Police in the Netherlands have found an effective tool to deter bicycle thefts: Decoy bikes that give bike-nabbers only a 1-in-4 chance of escape once they taste the forbidden fruit.
The bikes, part of a pool of 300 that includes popular brands and some electric bikes, are fitted with hidden GPS units, and left at places where bicycle theft has been common.
A university study of the results shows that the decoy bikes were taken 1,612 times, and the tracking system found the bike and the thief 1,220 times. What’s more, bicycle theft from the areas where the decoys were used dropped by as much as 50%. Apparently, those odds were too bad for thieves to take a chance on possibly grabbing ‘poisoned bait.’
Bicycle theft has been so common at times and so hard to track that many people in the Netherlands believe it’s not worth reporting when it happens, but the new program may help change that—especially since police rely on theft reports to decide where to put the decoys.
Photo: Tim Tregenza/Wikimedia
