How to keep your bike safe: Home security tips for your bike

sadly bike theft from the home is all too common these days so here are some tips and techniques to make sure your bike is as secure as it can be when it's locked up in your garage or shed it's not enough just to have your bike in a locked garage or shed a lot of insurers now will stipulate that the bike has to be secured to an immovable object with approved locking devices in order for the insurance to be valid so bear that in mind we're going to look more closely at some products and techniques for that shortly but before we do so it's important to realize that security of your bike really begins before you even get it home and being aware of how thieves might spot your bike and potentially target it to steal at a later date for instance following people home is quite common um bikes on roof racks on cars uh or outside the cafe for instance a thief might clock that bike think you know that that would be a really good bike to steal and actually follow people home to then be able to scope out the location to see if they could break in at a later date there's also the point of when you get home therefore not leaving your bike on view for any length of time so if you arrive home not leaning against the front garden gate and spending ages nipping in and making coffee or whatever and leaving your bike on show or even on the again the roof rack of the car is a common one um and when you do open your garage door try to keep that you know as as closed as as often as you can really if you've got passing traffic that's particularly important because people can be looking in your garage seeing what you've got in there eyeing up the bikes also looking at you know where they're locked and what the potential ways to steal them could be so bear all that in mind it's really important and also with uploading your ride data this has become more and more common now people love to upload their eye data to software like strava um there are techniques built into that software for security so that you can have a kind of a dead zone around your house for a kilometer which is really important that you mark those settings just so that a thief can't be looking at your your ride data and seeing where your house is located at the start and finish of all of your rides because you're basically giving someone a pinpoint on a map for where your bikes live it's important to consider some of the aspects of the actual building that you're locking your bike in be that a shed or a garage you know things like windows it's likely that a shadow garage will have a window but obscuring the glass for instance is a really simple technique to stop someone being able to peer in and have a little look and scope out what's in there putting extra bars across the window is another good good tip that'll stop someone from using the window as a means to get stuff out the garage door for instance if it's an up and over door a good idea is to reverse your car or vehicle up against the door so then that can't be uh used as a means of entry or exit as easily it's just putting another um thing in in the way basically for a thief to be able to get your bike out a good alarm system kind of goes without saying yeah all those things are to basically add up to um more and more risk for the thief and that's what you're trying to do sadly it's probably the case that if a thief really wants your bike in this current day and age they will probably find a way to be able to get it ultimately if a thief is looking at your property and they're seeing alarm systems bars on windows high quality door locks security lighting and all those kind of techniques that you've used then there's a good chance they're going to see it as too risky and move on and look elsewhere so what we have here is a fairly common setup that you might expect to see in our home garage we've got a bicycle racking system with a solid wall anchor mounted to the brick wall behind and what that's going to enable me to do is hang my bike nice and neatly and then have this secure point where i can lock it to to an immovable object which is really important because a number of insurance companies now will stipulate that as a minimum requirement you need to have your bike locked to something immovable such as a wall anchor with an approved lock as well at this point you've got to assume that if a thief has broken into your garage and trying to steal your bike from here they've come pretty well prepared um this is not an opportunist thief that we're dealing with they've probably scoped out the location and come with power tools and other other techniques that they're prepared to use to get your bike away from here so what we're trying to do with the the locking setup that you use is basically deter them for as long as possible and that's where the level of lock that you buy and use is really important to consider the best locks it goes without saying are the most expensive locks but what you've got i guess way up is um how much value do you put on on your bike if you've got a bike worth several thousand pounds spending a couple of hundred pounds on locks in the grand scheme of things really shouldn't be uh too much of an issue so yeah looking to buy those top end locks is going to deter a thief for the longest possible amount of time and that's that's really what they don't like thieves want to be in and out as quickly as possible so in the uk we have a simple bronze silver and gold tiered system done by a company called sold secure so that's an independent test company which tests all sorts of locks from bike locks all the way up to like the lock that you use on your front door or your house for instance and by using that rating system you can see really easily on the packaging of most locks and what level of security you're going to get by buying that particular product whether that is a wall anchor so this is a top end level wall anchor you can see fitted to this wall here there's a slightly smaller version um here although still a gold level of secure sold secure different chains different thicknesses weights the good thing i guess about locking a bike in the house or in a garage is you don't need to worry about the weight or size of the lock it's not something you need to carry around with you so i guess that's the best advice you could really offer for home security and that is just spend as much as you physically can on locks to make sure that you're giving your bike the best chance of not getting nicked [Music] so let's take a look at some of the ways you could actually lock your bike to the wall anchor when it's in situ i should point out that the the bike stand or the racking system isn't an essential part of this um i just prefer to have my bike hanging neatly so that the levers are not getting stuffed against the wall and so on but you could equally make your bike secure if it was leaning on the floor and just up against the wall the key thing obviously is the anchor point on the wall and the type of lock that you use to secure your bike so d-locks are very common this is a top-end high level of security d-lock and what i can achieve with that then is simply to go through the wall anchor and directly round one of the main frame tubes to secure my bike like so and that would be a very high level of security in this garage setting and i guess it's important to point out at this stage that unlike for instance when you're locking your bike outside the shop or cafe or whatever and you're worried about your saddle or wheels being stolen a thief that's in your garage is really more interested in getting the whole bike so you don't always have to worry about all the little ancillary parts you're just getting the frame as secure as you can against the wall however that said if you did want a different option that would secure all the parts of the bike and i quite like this option personally that is to use a heavy duty chain lock such as this one same level of sort of gold security um is on on off with this but just a little bit more versatility in terms of what you're able to actually cover with the lock so feeding that through this lock is 1.4 meters long which is a really good length giving you just enough cable to go through both wheels and the frame okay so that would be an example of a really good secure way to lock your bike in a home garage situation you can't really do much more than that in terms of the the level of locking and products that you've used and so on what you might want to consider at this point is one last step which is to take a photo of your bike in situ that is part of what you call we call the three rs which is to record register and report so recording obviously getting that photo will be proof not only to the police when you report the crime but also to your insurance company of the lengths that you went to to make sure your bike was as secure as it could be using approved locks and so on the register point of those three rs is to get your bike registered with one of the national databases which are approved by the police forces across the country one of which is bikerregister.com and that will just mean that your bike is on that database so should it be recovered at any point after a theft it will find its way back to you and of course the the report part of that is obvious do make sure that you're reporting the crime to your local police force um so they're aware of the crimes in your area as well you will certainly need that crime reference number in any case if you want to begin an insurance claim if you are unlucky enough to have had your bike stolen but hopefully with all the advice we've given you in this video we've shown you how to take the best possible steps to maximize the security of your bike in the home or garage if you've enjoyed the video do head over to the youtube channel for cyclist magazine and also check out [Music] cyclists.co.uk you

Channel: Cyclist

Views: 9,597

Keywords: cycling, road cycling, lock, bike lock, home security, security

Id: 3noAIIlzn3Y

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 24 2020