Cascade Bike Swap Vendors: Help fight bike theft

Once again, Bicycle Security Advisors is partnering with Cascade Bicycle Club to encourage vendors at its Seattle Bike Swap on Saturday, February 3 to help fight bike theft by pre-indexing their bikes on Bike Index and transfer the indexed bikes to the buyers at the point-of-sale.

On average, a bike is stolen every hour in Seattle — bike theft was the fastest growing larceny crime in the city from 2008 to 2015. Half of all people who bike will have their bike stolen at some point, and just 2.4 percent of the victims will recover their bikes.

Bike sellers can help solve the bike theft problem. The best way for people to recover their stolen bike is to make sure it gets listed on Bike Index, a free, voluntary online bike registration system. With the bike’s serial number, a description, photos, and chain of clear custody for each listed bike available on Bike Index, police departments and fellow caring bicyclists are able to track down stolen bikes.

Bike Index has more than 146,000 catalogued bikes, 80,000 registered riders, 440 community partners and 4,000 confirmed recoveries to date, making Bike Index a tremendous asset to fight against bike theft. And it’s free for everyone.

We highly encourage Seattle Bike Swap vendors to pre-index the bikes and frames they will be selling and to transfer the listing at the point of sale using Bike Index.

You can set-up your bike shop on BikeIndex.org to quickly pre-index all your bikes. Bike Index also has a mobile registration system that works well on smart phones for day-of indexing for buyers.

For bike shops that use the Lightspeed point-of-sale system, Bike Index also has an app that automatically registers all bikes sold. Click here to learn more about integrating Bike Index with Lightspeed.

If you have any questions about Bike Index or other bike theft questions, please feel free to contact Brock Howell of Bicycle Security Advisors at brock@bicyclesecurityadvocates.org.