Qualquer roubo é um problema que extrapola o ato em si de ilegalidade. As consequências diretas são vistas como ruins principalmente para quem sofreu o roubo, mas o problema vai muito além. Há a questão da contaminação social, que pouco ou nada se fala, e ai está o maior problema. No caso do Brasil diz-se que a criminalidade é endêmica,
No caso do roubo das bicicletas, que normalmente é bem de valor baixo, os efeitos são muito mais amplos do que possa parecer. É o que mostra o artigo abaixo, que fala sobre uma pesquisa realizada em Montreal, Canada.
Infelizmente aqui no Brasil roubos, assaltos e latrocínios são tão comuns que passaram a fazer parte de nosso cotidiano. Mesmo em caso de perdas de grande valor, como um grande furto na própria casa, é comum o proprietário não ir a Polícia e apresentar queixa. "Não vai adiantar nada", é frase comum e deprimente. Chegamos onde estamos, numa guerra civil não declarada, por que permitimos o vale tudo.
No caso das bicicletas é normal ouvir casos de assaltos armados e, pior, de gente pedalando bicicletas compradas por preços completamente irreais que levantam suspeitas. Tudo é aceito e tudo leva ao estímulo da violência. O resultado final é que muita gente deixa de usar a bicicleta ou ir a certos lugares por medo.
O artigo abaixo aponta os estragos que os roubos causam aos projetos cicloviários e de estímulo ao uso da bicicleta. Indiretamente fala sobre os sérios danos que um simples roubo de bicicleta faz com o trabalho de transformação das cidades para a vida. Perdem todos.
These 8 Depressing Bike Theft Statistics Show Just How Bad the Problem Is
One
of the biggest problems with
stopping city bike theft is that
cities don't even understand the extent of the problem. Police departments often
consider the incidents a low priority and fail to pursue thieves, which in turn
discourages riders from reporting later incidents. Great as cities know the
problem to be, then, the likely reality is that it's much greater.
Police
departments certainly have more severe crimes to address than bike theft, but
that doesn't mean the problem is trivial. The general tendency to overlook the
problem threatens to undermine public investments in bike infrastructure and the
viability of bike-share
programs, as well as city mobility more broadly. If people had their cars
stolen as often as their bikes — cyclists are four times as likely as drivers to
be victims of vehicle theft — you have to imagine cities would take stronger
action.
"Whereas
it is usually urban and transport planners who are in charge of planning a
city’s active transportation network and infrastructure, it is often the police
who are in charge of investigating bicycle theft," says Dea van Lierop, who's
been studying the issue at McGill University. "For the police, bicycle theft
simply not always is a priority crime."
Recently,
Van Lierop and colleagues conducted a survey of Montreal residents to better
understand for the bike theft problem. Their results, based on nearly 2,000
responses from cyclists, are set for
publication in the International Journal of Sustainable
Transportation. We've combed the paper to identify the most important —
and, from a perspective of urban mobility, most depressing — statistics.
About
half of all active cyclists have their bikes stolen.This figure has
been reported before, but it bears repeating: city cyclists are a mere coin flip
away from being victims of bike theft. In a sense, even that stat doesn't
capture the problem, since some cyclists have their bikes stolen more than once.
The McGill researchers found that the 961 respondents who were bike-theft
victims had a total of 1,890 bikes stolen.
Few
riders report bike theft, and fewer register their bikes. The Montreal survey found that
roughly 36 percent of riders reported the theft, and only 8.5 percent of victims
had their bikes registered at the time. Those figures largely reflect a general
belief that the police won't do anything anyway. Still, reporting the incident
does seem to matter in terms of one's chance for recovery: two thirds of
recovered bikes were reported.
But
only 2.4 percent of stolen bikes were recovered. A sad, sad figure. Even sadder: 22 stolen
bikes were reported stolen to police, had been registered before their theft,
and had been photographed to help show ownership, according to the Montreal
survey. None were recovered.
Year-round
cyclists are 90 percent more likely than others to have a bike
stolen. The more you take your
bike onto a street, the more chances it has of being stolen. That's no surprise,
but the figure itself is alarming: everyday riders are 90 percent more likely to be a theft victim than
seasonal or occasional riders. As for the timing of the incidents, theft rates
peak in July and decline the rest of the year. In other words, there's a huge
disincentive to ride at the very moment it's most appealing to ride.
The
crime occurs closer to home than cyclists believe. The Montreal survey asked cyclists where
they felt bike theft occurred most often and compared those responses to actual
theft geography. While riders think thefts occur about 3.5 miles from home, they
actually occur much closer — about 2 miles. This gap between perceived and
actual theft location could lead riders to be less careful locking their bikes
than they should be at times, especially in their own neighborhoods.
Only
37 percent of cyclists are willing to pay for better parking. Cities have a responsibility to provide bike
parking just as they delegate street space for car parking, but they also have
an incentive to charge the proper
price for it. This could be a problem, however, as only 37 percent or
cyclists were willing to pay for parking in the Montreal survey. Two in five
opponents cited cost, while one in five didn't want to pay on principle. Only 30
percent were willing to pay a dollar for parking.
76
percent of stolen bikes cost less than $500. The Montreal survey found that while 60
percent of all current bikes on Montreal streets were valued somewhere south of
$500, such bikes made up three quarters of all thefts. People with expensive
bikes may take greater precautions — buying better locks or renting off-street
bike parking — but therein lies the problem. The more it costs to avoid having a
bike stolen, the more expensive (and thus, for some, less desirable) riding
becomes.
7
percent of victims never replaced their bikes. This might be the most important depressing
statistic of all. It means these one-time riders revert to other forms of moving
around the city, no doubt in many cases by car. That's exactly the type of
unsustainable mode shift that cities invest in bike programs to avoid.
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image: neko92vl /Shutterstock.com
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