Bicycle anti-theft infrastructure: Denmark vs Belgium

I saw a bicycle worth €1500 new at a Brussels street market for €200. I thought surely it’s too good to be true. The seller must be in a real hurry to sell it. I had no idea how to verify the legitimacy of it.

Denmark is on the ball

Denmark has made it illegal to buy a stolen bicycle. That’s right. A buyer of a stolen bike can be prosecuted. Of course my first thought is: how can they hold a buyer accountable when the buyer can’t know with certainty what the bike’s history is? #Denmark has a toll-free hotline to check the serial number of a bike before buying.

It’s a great idea assuming that hotline keeps call records & vindicates buyers who call before a serial number is known to be that of a stolen bike.

Belgium

It’s legal in #Belgium to buy a stolen bike. In fact, buyers of stolen property actually have rights! There is sympathy for buyers because they spent money on the stolen goods. If a victim discovers their stolen property in someone else’s possession, the police do not simply return the property to the rightful owner. They ask the new “owner” to sign an agreement to relinquish the property. Nutty!

Belgium has no hotline for checking serial numbers. There is a sticker program where owners can register their bike before it’s stolen. The stickers are claimed to leave sticky residue on the bike if removed. So it seems the anti-theft system relies on buyers looking for evidence of removed stickers. How do buyers know whether a removed sticker was previously a registration sticker vs. any other kind of sticker? Seems useless. Apparently they’re hoping thieves will be sloppy and leave the sticker on it so buyers can check the website, which unreasonably assumes buyers carry with them an Internet-subscribed device.

The bike I saw at the street market did in fact have residue from a removed sticker. But that could have been anything. I needed a way to call in the serial number of the frame.

Another embarrassment: victims of bicycle theft in #Brussels were denied access to photos of recovered stolen bikes if they did not have a Facebook account.