Locks, Chains and Trackers: Keeping Your Bike Where You Left It

Bike theft is worse in the dark half of the year. Longer nights, more cover, and a machine that is sitting still for weeks at a time instead of being ridden most days. If you are going to think about security once a year, October is the month to do it.

Start from the right premise, though. You are not going to make your bike impossible to steal. Anything that can be lifted by two people and put in the back of a Transit can be taken, and the reported figures suggest that the overwhelming majority of bike thefts in this country are never solved. What you are actually doing is making your bike a longer, louder, riskier job than the alternatives, and giving yourself a fighting chance of getting it back if somebody has a go anyway.

Everything below is in order of how much difference it makes, which is not the order most people buy things in.

Where you park it does more than what you lock it with

This is the least interesting bit of advice and by some distance the most effective.

A bike in a locked garage is a fundamentally different proposition from a bike on the street, because the thief has to commit to breaking into a building first, in the dark, with no idea what is inside and no quick exit. Even a cheap garage with a decent lock changes the maths.

If you have not got a garage, the hierarchy goes roughly: locked garage, then a gated or shared secure yard, then a back garden with the gate locked, then a driveway, then the street. Move up one step and you have done more than any chain will do for you.

On the street, the details matter more than people think. Park under a streetlight rather than in the gap between two. Park in view of a window, ideally yours. Avoid the spot at the end of the terrace next to the alleyway, because that is where a van can back up without anyone seeing. And if you have a choice between a quiet residential road and a busier one, take the busier one. Thieves do not mind an audience nearly as much as they mind being interrupted, but they mind both.

If you live in Portswood, Shirley or anywhere with a lot of on-street parking and a lot of turnover, be aware that September changes the neighbourhood. Thousands of new residents arrive, a good number with scooters and small bikes, and the area gets scoped accordingly.

Physical security: what the ratings mean

Sold Secure is the UK testing standard and it is the only one worth paying attention to. Locks are tested by people who are actively trying to defeat them and rated on how long that takes and what it takes.

For motorcycles you want to be looking at the Powered Cycle ratings, and specifically Diamond or Gold. Silver and Bronze exist, and they are better than nothing, but they are a different class of product. A lot of insurers specify a minimum rating in the policy wording, so check yours before you buy, because a lock that does not meet the requirement can leave a claim in trouble.

A ground anchor is worth more than a better chain. A chain that is not attached to something immovable is a chain that gets loaded into the van along with the bike. Bolt a proper anchor into concrete, through the floor rather than into a paving slab, and use it every time. This is the single most common gap: people buy a very good chain and then loop it through the wheel.

Chain thickness matters up to a point. Sixteen millimetres or better through the frame or the swingarm rather than a wheel, kept off the ground so it cannot be smashed against the floor or attacked with the pavement as an anvil. A chain lying on concrete is much easier to defeat than the same chain hanging taut.

A disc lock is a second job, not a first one. It stops the bike being wheeled away and it is quick enough to use that you will actually use it. Get one with a reminder cable, because everybody rides off with one on eventually and it is an expensive lesson in front forks.

A cover is underrated. It is not security, but a thief walking down a street cannot see whether the thing under the cover is worth the trouble, and most of them are shopping rather than hunting a specific bike. It also hides whether you have got a chain on it.

Be realistic about all of it. The companies selling angle-grinder-resistant products are quite open about the fact that a determined thief with power tools gets through most things in well under a minute. Physical security buys you time and noise. That is genuinely valuable, because most attempts are opportunistic and time and noise are exactly what an opportunist has not got. It is not a guarantee and anyone selling it as one is selling.

Trackers: the bit that gets the bike back

Everything above is about preventing the theft. A tracker is about what happens after it has already gone, which is why it is the part people skip and then regret.

Thatcham categories are the ones to look for, with S5 at the top. An S5 unit includes driver recognition, so the system knows the difference between you riding it and somebody else moving it, and it comes with a monitored service that talks to the police. S7 is a simpler asset tracker without the monitoring, cheaper, and correspondingly less effective at the point where it matters.

Two honest caveats. Trackers carry a subscription, so this is an ongoing cost rather than a one-off. And recovery is not instant: it depends on police availability and it depends on the unit not being found and ripped out, which is why professional installation and a sensible hiding place are part of what you are paying for.

What tips it is the insurance side. Many insurers offer a meaningful discount for a Thatcham approved tracker, and for an S5 installation specifically that discount can be large enough to offset a good chunk of the subscription. Figures move around by insurer and by bike, so get your own quote both ways rather than taking a number off a blog, including this one.

The insurance maths, done properly

Fitting certified security usually reduces a premium, and the range people quote runs from a few percent to something like a third depending on the insurer, the bike, where it lives and what you fit. That is a wide enough range to be nearly useless as a planning figure, so do it the other way round.

Get a quote as you are now. Then get quotes with a Sold Secure Gold chain and anchor declared, and with a tracker declared. The difference over three years is the number that tells you whether the kit pays for itself, and for anything above about four thousand pounds it very often does.

Two things that catch people out at claim time:

Declare where the bike is kept, accurately. If the policy says garaged and the bike lives on the street, you have a problem, and it is the sort of problem that surfaces only when you are trying to claim.

Check the security conditions in the policy wording. Some policies require a specific rating of lock to be in use, not merely owned. If the wording says the immobiliser must be set and the chain in use whenever the bike is unattended, that is a condition, not a suggestion.

If the worst happens

Report it to the police straight away and get the crime reference number. Ring your insurer the same day.

Post it in the local groups. Southampton and Hampshire bike groups on social media move fast, and a decent number of stolen bikes are spotted by other riders within the first few days, usually dumped somewhere while the thief waits to see whether it is being looked for.

Check the online marketplaces for your own bike, and for parts off it. If it has been broken, the fairings and wheels appear before the frame does.

And give the police the tracker information immediately if you have one, rather than trying to go and get it yourself. People do, and it goes badly.

The short version

If you do nothing else: get it off the street if you possibly can, bolt a ground anchor into the floor and use a Sold Secure Gold or Diamond chain through the frame, put a cover over it, and if the bike is worth more than a few thousand pounds, price up an S5 tracker against what it saves you on the premium.

That is most of the available protection for a fairly modest outlay, and it puts you well ahead of the bike parked round the corner with a cable lock through the front wheel.

If you have just bought something and want a hand working out what makes sense for it, come and ask. We would rather spend ten minutes on it than see a customer’s bike go. And if you are still shopping, what is in stock is on the site, along with our guide to what to check before you buy.