Back in high school, I had a friend who’d never wear his seat belt. His reasoning was ridiculous. “If you drive off a cliff, a seat belt isn’t going to help you,” he’d say. What he failed to grasp was that no one expects a seat belt to protect them from cliffs or asteroid strikes. It’s there to to keep you from having the airbag embedded in your face when a distracted driver plows into your rear bumper.
Like safety, security isn’t all-or-nothing. Yet many cyclists invoke the same kind of reasoning when it comes to securing their bikes. “Any thief can get your bike if they want it bad enough,” they’ll say. True, but master bicycle thieves aren’t hiding around every corner. Most thieves are opportunistic and in a hurry. You don’t need to make your bike impenetrable; you just need to make it a less attractive target.
