Hello ladies and gentlemen!

My name is Koko and today I’m going to talk about one of the biggest annoyances that cyclists have to face in their day to day life. Bike locks have been the ultimate source of security for bikes since the inception of bikes. Though people buy bike locks to ensure the safety of their bikes while they’re gone, thousands of bicycles still get stolen every single day. There are many different options of bike locks that people can use so this begs us to ask the question; why do they fail? The source of this lack of success can, in my opinion, come from two different mistakes that people make.

The first being user error; people are not aware that if the criminals cannot take your bike, they can take any other vulnerable part of the bike and sell it for money. The two parts that are vulnerable to burglary are tires and seats because with bicycles today, they’re quite easy to take away without any heavy tools.

The second problem is the inconvenience of the bike locks that exist today. Weight and portability is a huge issue with bikes, as well as complicated instructions for some types of locks. An example would be the folding lock which requires the lock to be placed at a specific location, or another example would be the U locks and chain locks because they need keys. There are also many different options available with many advantages and disadvantages for every single one; making it hard for users to pick between the options.

Let’s now go through the types of bike locks and their advantages and disadvantages to show you the flaws of the system that billions of people have been using for years.

1.U-Lock

Advantages

• Most secure
• Most common

Disadvantages

• Heavy
• If you lose the keys, you have no bike
• Doesn’t secure the vulnerable parts (tires, seat)

2.Cable Lock

Advantages

• Light
• Compact
• Versatile
• Large locking area (Secures the vulnerable parts)

Disadvantages

• Easiest to cut

3.Chain Lock

Advantages

• Secure
• Large locking area

Disadvantages

• Heavy
• Hard to carry
• Restricts movement
• If you lose the keys, you have no bike

To figure out the main underlying problem within these options, I had to ask the question; What do they all have in common?

After much thought, I came to the fact that none of these options serve the purpose of portability. To solve an issue of portability, the first idea that one would get is to integrate whatever we need into the main thing that it supports. It was time for me to find out if there’s a way to make the lock a part of your bike while still securing everything. Instead of creating a concept of my own, I did research on other companies that has tried to fix this same issue; and I found two companies with the same viewpoint as mine. These two companies are called nRocket and the Senza Bike Lock System. I think that the Senza Bike Lock System tends to all the problem that I had but both these problems still solved the main problem that all these bike locks lacked. These two companies both fixed the problem of Ultimate Portability of bike locks.

Before I talk about the company that I prefer, I’ll first talk about the nCycle. The nCycle just looks like a normal bicycle but the handle bars are flexible so that it can be placed around bike racks and poles; acting as a bike lock. Both the nCycle and Senza Bike Lock System integrates the concept of the bike lock into the handlebars so that if someone tries to remove it, it would completely ruin the bike in the process. This makes stealing these inventions redundant.

The way that the Senza Bike Lock System is better than the nCycle is that it secures all the parts of bike with a different lock integrated under the seat of the bike to secure both the seat and the back tire at the same time.

There is a programmer called Larry Wall who created this very sophisticated programming language called Perl Programming. He once said that “Portability should be the default.” And I think that this concept should be a key aspect in the biking industry. I would like to urge the league of American Bicyclists to create petitions to make integrated bike locks a standard part of the bike to create a better biking future for everyone.