Project529 Delivers Petition With 51,203 Signatures To eBay and Craigslist To Stop Bike Theft

I’m on the fence about this. I like the idea of it as a theft deterrent but I dislike the idea for mandatory VINs though a government regulated system.

I see riding a bicycle on public roads as a right, where as operation of a motor vehicle is legally not a right, but a privilege. I just fear registration will lead to registration and loss of rights.

It won’t stop anything. There is no way to verify the serial, and nothing to stop thieves from incorrectly listing a false serial.

So I input a flipped digit serial number, or I label it as some other item then a bike but let the pictures and the text convey it is a bike. I do not think eBay is the place to start, rather a list of all marked-as-stolen framenumbers would be helpful, so you can check if the bike you are looking at is among them.

Velociraptor is right. I think this is a hard thing to fix. if you embed QR codes or serial numbers in the frames is a great start but people would still cheat that system. we have to start somewhere and this is a good.

Here in the Netherlands we have an open database to check on stolen frame numbers. When you buy or collect a secondhand bike you can enter the frame number on the government site and check whether it is reported as stolen. I am very happy this open database exist but it is not really putting a stop to bike theft, if you were so naive as project529 to believe. But it will help the honest people to stay honest. Unfortunately most of the second hand bicycle buyers just want a cheap bike, they don’t even care the bike is stolen, so they won’t check. As long as you can attest that you could not know the bike you bought was stolen, the police can’t do anything about it.

Another issue: It takes some time before the stolen bike’s frame number is on the website (owner needs to report, report needs to be put online, etc). While most thieves will sell the bikes they stole the same day.
Anecdote: There is this shabby bike shop nearby, the owner often bought stolen bikes from junkies and sold them to customers. The police picked up on this, his whole business was confiscated, he spend a few nights in jail. Two weeks later he was back in business doing exactly the same thing; He had proved that he checked the bicycles on this government site the moment he bought the bikes and at the time they were not reported, so he ‘could not know’ that they were stolen.
Everybody can see those bikes were stolen (no wheel lock, no keys, on a Dutch bike, every week the same guys who come to sell him bikes), but to prove it is something else.

I am also very annoyed by the demand side of the problem; consumers who just want a cheap bike because theirs was stolen and who are to dumb to see that they themselves keep up the bike theft with their naive way of dealing with it.