The approaching buzz sounds like a swarm of bees. The fat bike’s fist-thick tires race across the asphalt; Stepping is no longer necessary, just looking cool.
The electric bicycle became a status symbol and the cycle path turned into a highway. Unfortunately, criminals also like to cycle.
In 2022, the police registered 22,593 stolen e-bikes, an increase of 74 percent in the past two years. This year things are going completely crazy, according to a tour of insurers and experts from the bicycle industry. The police already recorded 48,000 stolen e-bikes in the first half year.
Such bicycles are sent to Eastern Europe by the busload, sometimes hidden behind a load of old bicycles that they buy legally from a bicycle shop, as a cover. But stolen e-bikes also turn up in the Netherlands and you can – in theory – find them.
The chance of being caught for thieves is low and the loot is there for the taking, on the sidewalk, on the schoolyard, at the supermarket, the station or the beach. And it may be a coincidence, but since the rise of the e-bike the number has increased home burglaries decreased dramatically. As a thief, why would you bother sneaking into a house when the best loot is waiting in the shed?
The electric bicycle becomes uninsurable due to the ‘perverse’ incentives in the system: insured bicycle owners are often lazy (they have an e-bike for a reason) and do not use a second lock to secure their bicycle. And manufacturers will not quickly develop better locks on their own. The parts are expensive, and every insured bicycle that is stolen results in a new bicycle being sold.
The security requirements of bicycle insurance are outdated. Ten years ago it was an approved lock (ART-2quality mark) needed to insure a bicycle worth 600 euros. That standard remained the same, but the average bicycle became four times more expensive. No lock is a match for an angle grinder – you could cut down a lamp post with that. And with the so-called Polish key or power key you can break open a frame lock in two seconds.
Bicycle insurance premiums increased in the spring upwards and in September ANWB/Unigarant, following Kingpolis, stopped insuring fat bikes. These are stolen even more often than regular e-bikes. The question is not if, but when he will be gone.
On behalf of the two largest bicycle insurers, Uniguarantee and Bovemij certification body KIWA is therefore working with suppliers on a new security standard for e-bikes. From spring 2024, stricter security requirements will apply if you want to insure an expensive bicycle. What will be the new standard?
Step 1. Follow that bike
Insurers are still trying to persuade owners of a new bicycle to buy one GPS system install by offering a 20 or 25 percent discount on the premium. Next cycling season, it is expected that an approved track & trace system will become mandatory if you buy an expensive bicycle. The e-bike and the fat bike are therefore following the cargo bike: it was also stolen in droves and is now only insurable with a tracking system. Such a system easily costs 150 to 200 euros, because you also pay for the costs of the mobile network.
It can be done differently: some tracking systems work with LoRa, a low-frequency mobile network for devices. Such a LoRa sensor occasionally sends a signal and therefore the battery lasts a long time. If the bicycle is reported stolen, the chip can transmit non-stop for two days until the battery is empty.
Also read: How bicycle manufacturers thwart the repair of your bicycle battery.
The GPS chips, on the other hand, are connected to the normal bicycle battery and transmit their location every few seconds. This means you will find the bicycle more often. The home-garden-and-kitchen solution only costs a few bucks: stick an Apple Airtag or Tile Bluetooth tracker under the saddle and you can follow it. But there is a danger to that. Even if your bicycle has been stolen, someone else may have bought it in good faith. If you rush to retrieve your bicycle, you will soon be breaking the law. A restriction is therefore imposed on certified tracking systems: anyone who reports their bicycle as stolen will no longer see the live location on screen. This is only visible to the investigation service, to prevent you from going out with a gang yourself. For example, Tracefy, one of the suppliers of tracking systems, works together with security company G4S. And even if the professionals find a stolen bicycle, they don’t take it away: the police have to do that.
Step 2. Mandatory registration
There are databases with stolen bicycles, based on frame numbers. But the files are full of errors, it is not clear who owns the bicycle and the frame number can be changed with one sticker. One of the experts gives an example of how things can go wrong: a bicycle dealer who legally bought a batch of recovered bicycles from the police was subsequently accused of theft during a police raid. The bicycles in the database were still registered as stolen.
The databases for stolen bicycles are dirty and unusable
Sometimes the police find more stolen bicycles as a by-catch in a track & trace discovery. It appears not to be easy to find out who the owner is as long as the frame numbers are not linked to people. E-bike found, owner remains missing.
The RDW is therefore working on one system that links the frame number to the owner. Insurers would have to register that data. E-bikes do not receive a license plate, this only applies to motorized vehicles.
Step 3. More bells and whistles
It takes some time for bicycle manufacturers and parts suppliers to adapt their products. But you can bet that in two or three years’ time, expensive e-bikes will also have an engine immobilizer and an alarm system. Such bells and whistles are now also mandatory if you want to insure a car that is susceptible to theft. A stolen e-bike can be disabled remotely using an engine immobilizer. These systems must be so robust, including software, that criminals cannot easily circumvent them for the time being.
Step 4. A type approval
On paper, an e-bike is a bicycle with pedal assistance, up to 25 kilometers per hour. But they are easy to perform. Especially the fat bikes that come straight from China onto the Dutch cycle path. Screw a throttle on it and you have an electric moped. No helmet, no license plate, no driver’s license and still 50 kilometers per hour. It can not, but it does happen. That causes accidents and so on personal injury on. Insurers would prefer to introduce type approval, so that they only insure e-bikes that cannot be upgraded. Add a helmet requirement and the cycle path will become cycleable again.