Bike Theft Statistics in Canada

According to McGill University in Montreal, aboot half of all active Canadian cyclists have their bikes stolen. "My bike is too cheap to be worth stealing", you might say, wrongly:

van Lierop, D., Grimsrud, M., & El-Geneidy, A. (2015). Breaking into bicycle theft: Insights from Montreal, Canada. International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, 9(7), 490-501.

The cheaper your current bike, the more likely they are to steal it. That surprised me. Either cheap bikes have cheap locks, or expensive bikes don't get left in high-risk locations. Or both. 71% of high value bicycle owners used locks valued at more than $40 compared to only 47% of low value bicycle owners. Around 24% of high value bicycle owners keep their bicycles inside compared to only 13% of low value bicycle owners.

Of all stolen bicycles, only 2.4% had been recovered. Not one of the 22 stolen bicycles that were reported stolen, registered, and photographed had been recovered at the time of the survey. So don't hold your breath waiting for the Mounties to find your bike. Rob Brunt in Vancouver claims to have better results with 529 Garage, so it is worth a try.

Locks:

Chain and cable locks users are over 10 times as likely to be theft victims as U-lock users:

van Lierop, D., Grimsrud, M., & El-Geneidy, A. (2015). Breaking into bicycle theft: Insights from Montreal, Canada. International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, 9(7), 490-501.

So that would support the "stolen bikes have bad locks" hypothesis. Since chain locks fare worse than cable locks, they must involve cheap chains with cheap padlocks. Or the survey is wrong, possibly due to a small sample size. If locks are a major factor, that would be good news, since all you have to do is buy a better lock.

Tools used: (20.5%), report that their bicycle was simply picked up and moved, bolt cutters (10.3%), hacksaws (4.5%), and crowbars (2.3%). Mostly unknown. No mention of grinders.

Parts theft: Screwdrivers (8.5%), wrenches and Allen keys (4.1% each), but 51.5% of parts theft events described required only pulling the part(s) off.

There are 2 kinds of lock: boltcutter-proof and not boltcutter-proof. "Sold Secure Gold" or Platinum locks are rated as boltcutter proof, requiring an angle grinder to remove. Then we have the cheaper locks that can be cut with bolt cutters or cable cutters.

I happen to use the ($32 on Amazon.ca) Sold Secure Gold Master Lock 8195D U-Lock featured in the video, so that is reassuring. But they seem to have stopped making that, so a good choice might be OnGuard Pitbull STD Sold Secure Platinum, at $69.79 on Amazon.