Alarms may go off… but they don’t work

Testers ” stole ” a bike from outside a police station with its alarm blaring… and no one lifted a finger to stop them.

It’s just one of the depressing findings of a RiDE survey into public reaction to the sound of a bike alarm. It’s something most of us are already aware of, and why alarm-immobiliser makers are placing increasing store by the immobiliser functions of their devices these days.

MCN’s sister magazine RiDE left an R6 in a variety of locations then arranged for it to be ” stolen ” .

In one case the Yamaha was left outside a city centre police station in broad daylight. Moments after it was parked up with the alarm set, the undercover team drew up in a white van. One of them cased the bike, then they pulled out a ramp, grabbed the bike (with the alarm screaming) and were gone.

In a second incident, the RiDE team parked the bike in a busy shopping street. Again, the Yamaha was lifted in moments with no-one making an attempt to intervene

The bike’s owner Adam Molloy, 23, who volunteered his machine for the experiment, said: ” I’m gutted. There was a guy in a Castrol Honda jacket and I was sure he was going to do something, but nobody took action. ”

DC Mark Tidy, a case officer for the branch of the National Criminal Intelligence Service which deals with bike theft, said: ” It is a problem. Alarms don’t deter people from stealing bikes. We were at the Weston Beach races recently when a FireBlade was stolen. It was alarmed and there were bikers everywhere but it made no difference. ”

Read the full story in the February issue of RiDE, on sale January 4 price £3.10.