Lost a road bike to some low-life scum?

Road riding is fun. BIG fun and many people are getting back into it and spending a lot of hard-earned money to do it. Problem is, it doesn't matter if you have your bike locked up at home (or a friends place) or even parked in a parking station, if some scumbag wants it they are gonna get it.

A new roadie is going to set you back anywhere from $8000 to $heaps and a lot of people don't insure their bikes - for numerous reasons. If your bikes is stolen you potentially have lost not only all your dough but also the sense of freedom. You can't go riding until you get another bike and then you're always checking over your shoulder to see who's following. Your garage is now like Fort Knox and your new bike (when you eventually get one - if you do) is in pieces and the rest chained to the floor. That is no way to live.

So, what our intentions are with this website (and our other one for dirt bikes - www.stolendirtbikes.com.au) - is to try and make life a little bit more difficult for the crims, but at the same time collect enough data on theft so that all of you can see what the actual situation is. See, only the police and insurance companies know just how bad the situation is but what we do know that the recovery rate is pathetic and that's just not good enough. Have a read of this doc from the National Motor Vehicle Theft Reduction Council - Report_08.pdf. It will give you and idea of what it was like in 2002.

We want some action and it's high time that the authorities got their act together and did something for our benefit - like getting our damn bikes back! If a privately run company had returns of between 19 and 36% on it's investment it wouldn't be in business. So how on earth can figures like shown in the above document be justifed???

We have to leave it to the courts, who appear to have a very poor grasp on the effects of the criminal activities - like the sense of loss, anguish, out-of-pocket factor, increased insurance costs (if you can afford it) and more. The perps are given excessive lenience time and time again and just continue to do what they do, but as private citizens we cannot take matters into our own hands because any action that has even the slightest possibility of causing hurt to the criminals will boomerang. That's not justice.

Hence the website. We get enough info then we can use it the way we want. Support it for your pleasures sake.