" Sadly Chiswick is plagued with professional bike thieves. They feel untouchable because the police have no intention of even trying to deal with them,"Bike thieves can only prosper, if there are plenty of ready buyers. The majority of whom, at a guess, probably won't really concern themselves as to whether the bike is stolen or not; they'll simply try and pretend to themselves that it isn't.Almost all bikes have a frame number somewhere. With metal it's stamped with punches; with carbon its either engraved or more unsatisfactorily on a sticker. The advice is that everyone buying or already owning a bike should acquaint themselves with the frame number. Now there's no point in registering it beforehand, as the system would simply be swamped. But if a widely publicised website were to be set up - by whom is anybody's guess - where people could enter the frame number of their stolen bike, and a system was in place whereby nobody could advertise a bike for sale on major sites without quoting the frame number - to be subsequently checked on purchase - then this would prevent many inadvertant purchases of stolen bikes by buyers otherwise only too willing to look the other way.michael adams
Michael Adams ● 1451d