I went down to grab my bike one day, and my U-Lock was hanging open. This is strange, because the design of the lock and the key is such that it won’t let you take the key out until the lock is, well locked. I picked at it for awhile, and couldn’t get it to reset. Bizarly, my bike was still there.
Turns out you can pick the damn things with a plain old Bic pen. The shaft of the pen is just the right size to fit into the circular keyhole and pick the tumblers. Kryptonite - the Benz of bike locks - could well go out of business.
How the fuck did nobody figure this out before? The u-lock has always been considered the safest way to lock your bike. You’re even supposed to buy cables that run through your wheels, and then attach the cable to your trusty u-lock!
I’m just glad my bike wasn’t jacked from the communal bike room - I’m guessing somebody popped the lock, and then waited to see if anybody would notice. My bike will stay in my apartment until I find a better solution, which could well be a chain and a dinky but unpickable combination lock.
Wow, that really sucks about the U-locks. Chains or cables aren’t much better though, they can be cut with bolt cutters. I’ve had many bikes stolen that way over the years.
Yeah, that’s what’s blowing my mind about the whole thing. U-locks were always the guaranteed way to keep your bike safe. Any method you could think of to try to get those things off would probably cause a lot of damage to the bike, with no guarantee that the lock would actually break. Your main concerns were the strength of whatever you were locking your bike to (watch out for those signs that are just screwed in at the base), and losing pieces like your seat or handlebars.
It sounds like they’ve come up with diferent locks to replace the round-keyhole type they use now. It’ll be interesting to see what it is. I wouldn’t be suprised if it’s nothing more than the standard tumbler lock you see in most padlocks.
When I was a teen in D.C. and used a bike to get to and from work, I had one of those locks. The City Paper printed an article about how easy it was for two people, a bar and some leverage to snap the lock.
Then I was a teen in D.C. who depended on his feet to get him to and from work.
Nice to see it has only gotten easier to circumvent the damned things.
Over the years, I’ve watched as residential locks, commercial locks, and bank grade locks improve, along with electronic intrusion detection systems. I won’t provide cites as that goes against the grain of the board, for good reasons. Suffice to say that improvements are often born out of the most recent security breach.