Big Brother is Watching Your Bike

TreeHugger promotes bicycling as the best way to get around, but a big disincentive is the high rate of bicycle theft. The University of Toronto provides particularly rich pickings. Last year the U of T police cut the rate significantly by hiding GPS beacons on high end bikes and tracking them as they were stolen; six arrests have been made as a result. According to the Varsity, "Using cell phone towers and satellites, police track the position and speed of the bike on a computer, or even a Blackberry PDA. When someone steals the bike, police home in on it and arrest the would-be thief."

This year, they are giving out "this bike could be a bait bike...Do you really want to take that chance?" stickers for students to put on their bikes, to make thieves think twice, or perhaps let new inexperienced thieves learn about the program. That's a lot cheaper than a $ 1,400 GPS beacon. ::Biking Toronto