Bike Locking Tips - Lockdown

Security System Discounts
If you want to save a few bucks on your insurance, some states give discounts for riders with LoJack (or similar) systems on their bikes. The following is a list of discounts that you may be eligible to receive. For more information, check with your insurance agent.

Arizona: Up to 25%

California: Up to 32%

Colorado: Up to 25%

Connecticut: Up to 25%

Delaware: Up to 25%

District of Columbia: Up to 25%

Florida: Up to 25%

Georgia: Up to 25%

Illinois: Up to 25%

Louisiana: Up to 25%

Massachusetts: Up to 35%

Maryland: Up to 25%

Michigan: Up to 25%

New Jersey: Up to 25%

Nevada: Up to 25%

New Hampshire: Up to 25%

New York: Up to 25%

Pennsylvania: Up to 25%

Rhode Island: Up to 35%

Texas: Up to 30%

Virginia: Up to 25%

12 Tips for Securing Your Scoot
Peace officers in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Connecticut were kind enough to take time out of their busy schedules to give us some useful info on what riders can do to better secure their machines.

1 Use common sense. Park your bike in a well-lighted public place.

2 Thieves often target bikes in advance and watch riders to learn their daily routine. Vary your travel route between home and work to throw off a thief 's timing. Be aware of people that seem to be following you. Thieves often use spotters at rallies to find specific bikes that they want to steal. In one instance, a thief in New York was caught and was carrying a Christmas list of American and Japanese bikes in the area that he just hadn't gotten around to stealing.

3 Although thieves will steal bikes from a variety of places, certain places are preferred targets over others. Parking your bike in a home garage is best because the bike is nowhere to be seen, locked up indoors. Subterranean parking garages such as those in apartment complexes seem to attract thieves because most underground parking is easy to break into and people frequently don't lock their bikes when they're home.

4 Secure your garage as well as your bike. Motion sensor alarms and lights can protect not only your bike but the small fortune in tools you have surrounding it. It's also a good idea to lock up any tools in the garage that a thief could use to steal the bike (such as power saws). According to the Los Angeles Police Department, there have been burglaries where the thieves avoided the secured house and robbed the alarm-free garage attached to it.

5 Use locks appropriate to the task. That $5 combination lock may protect your kid's locker at school but it won't work nearly so well on your $30,000 bike. A decent disc lock sells for about $35, large U-locks start at $70. Scooter and bicycle locks are too small to stop a determined thief.

6 Understand what a lock is and what it will do. A bike lock is a deterrent, not a guarantee. Proper bike security is as much about where you park a bike as how you lock it up. Putting it between two cars gives thieves cover while they jack it.

7 Use multiple locks on your bike. The more locked-up a bike is, the longer it takes to steal. Time is valuable currency to a thief. Make him spend a lot of it if he wants to steal your baby.

8 When using a floor anchor, park your bike directly over it and lock the anchor to the frame of the bike. This makes the anchor harder for the thief to reach and therefore harder to defeat.

9 Don't leave excess cable or chain on the ground when locking your bike. This robs thieves of the cutting surface and leverage they need to break the chain.

10 An alarm by itself will not stop a thief from taking your bike. An alarm in conjunction with a lock is better because while the thief is breaking the lock the alarm is alerting everyone within earshot as to what the thief is doing.

11 Don't depend on your ignition lock to protect your bike. Breaking the ignition and stealing the bike is extremely common.

12 Installing a hidden kill switch is a good plan. Locks help prevent thieves from hoisting your bike onto a truck or van, but kill switches offer the added protection of disabling the thief from starting the bike and riding off into the sunset by either disabling the ignition or cutting power to the fuel pump.

And If It's Stolen, Then What?Obviously, if someone makes off with your ride you'll want to get it back. Here are some bits of information that are good to have on hand when you report theft to the cops.

* License plate number
* Make
* Model
* VIN
* Date of purchase
* Identifying marks
* A description of any suspect(s) you may have seen

Contact your insurance company to file a claim within 24 hours of the time when you discovered your motorcycle was stolen. Provide them with a hard copy of the police report or case number. If you have a LoJack system, check that you have the correct information on hand for reporting a theft and then call your local police.

The Dog Days
Be extra vigilant in the summer months and into the fall, as that's when the highest rate of theft is. With everyone out riding their bikes and taking road trips, the number of non-vigilant riders goes up exponentially, making it a fertile ground for thieves.

Lost And Found
If your bike does get stolen, you can register it at stolenmotorcycleregistry.com. Think of it as an online milk carton for lost iron.

Know the Enemy
Thieves use a variety of ways to break locks. Hacksaws and bolt cutters are commonly used for small locks, but require time and effort to break open good locks. Power tools are also used, but while they are more efficient, they're noisy and conspicuous. Deep freezing a lock happens but is rare due to the difficulty and expense involved with obtaining the chemicals. Also, some locks are tested to withstand cold temperatures well below the freezing point of the chemicals used to freeze them. Lock picking is another method, but it requires skill; and if the lock is hard to reach, picking it becomes even more difficult.