Bike lights?

parking_question_chap

Evening

Just wondering if people leave their bike lights on when they lock their bike? Is it common for these to be taken with you to prevent somebody taking stealing them?

Johnmcl7

I always take my lights off the bike when I lock it as they're fairly easy to take off which makes it easy for me to take them with me and would be easy for a thief to nick them if they were left on the bike. I do often see locked bikes with lights on them but it tends to be cheap lights and I don't want to risk mine.

John

esuhl

I wondered that too. And on my second ride, my lights got nicked, leaving me cautiously riding home ten miles on the pavement :-(

I live in a fairly posh area, and the bike was locked up outside the entrance of a busy supermarket. I thought the area would have been covered by CCTV, but alas not.

I always leave my water bottles on, though... I wonder if I should get some tamper-proof lids... :-/

Cycrow

It depends where I lock my bike up. When I worked at a supermarket and locked it up outside. If I ever left anything on the bike it won't be there where I got back. So I always took my lights, saddle and other things off.

My current work though the bike is fairly secure so I don't bother taking everything off

Richard53

esuhl wrote: »

I always leave my water bottles on, though... I wonder if I should get some tamper-proof lids... :-/

No, just fill them with 'truckers' tizer'. They might get nicked, but you will be laughing for ever.

elverson

If I'm in and out of a newsagent I'd leave them on (and leave the bike unlocked but right outside the door), if I'm locking the bike anywhere I take them off.

Also at home I leave them clipped to my helmet strap so I don't forget to take them with me.

Herbalus

At my place of work (large company underground car park, with barriers and security guards), people leave their entire bikes unlocked.

Even those that are worth at least a few £k. Absolute madness. Means I also have to leave my bike unlocked because there's no way I can lock my £20 bike from the 80s when it's next to an unlocked cannondale caad12...

ab1982

I usually take them off if easily done.

I always replace QR skewers with bolted ones - makes it a bit more difficult.

The only way to guarantee you wont have your bike stolen is to not buy one in the first place.

ca55ie

elverson wrote: »

Also at home I leave them clipped to my helmet strap so I don't forget to take them with me.

Great tip - never thought of that doh;)

thescouselander

I usually leave one of my rear lights permanently attached - as someone else said they're easy to remove so I applied plenty of superglue to the bracket to make it difficult to remove.

DigForVictory

+1 for thank you for the helmet strap tip - several of our Scouts come by bike & we're formally responsible for their wellbeing til they get over their doorstep.

So far bikes are stacked against the back of the hut, not visible to the footpath or road & anyway, Scouts a-scouting in between, so no locking issues, but if someone has a bike they worry about, we'll unlock the quartermasters hut for them.

We were discussing road safety at a leaders meeting last week & plan to buy some poundshop lights to ensure our Scouts can get home legally. Sure, it's summer, but it's still dark in the rain.