At 11:57 a.m. on Oct. 29, Lucas Renaudin was working in his office in northeastern Paris. It was at that moment his metallic gray Aventon Córdoba fixed-gear bike was being stolen from the building’s bike storage facility, he learned after reviewing security camera footage. “At first I didn't think it was a robbery but rather a bad joke,” says Renaudin, a 20-year-old work-study business student. “But then I was so angry.” Earlier that month, Céline Libert, a 29-year-old business consultant who lives in the same area of the French capital, had thieves break into her courtyard, cutting the lock around her second-hand Decathlon bike and taking it just days after she had bought it. Journalist Pauline Chambost, 30, had her bike, a 10th birthday present, disappear in July, just a month after bringing it from her parents’ house in the south of France. Clélia Timsit, a 30-year-old management consultant, says she’s had three stolen since last year, most recently when thieves dismantled the scaffolding the bike had been attached to. “I had bought a special lock to make sure the bike wouldn't be stolen,” she says. “Bad luck.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...urce=applenews This type of thing is undoubtedly caused by all the migration France has taken in from other countries. Thefts like this are not rampant in other developed countries like Japan or Singapore. And they used to be uncommon in most of Europe. Just a price people are going to have to pay now. A new permanent part of life. People in countries like France also tend to buy some pretty nice expensive bicycles too. Traditionally they could just lock them to a rack and not have to worry about them. But with so many poor people, and persons who have no shame about thieving, thieves will go to a lot more trouble to steal even low value items. Ultimately, I think bicycle thefts are going to interfere with public transportation as well. With all the additional time and expense to try to secure bicycles and prevent thefts, and worry over having alternative transportation options if the bicycles are stolen. People will be more likely now to buy cheaper bikes that do not look as good or perform as well.
