Someone stole my bike when I was 12. That sucked, 'cuz my grandfather didn’t have a lot of money and he bought it for me. It was locked, too. Anyone who would steal a child’s bike is a true asshole.
Uh, yeah. That’s the guarantee. To be more precise, the guarantee is for the monetary value. They send you a check. For the bike, not the lock. About as major an inconvenience as automobile insurance. You do carry auto insurance, don’t you? Or is it not worth the hassle?
So? Because someone somewhere is looking for a way around one lock, no lock is safe, ever? C’mon! That’s just stupid
And that pretty much describes bike theives. Locking a bike is tremendously safer than not locking it. Ergo, locking a bike is a safe thing to do.
When did I say it wasn’t? I challenge you to show me where I said that locking up a bike wasn’t the safer thing to do.
I simply pointed out that to a determined thief a lock is a speed bump at best, and that no lock is safe, it’s simply a deterrent to casual theft.
Of course I do. And I have a factory alarm and locks on the car. But I’m not under the illusion that if I had a desirable car (which I don’t) that such measures would deter a dedicated thief.
I lost a bike once. She was locked and in direct view of the offices that I worked from. April 1994.
I loved that bike. She was a 1992 Specialized StumpJumper Comp. A beautiful thing, triple-butted chromoly steel frame, tricked out with parts over the short time I had her. She’d almost gotten to sub-20-lbs, Ti parts and Ritchey Logic cranks and a Selle Italia saddle she was a DELIGHT to ride. Soft and supple and yet firm and THRUSTING.
I shoulda taken her into the office with me. I shoulda taken her into the office with me. I still kick myself for not taking her into the office with me that day. I coulda, I had in the past.
Came out ‘round quittin’ time. No bike. Where’s my bike? No bike. Had I taken her in? No. No bike. No… Bike.
5 hours later, my roommate found me roaming the neighborhood with my machette trying to find the…
Words fail.
The… Utter subhuman BASTARDS that had deprived me of the most… BELOVED of my simple posessions at the time.
I still feel sharp twinges of guilt. I fear that she was dismembered for parts, her frame cast aside or maybe sold, I don’t know. Sometimes I still weep for I LOVED THAT BIKE. And it was somehow my fault.
Seems silly for just a bicycle, right? But I still miss that bike, and always will.
:mad: 
:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:
From post #17–“No lock is safe. None.”
Now if using a lock to secure a bike is safer, it necessarily follows that it is safe. Yes? Therefore, some locks are safe, which is the negation of your statement “No lock is safe.” Now, if you had said “Given a sufficient amount of determination, incentive, tools, time, and technical ability, no lock is unbreakable,” you might have something.
No. Which is safer, having a gun pointed at you from 50 feet or having a knife pointed at you from 50 feet? I defy you to say that either is safe, but one is in fact safer than the other.
Which is safer, driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic or driving on a mostly empty freeway? One is safer than the other, but there’s still substantial risk.
Mitigating risk does not mean that it no longer exists. You put a lock on your bike and you reduce the risk of theft, but you never eliminate it. No lock is capable of doing so. Therefore, a lock is a deterrent to theft, not necessarily a preventer of it.
I stand by what I said. No lock is safe. If you think that a lock provides safety you’re deluding yourself. It provides deterrence.
I feel your pain.
Signed,
— Pee Wee Herman
OK fine. You win. But you know what? Nothing is safe under your definition. You could be 5 miles down in the concrete and steel bunker with Cheney and not be safe. There are no safe cars, no safe restaurants, no safe buildings, no safe diets, blah blah blah. Nothing is safe! Because there is always the tiniest chance that bad stuff will happen no matter what precautions you take.
Ever wear a safety harness? Why is it not called a deterrence harness? How about the safety on your gun? Have you ever ranted about what a stupid word that is? And those places providing safe havens for kids? God forbid a child should end up there!
You have narrowed the definition of “safe” beyond useful meaning.
You’re absolutely right. Safety is an illusion. A nuke can bust that bunker. The safety on a gun doesn’t always work. A restraint harness can break, sometimes quite dramatically, ala Owen Hart in a wrestling PPV a few years ago. You can still die in a collision even if the airbags and seat belt work.
You call it safety because stuff almost never goes wrong, but it’s really just mitigation.
From dictionary.com:
The condition of being safe; freedom from danger, risk, or injury.
Tell me when that is ever the case.
Well, Contrapuntal, in light of your level-headed reply…
Oh, wait, you’re just being a total dick for no reason.
Good debate tactic, that.
Any one in particular?
That’s cold. I could have lots of reasons for being a dick.
Specify, please?
Right. Then nothing is safe. “Safe’” is an ideal concept that has no relation to the real world. So your comment that locks are not safe is either belaboring the obvious, which is frowned upon in polite society, or some kind of flight into rhetorical fancy, which seems to me to be non-responsive in a thread which is, at least tangentially, about safely securing a bicycle.
Larry Olivier would have so yanked all your teeth. And possibly your mother’s as well.
“Is it safe?”
“No.”
“AAARRRGGGHHH”
“Is it safe?”
“No.”
“AAARRRGGGHHH!”
“Is it safe?”
“No.”
