

The Bike Index: Let's Stop Bike Theft, Together - dsego
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1073266317/the-bike-index-lets-stop-bike-theft-together

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FireBeyond
Ugh. So many problems:

1\. It's a violation of "Kickstarter cannot be used to fund e-commerce,
business, and social networking websites or apps."

2\. This is a website, right? Then why: "Travel to the eleven biggest bike
cities in the United States to meet with shop owners and give them the ability
to register bikes for free (the cities: NYC, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle,
Philadelphia, Madison, Tucson, Austin, Denver, D.C., and Minneapolis)."

(Awesome, let's use Kickstarter to pay for me/us to take a trip through the US
"to meet with bike shop owners and give them a chance to use the website"...)

3\. "Offer region specific recommendations for reporting bike theft to the
police." \- so an extended goal of this site is to "recommend how to report to
the police, customized for regions"?!?

4\. Some stickers.

5\. Oh, and you have to pay to register with the Index.

And they seriously want $50K for this? Sorry for the cynicism... but this is a
website, some stickers, and a tour of the US for the founders.

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yannk
I think some of your points raise legitimate concerns. 5. is wrong though, out
of curiosity I googled the site, and registered my bike -- and no payment was
required. Where did you get the information that it would be paying? Is that
after the kickstarter is funded?

Registration of all new bikes is probably a good way of solving the problem
once and for all, although I'm dubious it would work correctly without the
legislator involved, and you don't want to involve the legislator, because it
wouldn't be free.

~~~
FireBeyond
Their Rewards structure hints at point 5: "$60: Free bike registrations
forever".

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sbierwagen
While you're waiting for this kickstarter to be funded, you can just tweet a
picture of your bike:
[https://twitter.com/ceequof/status/372166690273898496](https://twitter.com/ceequof/status/372166690273898496)

(And since google doesn't appear to have indexed that serial number, a vanilla
html page: [https://bbot.org/bike](https://bbot.org/bike) )

~~~
ivanbrussik
sharing on a G+ community would have done the trick

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Patrick_Devine
A better idea would be something like LoJack for a bicycle that fits in the
stem underneath the seat. It would transmit on a frequency which can be picked
up by the police and in theory you should be able to get your bike back fairly
quickly. Alternatively, it could have a cel connection (like whispernet for a
Kindle), and any time it picks up a frequency it could send out its GPS
coordinates or triangulates itself.

Either way, technology is the solution, not registering your bicycle. Most
cities have registered bikes for years (in Palo Alto I believe there is still
a law on the books making it mandatory, but it's never enforced), and very few
bikes ever get recovered. You're better of perusing Craig's List to wait for
someone trying to sell your bike and just go and steal it back.

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erdle
In a world without paint, metal files, sandpaper, grinding discs, tape,
interchangeable bike parts, semi-smart bike thieves, etc...this would make
sense.

/u/Patrick_Devine is spot on and the best place to test this concept would be
the bike theft capital of the world: Amsterdam

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akkyakimoto
In Japan, police forces people register that. If you ride on a bike without
registration, police would stop you (precisely speaking, stop everyone "looks"
bad then check) and check the record if it was stolen.

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epa
I wish startups would stop using the 'save the world' mantra and lose the
'awesome' descriptor. It's not professional.

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airwot4
There's a government website that does this in the UK. immobilise.com.

If there isn't something like this in the US then it's a great idea but I'm
reluctant to believe that a commercial venture is the best way to build it.

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AmVess
I get the feeling this is going to become a a comprehensive registry of stolen
bicycles.

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mithras
I don't even know why people pledged over $11000 for this. It will fail, and
hard.

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ihsw
Lol, bike theft is notoriously ignored by LEOs. Less than $500 value items
usually, which barely pays for the salaries and doesn't pay for gas, food,
equipment, or repairs/health.

Besides, you can just shell out $100 for a shitty bike while you save up for
your next one to get stolen. Here's an idea! Just buy a stolen bike.

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ivanbrussik
what a great idea, i like it

