registering bike

themole

yo.

does anyone know of an irish site which can be used to register your bike?

robfitz

I've thought about doing something like this before. I'll try and put something together in the next day or so.

Johnny Jukebox

Er, register it for what ?

themole

register the frame number.

if the cops find stolen bikes they are able to search the database and return bikes to owners. thats why there are those bike auctions, they weren't able to find the owners of the recovered bikes

bike shops are also able to see if someone selling a bike actually owns it

zeris

From a technical point of view it would be very simple to make a website that could do this.

What would be a lot trickier is the get people to use it.

Getting bike owners to input their details would come down to making sure people knew it existed. After all, it is in their interest to do so. But people are only going to do that if they feel it is worth their while and they may actually get their bike back.

It also needs the Gardai to know about it, want to use it, be able to use it (content filtering on firewalls etc) and also be willing to respond to for example, people being contacted to pay money to get their stolen bike back. Bike-napping and ransom demand kind of thing.

Getting shops to use it comes down to whether they see a cost benefit. After all, going online and searching for bikes takes time that they could otherwise spend doing work that brings in money.

A quick google gives http://www.nationalbikeregistry.com/, a USA based site that goes this kind of thing.

themole

zeris wrote:

A quick google gives http://www.nationalbikeregistry.com/, a USA based site that goes this kind of thing.

ya.

i was looking for an irish equivalent of that site.

as far a shop owners using it, its illegal for them to sell stolen goods,

this is regardless of whether or not they knew they were stolen,

so if such a service existed they would be obliged to use it to avoid prosecution in the event they received a stolen bike to sell.


so. in the end no one knows of an irish version of this? , or an english one which can be use here.

mockerydawg

make one

Civilian_Target

This is a good idea. I have PHP/MySQL hosting, and I may even get enough time to do it this week...

daymobrew

In the UK there is the DataTag system.
An electronic transponder is put inside the bike's seat tube. The transponder has a unique code which can be read by DataTag readers. The police use these readers to return stolen bikes to the owners.

I emailed DataTag a month or two back. The confirmed that the system is not used by the Gardai here.

Civilian_Target

How much does it cost to put a datatag in a bike?

daymobrew

Civilian_Target wrote:

How much does it cost to put a datatag in a bike?

£20stg at Wiggle.co.uk

daymobrew

I contacted DataTag asking if the Gardai have DataTag readers. They directed me to their distributor in County Down who is checking with the Gardai for me (he thinks that they have readers).

While this guy mainly deals with motorbikes and plant equipment, bike tags are available. He described a DataTag product which is like a paint so each part of your bike could be 'painted' and each part will have an individual chip and ID! I don't know anything else yet. Sounds promising.

Darren_C

Just based on my experience of having my motorbike stolen a year ago the gardai are fairly useless.

After a couple of calls to see if they had heard anything or found my bike I was politely but firmly told don't call us, we'll call you.

A guy in one of the bike shops told me that the guards don't check serial numbers off bikes they get in that may be crashed/burned and don't have licence plates - even though the serial number is on your licence form which is stored in the national garda computer system.

So basically my bike could have been sitting in a garda station without a licence plate but because nobody bothered to check the serial number against the computer, I don't get my bike back.

Anyway, hope you have more luck with this system. Would definitely sign up if it goes ahead.

Cheers
D