Iride01 

Just talk to your insurance agent and find out if your homeowners or other insurance covers your bike and in what situations.

Redbullet

Bike insurance is a beautiful dream, but if one dives into real life, it becomes less appealing . Briefly: You pay yearly insurance premium of 9% of bike price and in case of an event, you get 70% of the insured value for theft. It took me 15 minutes to deeply analyze the figures for a meaningful result, as below:

If you consider only a 3% yearly increase in bike price acquisition as new, then: If an event occurs after 3 years, you already paid insurance premium at the level of 24% of a new bike acquisition price and you recover 64% of the same price. In net terms (recover amount minus premium paid), your recovery is 40% of the price of a new bike. But 40% is only the theoretical legal obligation, because the insurer will do everything to decrease it to less than a quarter of his legal obligation. You need to spend a lot of time and effort to oblige him to pay closer to legal amount.

In a parallel exercise, I have just ended a tedious 8 months legal fight with an insurer for a totally damaged bike (not theft) and I got the brilliant result of 83% of what he should legally pay, while his firm offer was 18%.

Iride01 

I wouldn't buy insurance just directly on the bike either. However for some situations the bike is already covered by other policies you may already have as was the subject of my initial reply here. Not buying insurance just for the bike.

And for certain there is always self-insurance. Most bikes don't cost that much to replace. And if the bike was damaged after it was stolen, I'd probably not even care to want the bike back.

Might also be a good idea for cyclist to find out whether or not any policies they already have might cover them for harm they might do to other persons or property while cycling.

njkayaker

There are a few of them,

https://road.cc/content/review/tail-...tracker-274995

Most of them use a cell network to report back and that usually requires a subscription ($5-10/month).

beeballman

I shipped my bike to California from the east coast with an Air Tag. I tracked it the whole way their (went UPS truck via Airflights) and on way back it came via train. I followed it the whole way with no drop outs at all. Worked well.

SoSmellyAir

Shipping, yes; theft, no.

typ240

…i use an airtag and hide it inside the downtube of the bike, wrapped in a ziplock bag! I can easily track my bike from wherever I am, not just during cafe stops on group rides!

msu2001la

How do people think this works? You track down your stolen bike and knock on the door and ask the thief to return it and they're just like "ope you caught me sorry here's your bike back"? What do you do when they say "no I don't have your bike"? Have you ever met a bike thief? This is not a situation that the average cyclist should be walking themselves into. It's likely ending in violence.

I can also say with 100% confirmation that cops in most major cities will do very little to assist you in recovering a stolen bike, even if you know where it is. Even if you call them from that location and tell them that you have indisputable proof of ownership. Maybe in small town suburbia this is different, but in most major cities all you're getting out of the cops in this scenario is a report.

With both of those in mind, I took out a separate insurance policy for my main bike. The policy includes a $6000 replacement cost, and costs $321 a year. In the scheme of bike stuff that I spend money on, $321/year for this coverage seems reasonable to me. On the topic of homeowners insurance, my carrier (Allstate) told me that bike theft would only be covered if it was stolen from my home.

Mojo31

I've always said that if my cars get stolen, I don't want them back for all the obvious reasons.

Same is true with my bikes. If one gets stolen, its No Big Deal as it then becomes New Bike Day!




*It actually is a bid deal because of the cost, but if you ever think you're getting it back in the condition it was in pre-theft then you are likely in for a surprise.

msu2001la

I have a friend who's car was stolen a few years ago from a parking lot next to her condo building. (She kept a spare key in the glovebox and would unlock the car via app... which is pretty dumb in hindsight). Her car had a GPS enabled app that showed the location when parked, so she got updates on where it was last parked after it was stolen. She told the police about this and they basically told her they wouldn't/couldn't do anything with the info beyond alerting the local precinct in that area to be on the lookout.

A few days later she got a call that they had found her car. It had been crashed, airbags deployed, and was found abandoned on a set of railroad tracks. The plates had been removed and the city had towed it to an impound lot. She was pretty happy when her insurance adjuster informed her that the car was "totaled".

A few days after that the red light tickets started showing up in the mail...

Mojo31

Pretty typical with stolen cars.

njkayaker

The range of an Airtag is 33 feet. That is, there has to be a phone within about 33 feet of the tag to register. That distance is optimistic. Things like metal between the phone and the tag is going to reduce that distance. It's not likely that your bike was that close to some iPhone for the entire trip.

DangerousDanR

https://findgaleo.com/

I know the people who make these, so this is not an endorsement. If you can figure out a way to hide one they will work great, but if they are hanging out in plain view they will be removed almost immediately. They use a cellular connection, so unless the thief wraps them in a Faraday cage they will be sending out a report most of the time. For an e-bike, if you can figure out a way to hide it inside the battery box it could be great, and only something like $20 a year for the cellular data plan.