Here's a neat new take on an existing idea: Bikes in the Sky
London design student Dominic Hargreaves has seemingly solved the world's bike theft concerns with a winning design in the iQ Design Challenge at the Royal College of Art. If his invention rides into production, it could be an important advance in transportation security as the world goes fit and green turning to bicycles for exercises and energy conservation.
There's more info @ Royal College Of Art's website.
There are a handful of companies that make bike parking "trees" that hoist bikes skyward on a somewhat similar manner, but this seems to be the smaller home version.
Personally, while I think it's a neat idea, I think it's still vulnerable - hoisting without locking is a little too tempting, especially if there's any kind of balcony/stairwell/drainpipe nearby that can be used for access. I've heard stories of thieves scaling up three stories to get to balconies with unlocked bikes on them.
If this also combined a locking mechanism of some sort, I'd be more behind the idea, but it's a neat take on the problem.
2 comments:
I'm based in San Francisco now but used to live in Cleveland - Cleve Heights and Tremont. have you ever investigated putting a map up so folks can post the exact location of wher etheir bike was stolen? It might help law enforcement to focus on hot-spots...just a thought. This is not something I have the expertise to code so I offer it up to more talented and able souls like you. Cheers, Nick
Hey Nicholas - SF is very much a step up from Cleveland Heights, man :)
I've thought about the mapping option, along with some other helpful data-gathering changes to the SBR (things like "was locked at time" or "locked with cable/ulock/other" etc.) and have some notes down for an eventual rainy-day site rework. Right now I'm not even sure law enforcement would focus on hotspots if we pointed them out, since it's hard enough to get them working on the backend recovery when they have a warehouse full of bikes, but it's a good idea nonetheless.
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