National Bike Registry

[n18]

Bike shops could offer Serial Number Reader service(be that RFID or whatever) for a small fee, lets say $1 to $5. RFID readers themselves with USB interface cost about $15, so it's not too much for expensive bikes.

If there are still buyers who don't prefer to check for serial numbers, then what happens to them is the same what happens now. If the bike was reported stolen, and the bike was stolen again from the new buyer, and the buyer called the police, then if the police finds it, it will be returned to the original buyer. The original owner could also spots his bike parked somewhere, checks the serial number to be sure, and calls the police, which would give the bike back to him.

As for registering bikes, I prefer that it is managed by a non-profit, to make sure that it's free. There is no telling when the free ones out there stay free, and even if so, the site remains active and maintained. Having a non-profit do it, makes it easier to promote, because it's just one site.

I did some web design, and making a web site for registering bikes only takes few minutes to few hours, assuming it's lightly used, and it would costs about $20/Month to run. If it gets heavy visits, then it would require renting entire servers, in the area of $100+, and could go into the $1000+ range, but I am not an expert on heavy use sites. This is probably why the National Bike Registry doesn't allow public searches, because it costs a lot to run heavy use sites, and it requires some know how, which may require hiring a reputable firm to do such web site upgrades. I guess they were not ready to make that commitment.

[dasgeh]

This thread reminds me of an idea I had for a Kidical Mass (or some other) ride:

Meet at a park, preferably one with some free asphalt. For the first x minutes (while kids play), have a station where people can measure their bikes and find serial numbers, etc. Bonus points if we can get the police there to do immediate registration. Encourage people to take pictures of their bikes, measure them* and write down the serial numbers -- for my family, we'd just send ourselves emails with the pics and info, etc, since we can always search that.

*The measure thing would really be for family bike set-ups -- long-tails, long-johns and trail-a-whatever set-ups are (obviously) different than standard bikes, and it's hard to find good info about how long/wide these set ups are. We could easily set up a station where people could park the bike at a designated spot, and we'd stripe out the various widths and lengths in concentric rectangles, so you could see how wide things are and where.

Would people be interested in this?