person who bought it after it was stolen. Might | need to be hashed out in court if the second-hand buyer won't | relinquish it, but it's not illegal to ask. | londgine wrote: | https://www.vanmoof.com/shop/en_nl/bikehunters their website says | they even go flying around the world to places like war torn | Ukraine and Casablanca gangs to retrieve the bike. That sounds | very dangerous. | farnsworth wrote: | After having two bikes stolen at once, I bought Tile trackers for | a bunch of my possessions and hid one on my new bike. The | tracking in Seattle is good in places with a lot of people | around, pretty coarse in other areas, but I'm hoping that it will | at least give me a direction to head in if this bike is ever | stolen. I'm wondering whether anyone has a recommendation for a | bike GPS tracker though. The ones I see generally look too | obvious, have expensive subscriptions, need charging every day, | etc. | thinkling wrote: | There are covers for the Apple AirTags that look like regular | seatpost-mounted reflectors. I haven't looked to see if they | exist for other trackers, but that's the route I would go. | kevinmchugh wrote: | Don't the anti-stalking features of AirTags make them poorly | suited to anti-theft uses? If I were a professional bike | thief I'd have an iphone just to get notified when I've | stolen a bike with an airtag on it | ray__ wrote: | If the AirTag is well hidden enough, I wonder how many bike | thiefs would just cut their losses and leave the bike | behind at this point. | jdminhbg wrote: | The AirTag will beep if it's been separated from its | owner for long enough, so presumably the thief would be | able to find it relatively quickly once that happens. | foxyv wrote: | I bought two Boomerang bike trackers a while back as well as | upgraded to their 4G version the "V2". Unfortunately they | aren't great at stuff like arming, disarming, etc... You can | arm/disarm using bluetooth using Bluefruit, but the app can | only do so through the 4G network it attaches to which can be | iffy sometimes. The battery is okay, but not amazing, I have to | charge it pretty often. | | The things are pretty obvious and are intentionally so. They | have an audible alarm that goes off if they sense movement and | send a notification to your phone if they can connect to 4G | (Iffy). I guess some Canadian city tried to run a bait bike | program using them but no one would touch the bikes with an | alarm. Personally I prefer to deter than to have to hunt down | the thieves and retrieve. | | By far the best way to prevent theft is to register your | bicycle and encourage others to do so as well. I use Project | 529: https://project529.com/garage | | Police tend to not enforce bicycle theft, mostly because | proving ownership is not usually possible due to lack of VIN | numbers and registration. Having proof of ownership like | photos, Project 529 stickers, and such is a great way to help | police stop bike theft. | dorfsmay wrote: | How does this compare to https://bikeindex.org/ ? | rektide wrote: | Wow, I had no idea; this is wild. | | > _Appears to Succeed Where the City Doesn't_ | | Pretty aggressive framing given that bikes generally havent had | gps trackers builtin before. Police wouldnt have any experience | trying to get such things back, yet, given the new-ness, but | these people have both time & some experience. | TulliusCicero wrote: | I don't think the GPS tracking is the issue. | | It's not uncommon to hear about people losing something like a | smartphone to a thief, know where it is due to GPS tracking, | and police just won't do anything with that information. | praxulus wrote: | Well, it's not the _only_ issue. Without GPS tracking or bike | registries bike theft is legitimately a very hard problem for | police to deal with, so they 're used to relying entirely on | getting cyclists to use better locks. | | The situation has changed though, and they certainly deserve | criticism for failing to change their attitude. | SilasX wrote: | Police definitely have done bike stings in SF, and so | definitely have the know-how to track at least _some_ bike | thieves this way. Example from googling: | | https://www.kron4.com/news/video-san-francisco-police-set-up... | more_corn wrote: | Have you actually spent any time in SF? Bike chop shops every | fifth block. Rampant blatant theft. It's an apocalyptic hell | scape. | gamegoblin wrote: | I think the point parent commenter was making is that the | police _do_ have the knowledge and ability to tackle bike | theft. Your comment implies that they are choosing (or | being instructed) not to, which is a different thing. | | That said, my experience echos yours -- I'm a bike commuter | in Seattle and ride by 3 open-air bike chop shops on my way | to the office, all literally adjacent to bike paths. Pretty | uncomfortable. | decafninja wrote: | I would not keep bike I cared about outside in any major | city. Doesn't matter if it's locked. | chrisin2d wrote: | I have a VanMoof bike with both a GPS and a Find My tracker. | | The first time it got stolen in Berkeley, I recovered it. It | hadn't gone far, so the police were able to locate it and the | thief. | | The second time it got stolen, I couldn't recover it. But I had | already bought the Peace of Mind coverage plan, so VanMoof | replaced it -- and lent me a bike of the same model in the 2 | weeks it took to deliver. | glhaynes wrote: | Do you know how they were able to steal it without the alarm | going off? | wferrell wrote: | Are you able to keep using the Peace of Mind coverage plan once | replaced? Or did you have to buy a 2nd plan? Asking out of | genuine interest. It seems to be some of the value of the plan | is that you get to worry less about the stress/fear of your | bike being stolen -- but if you are off the plan once it has | been stolen once...seems like a loss of value. | awinter-py wrote: | > The two-person team did a quick U-turn and pulled aside the | person to find that the bike's GPS system was disabled, | indicating that it had been stolen | | the google bus did a quick U turn and did an illegal terry stop | to find that the pixel 6's third party cookies had been disabled, | indicated that it had been stolen ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-19 23:00 UTC)