“AAARRRGGGHHH!”
“Is it safe?”
“No.”
“AAARRRGGGHHH!”
Specifically, Airman Doors and I have made the reasonable contribution that locked bikes - even really locked bikes - can still be stolen. Locking up a bike lowers the probability, but doesn’t eliminate the possibility of theft.
You have used an entire hayfield taking this to mean that we’re arguing that there’s reason to lock a bike, or indeed, anything, ever.
Either you’re willfully misinterpreting a very simple statement in order to stir up shit, or you’re a total idiot.
Edited to correct.
Unless you can show me that anything eliminates the possibility of theft, you are straining at a gnat. See my response above to Doors.
Nooo, try to follow along. I proposed locking a bike. I never said that locking a bike absolutely prevented a bike from being stolen. It is, however, just about the best way, short of sleeping with it, to prevent a bike from being stolen.
Doors then presents a video of a lock being picked, but offers no support that any bikes were actually stolen as a result of the lock being defective. Instead, he offers a definition of ‘safe’ that excludes any possibility of ‘safe’ actually existing.
It is his word, not mine. Your quarrel is with him.
Ok, now it’s your turn to follow along:
Quasimodal is mad that his bike is stolen. He posts a pit thread to that effect.
Several dopers come in and comment that having bikes stolen does indeed suck, and share their own stories.
You bust in and ask “Did you lock it? Because you really have to lock bikes.”
I post a video showing that a lock may not help, as a thief can still bust the lock to get the bike. The lock exists merely to make the act of busting the lock more trouble than the bike is worth to the thief, as demonstrated in the story I tell in the second half of my post.
You claim that you have discovered a lock that can’t be defeated and brag about your magical lock keeping your bike safe for three years. Oh, I’m sorry, your three $1,500 bikes. (One might conjecture that if you can afford to spend $4,500 on having several bikes at once, you probably live somewhere where it’s less likely for your bike to get stolen in the first place, but let’s leave that be.)
Airman Doors shows you that uber-fancy locks are also not invulnerable, since a lock is a deterrent, not a way to absolutely preclude theft.
You completely lose your shit. My favorite part is where you compare locking a bike to having a safety on a gun. Because trying to keep guns from going off accidentally and killing people is totally equivalent to trying to convince thieves that your bike isn’t worth the effort.
If you can’t see how you are coming off as a jackass, I’m not wasting time arguing with you anymore.
While the fun had from watching this pissing match unfold is beyond anything that I, personally, should be allowed, this:
Was long ago addressed by the good folk at Kryptonite, who have, indeed, come up with a lock that cannot be picked with a pen. As a matter of fact, anyone who still owns one of the old style locks (such as, f’rinstance, myself) is a total dumbass if he or she thinks that said lock will provide any worthwhile degree of safety.
But by all means, carry on with your definitional argumentation. Haven’t had so much fun since the hogs ate my sister.
-Waste
I called the police on wannabe bike thieves the other day. I’m sorry yours got stolen, and thankful that there is space to lock mine inside.
So, given that:
- Everyone here understands that nothing in this imperfect world can ever be 100% perfectly secure
- The word is used virtually everywhere to describe devices that simply make things safer but not 100% safe (see numerous examples from Contrapuntal)
Can we please use the word “safe” to describe a bike lock? No one likes a good semantic argument better than me, but this is starting to dive into mid-80s politically correct “you must say ‘safer sex’ because the term ‘safe sex’ inaccurate” linguistic territory.
I suspect my argument may be futile, but i felt i had to make it anyway. As i’ve been told repeatedly: Never argue with a pedant; it just frustrates you, and annoys the pedant.
My mom got her bicycle stolen from directly in front of a police office before. A good friend of hers had just given her the bike two days prior because she got her car impounded when my father got arrested for drunk driving in it. That just about broke her heart.
People are assholes.
~Tasha
Well, I posted what I thought was good advice. If that is ‘busting in’ then we are tarred with the same brush.
Actually, you posted a video of a guy cutting a chain with boltcutters. I never recommended securing your bike with a chain.
OK. I admit it. You are right. Locking up your bike** is** safer than not locking it. What was I thinking?
I claimed nothing of the sort, and I challenge you to show otherwise. I implied that it could not be cut with bolt cutters. It can’t. As for three years, where does that come from? I have never had a bike stolen, in over thirty years.
One would more correctly conjecture that I have a buddy who owns a bike shop, and always pay wholseale. One might further conjecture that I live in a neighborhood that is slowly being gentrified from crack alley, where I never leave a door unlocked unless I am going through it, and never leave a bike outside unattended. One might then find that, when speaking, her toungue is unoccluded by her rectum. Or not. I suspect it is a chronic state with you.
You don’t get out much, do you?
BBZZZT! Wrong again. I was comparing the use of the word ‘safe.’ But thanks for playing.
Ahh. The presumptive bailout. You might want to tuck your head and shoot for the old aikido roll when your feet leave the pedals. That’s a wicked curve up ahead.
My whole beef with your boyfriend can be summed up in the juxtaposition of these quotes from him. After you get your head out of the bushes, I suggest you spend a few seconds contemplating them. Enlightenment is just a pedal stroke away!