Forget “hide your kids, hide your wife” — hide that expensive e-bike. Upwards of 100,000 bikes are stolen annually, and lately thieves are targeting more and more two-wheelers of the electric variety.
The politie are warning civilians that gangs who steal bicycles (often with the intent of crossing them over the border to Eastern Europe) are “getting smarter”, Hart van Nederland reports.
The hype surrounding e-bikes has expanded beyond the Netherlands, and now other countries are demanding more of them. That is why the Netherlands (which, in case you didn’t know, has bikes) recently became an international bike burglar’s dream for snatching them up.
Method to the madness
One innovative bike-stealing tactic that hasn’t gone unnoticed by the police is the tendency to use fake frame numbers.
This involves slapping a new sticker (purchased from some kind of online black market) on top of the e-bike’s original serial number plate to prevent getting caught. Some even go the extra mile and forge loading papers for their stolen bikes.
READ MORE | Take it from a former thief: this is how you can prevent your bike from being stolen
Many gangs are also using large transportation trucks, and cleverly changing their storage locations on a regular basis, which Politie.nl says makes them even more difficult to pin down.
Not only that, but for any seasoned bike thief, opening a lock with “special equipment” can be done within seconds and is essentially “child’s play”, explains René Middag, the police’s Mobile Banditism project leader.
How to make your bike steal-proof
Unless you want your bike to be ripe for the picking, it’s recommended that you use an additional external lock, attached to a fence or a post, in order to ward those bike swindlers away.
@scotch_soda If you like it then you better put a lock on it. 🚲🔐 #scotchandsoda #biking #amsterdam #lifehack #lock ♬ original sound – Scotch_soda
The police also advise that people register their bikes at Stop Heling, so you can suss out whether or not a bike has been stolen.
The problem is that not enough e-bike owners take note of their frame numbers, so even if a bike is retrieved, it often has too little information to make its way back home.
What are you doing to secure the safety of your e-bike? Let us know in the comments below!