Securing Your Scoot
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Securing Your Scoot
Tips for Securing Your Scoot
From peace officers in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Connecticut about Harley theft. They were asked what riders could do to better secure their machines. The boys in blue were kind enough to take time out of their busy ticket-writing schedules to give us some useful info. Here is what they had to say:
Use common sense. Park your bike in a well-lighted public place.
Thieves often target bikes in advance and watch riders to learn their daily routine. Vary your travel route between home and work to throw off a thief ’s timing. Be aware of people that seem to be following you. Thieves often use spotters at rallies to find specific bikes that they want to steal. In one instance, a thief in New York was caught and was carrying a Christmas list of American and Japanese bikes in the area that he just hadn’t gotten around to stealing.
Although thieves will steal bikes from a variety of places, certain places are preferred targets over others. Parking your bike in a home garage is best because the bike is nowhere to be seen, locked up indoors. Subterranean parking garages such as those in apartment complexes seem to attract thieves because most underground parking is easy to break into and people frequently don’t lock their bikes when they’re home.
Secure your garage as well as your bike. Motion sensor alarms and lights can protect not only your bike but the small fortune in tools you have surrounding it. It’s also a good idea to lock up any tools in the garage that a thief could use to steal the bike (such as power saws). According to the Los Angeles Police Department, there have been burglaries where the thieves avoided the secured house and robbed the alarm-free garage attached to it.
Use locks appropriate to the task. That $5 combination lock may protect your kid’s locker at school but it won’t work nearly so well on your $30,000 bike. A decent disc lock sells for about $35, large U-locks start at $70 and Cobralinks start at $159. Scooter and bicycle locks are too small to stop a determined thief. Cheap little locks are cheap for a reason.
Understand what a lock is and what it will do. A bike lock is a deterrent, not a guarantee. Proper bike security is as much about where you park a bike as how you lock it up.
Use multiple locks on your bike. The more locked-up a bike is, the longer it takes to steal. Time is valuable currency to a thief. Make him spend a lot of it if he wants to steal your baby.
When using a floor anchor, park your bike directly over it and lock the anchor to the frame of the bike. This makes the anchor harder for the thief to reach and therefore harder to defeat.
Don’t leave excess cable or chain on the ground when locking your bike. This robs thieves of the cutting surface and leverage they need to break the chain.
An alarm by itself will not stop a thief from taking your bike. An alarm in conjunction with a lock is better because while the thief is breaking the lock the alarm is alerting everyone within earshot as to what the thief is doing.
Don’t depend on your ignition lock to protect your bike. Breaking the ignition and stealing the bike is extremely common.
When traveling in a group, locking your bikes together is a good idea. Cobralinks, cable locks and chain locks are best for this since they tend to be large and flexible, allowing the lock to bridge the gap between two parked rides. We used a Harley-Davidson® chain lock through the front parts of these bikes’ frames to keep them secure. Of course, locking one bike to an object and then to your buddy’s ride is a good way to go also.
Disc locks are best for situations where you can’t lock the bike to another object or as a secondary lock. It should be placed on the rear disc to minimize rear-tire movement. This will stop a thief from rolling the bike forward. While no lock on Earth can stop a determined thief, a disc lock will deter a crim
From peace officers in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Connecticut about Harley theft. They were asked what riders could do to better secure their machines. The boys in blue were kind enough to take time out of their busy ticket-writing schedules to give us some useful info. Here is what they had to say:
Use common sense. Park your bike in a well-lighted public place.
Thieves often target bikes in advance and watch riders to learn their daily routine. Vary your travel route between home and work to throw off a thief ’s timing. Be aware of people that seem to be following you. Thieves often use spotters at rallies to find specific bikes that they want to steal. In one instance, a thief in New York was caught and was carrying a Christmas list of American and Japanese bikes in the area that he just hadn’t gotten around to stealing.
Although thieves will steal bikes from a variety of places, certain places are preferred targets over others. Parking your bike in a home garage is best because the bike is nowhere to be seen, locked up indoors. Subterranean parking garages such as those in apartment complexes seem to attract thieves because most underground parking is easy to break into and people frequently don’t lock their bikes when they’re home.
Secure your garage as well as your bike. Motion sensor alarms and lights can protect not only your bike but the small fortune in tools you have surrounding it. It’s also a good idea to lock up any tools in the garage that a thief could use to steal the bike (such as power saws). According to the Los Angeles Police Department, there have been burglaries where the thieves avoided the secured house and robbed the alarm-free garage attached to it.
Use locks appropriate to the task. That $5 combination lock may protect your kid’s locker at school but it won’t work nearly so well on your $30,000 bike. A decent disc lock sells for about $35, large U-locks start at $70 and Cobralinks start at $159. Scooter and bicycle locks are too small to stop a determined thief. Cheap little locks are cheap for a reason.
Understand what a lock is and what it will do. A bike lock is a deterrent, not a guarantee. Proper bike security is as much about where you park a bike as how you lock it up.
Use multiple locks on your bike. The more locked-up a bike is, the longer it takes to steal. Time is valuable currency to a thief. Make him spend a lot of it if he wants to steal your baby.
When using a floor anchor, park your bike directly over it and lock the anchor to the frame of the bike. This makes the anchor harder for the thief to reach and therefore harder to defeat.
Don’t leave excess cable or chain on the ground when locking your bike. This robs thieves of the cutting surface and leverage they need to break the chain.
An alarm by itself will not stop a thief from taking your bike. An alarm in conjunction with a lock is better because while the thief is breaking the lock the alarm is alerting everyone within earshot as to what the thief is doing.
Don’t depend on your ignition lock to protect your bike. Breaking the ignition and stealing the bike is extremely common.
When traveling in a group, locking your bikes together is a good idea. Cobralinks, cable locks and chain locks are best for this since they tend to be large and flexible, allowing the lock to bridge the gap between two parked rides. We used a Harley-Davidson® chain lock through the front parts of these bikes’ frames to keep them secure. Of course, locking one bike to an object and then to your buddy’s ride is a good way to go also.
Disc locks are best for situations where you can’t lock the bike to another object or as a secondary lock. It should be placed on the rear disc to minimize rear-tire movement. This will stop a thief from rolling the bike forward. While no lock on Earth can stop a determined thief, a disc lock will deter a crim
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