Immobilised Bike

[mattc]

I once got blocked into a car park after dark with two screaming kids in the car.  I had to do a bit of touch-parking to escape.  I did not leave a note on the car.  It was their fault.

That seems like about the best comparison/analogy yet. I don't think anyone would begrudge your behaviour in that situation.

zag's scenario was different, but also in many ways the same - I don't find him guilty of anything; it was the fault of the other bike-owner.

( I do think cyclists  - taken as a statistical average - are a lot more forgiving, less selfish, and more likely to give people benefit-of-the-doubt. Drivers are much more territorial, quick to blame others, and generally selfish! )

[T42]

I once got blocked into a car park after dark with two screaming kids in the car.  I had to do a bit of touch-parking to escape.  I did not leave a note on the car.  It was their fault.

More extreme my old colleague Garcia who, on finding the exit from his parking space blocked by another somewhat tatty car, drove merrily back into its passenger door then forward across the grass and away.

[quixoticgeek]

What depresses me is how little people seem to know about the strength of a lock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyORzskAkkY

A lock like that pictured, with the right tool, is seconds to destroy. The tools are not expensive, and many can be borrowed or hired.

I'm expecting the owner of that bike came back, got on it, and the bike self destructed on them.

J

[Paul]

I wouldn’t have a clue about the strength of the lock, or the tools to deal with it.
Why are you depressed about that?

[Kim]

Surely general ignorance is the mechanism through which most bike locks perform their function?  The good ones up the game to 'uncommon tools'.

[quixoticgeek]

I wouldn’t have a clue about the strength of the lock, or the tools to deal with it.
Why are you depressed about that?

Because people trust their bikes to locks that are so easy to compromise.

Surely general ignorance is the mechanism through which most bike locks perform their function?  The good ones up the game to 'uncommon tools'.

Yes and no. A simple hacksaw will go through a surprising number of locks, and things like a nut splitter or bolt croppers you can buy at any decent tool shop, there's nothing special to them...

J

[Cudzoziemiec]

I'd put the blame on the rather silly design of the stand. It's most likely the owner of the other bike genuinely thought they were locking it to the stand. That obviously isn't always the case in these incidents.

[Pedal Castro]

If the owner ever returns it’s going to look like someone cut through the bike to steal their lock.

A surreal theft.

My friend and I locked out bikes together (and to a post) outside a cinema. When we came out someone had nicked the lock! It was only a cheap combination lock in though, and my friend's not mine so was I bothered? 

It was a school matinee showing of Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet and although we never knew until after we married, the future Mrs PC was also there.

[Kim]

I'd put the blame on the rather silly design of the stand. It's most likely the owner of the other bike genuinely thought they were locking it to the stand. That obviously isn't always the case in these incidents.

I don't think it's particularly silly:  A variation on the classic Sheffield design, which provides more locking point options for bikes without a traditional diamond frame that might otherwise end up sticking out or badly supported in order to be properly secured.  It likely makes the stand easier to detect with a cane^[1], as a side-effect (normally a horizontal plate is fitted to the stands at the ends of a row to achieve this, but the 'M' design is probably easier to manufacture).

Ultimately, locking up a bike securely is one of those visual-spacial tasks that some people are naturally good at, and others have to learn step-by-step.  It probably correlates with ability to draw a bicycle.  If you've had to learn it as a sequence of steps, you're going to have more difficulty adapting to unusual stand designs, etc.  That the OP's bike has a toptube that looks a bit like a bit of bike rack doesn't help.

I'm leaning towards the mistake theory, rather than the secure-as-precursor-to-theft, simply because there's nothing to stop the OP coming along with a suitable vehicle and carting off both bikes.


_{[1] A traditional Sheffield stand appears to be a pair of posts until you walk into it.}

[andyoxon]

I once got blocked into a car park after dark with two screaming kids in the car.  I had to do a bit of touch-parking to escape.  I did not leave a note on the car.  It was their fault.

That seems like about the best comparison/analogy yet. I don't think anyone would begrudge your behaviour in that situation.

zag's scenario was different, but also in many ways the same - I don't find him guilty of anything; it was the fault of the other bike-owner.

( I do think cyclists  - taken as a statistical average - are a lot more forgiving, less selfish, and more likely to give people benefit-of-the-doubt. Drivers are much more territorial, quick to blame others, and generally selfish! )

I'm along these lines too.  If it wasn't deliberate, being careless enough to miss the stand, and lock your bike to someone else's, with all the disruption it potentially causes them, comes with a risk to your bike and/or lock, that the bike extraction may be fully outside of your control or the way you'd want the bikes separated...

[Cudzoziemiec]

Locking points for bikes of various heights (and whatever height the stand is, it's never ideal) can be provided by having two (or more) horizontals. 

[Kim]

Locking points for bikes of various heights (and whatever height the stand is, it's never ideal) can be provided by having two (or more) horizontals.

Indeed, but that means welding, rather than just making an extra couple of bends in the tube.

Coincidentally, the 'M' stand is by far the best design I've come across for locking a USS recumbent bike to - you can just offer the bike up to it rather than having to slide the handlebars up from underneath or stick the front half of the bike out from the stand.  Reasonably sure that wasn't what they were thinking off at the time (unless it's the work of the same guerrilla darkside activist welder who designed those A-frame Silly Sustrans Gates™), but I'm not complaining.

[mzjo]

Back to the OP which I've only just read. I hope you left a note saying "Don't ride this bike until you've rewelded the stays - and take more care what you lock your bike to".

Look at it positively. At least the owner still has the bits, which he or she wouldn't if the two bikes had been carted off to be liberated and the offending one then dumped in the canal or whatever.