Staring eye posters deter bike thieves, apparently

pinkteapot

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-22270052

Heard about this on the radio this morning - they're going to try it down here in Essex.

My favourite bit of the article is:

Academics found that bike racks which had eyes placed above them experienced 62% fewer thefts than the previous year, while those without eyes saw thefts increase by 63%.

So in other words, the total number of thefts remained broadly similar and the thieves just changed location.

Perhaps they saw the posters and thought they meant there was CCTV on that parking area....

danlikesbikes

Yeah I saw the chap on the morning news & thought that it was..... well i don't know would assume that if your bike was parked right under some CCTV you would be better off that no CCTV and putting up a poster but maybe I am wrong.

capt_slog

What the research didn't cover was that kicking the theives' plums up level with their tonsils is an even better deterent

cloggsy

Funny that; the threat of chopping their bleeding hands off would probably be 'more of a deterrent! :evil:

pinkteapot

I work at a university, so my baby gets parked in the uni bike park. Got a good lock but still feel a bit nervous every time I walk back, wondering if it'll be there (and in one piece).

keef66

My son was at Loughborough and it seemed that the local thieves regarded the campus as a kind of cycling pick'n mix. The one time he'd locked it up just by the frame the wheels went missing. The following year the whole thing was lifted from a locked rear yard. Most of it was on Ebay within the week apparently located in Manchester.

ben@31

Reminds me of them 2 dimensional cardboard cutouts of a police officer they used to have displayed in some shop windows.

However, what gave the game away is that you never saw a copper on the beat around here. So why would one be stood perfectly still in the window of Boots for 8 hours?

It would be ironic if anyone stole a cardboard policeman :-)

thegreatdivide

Wish I'd had them on my front door on Monday. Some fuxker walked right into my house while i was in getting ready for a ride and walked out with my new MTB. Luckily he didn't go upstairs and find the road bikes!

Drfabulous0

ben@31 wrote:

It would be ironic if anyone stole a cardboard policeman :-)

So tempted to do this, maybe hold it to ransom,

danlikesbikes

ben@31 wrote:

Reminds me of them 2 dimensional cardboard cutouts of a police officer they used to have displayed in some shop windows.

However, what gave the game away is that you never saw a copper on the beat around here. So why would one be stood perfectly still in the window of Boots for 8 hours?

It would be ironic if anyone stole a cardboard policeman :-)

For some random reason the other half was watching 'secrets of the shoplifters" and a chap did exactly that. He didn't get caught for it, but the police went round his place for something else and found the cardboard policeman.

plowmar

Wether the figures balance out surely depends on the start figures. If they were equal then they would balance but if the eyes made the scum move to another area where the thefts were less then they wouldn't balance and could result in a net reduction.

Sorry, Granny first of all you get an egg ............

GiantMike

In 35 years, when I'm too old to care about being sent to prison, I'm going to spend a couple of grand on bikes and leave them in a crime hotspot. I'm then going to hide with a sniper's rifle and have a great couple of hours picking the theiving scum off. If more people took such a moral stance there would be less crime.

I'll also shoot at dog walkers who don't pick up their pooch's deposits and those that do, then drop the bag by the park gate. Oh yes, and I'll be sniping the anybody dropping litter, too, especially cyclists who think they're too good to have to take their gel wrappers home with them.

pinkteapot

While you're at it, if you could take out the two cyclists who were riding two abreast on the A133 on Sunday that'd be great. Very busy single-carriageway 60mph road and they had a 1/2 mile queue behind them! And people wonder why drivers hate us.

seanoconn

pinkteapot wrote:

While you're at it, if you could take out the two cyclists who were riding two abreast on the A133 on Sunday that'd be great. Very busy single-carriageway 60mph road and they had a 1/2 mile queue behind them! And people wonder why drivers hate us.

Ah, the old 'nothing teaches an annoying cyclist a lesson quite like being murdered'

I'm with you pinkteapot ( apart from the murder) but prepare for a backlash

rolf_f

GiantMike wrote:

In 35 years, when I'm too old to care about being sent to prison, I'm going to spend a couple of grand on bikes and leave them in a crime hotspot. I'm then going to hide with a sniper's rifle and have a great couple of hours picking the theiving scum off. If more people took such a moral stance there would be less crime.

Ummm, yes. An interesting "moral" stance you have there!

Of course, the other issue is that in 35 years you'll be just as happy to not be in prison as you are now!