Bicycle Theft Galore In Buenos Aires
The “creatives” at Liebre Amotinada, a local ad agency, had an idea. They were thinking about “the good ol’ days,” a time when people were honest and the city was safe. Wouldn’t it be nice, they thought, if you could ride your bike to the nearest panadería, leave your bike in front of the store, and go inside without having to worry about someone stealing your ride. Yeah, that would be nice. But the days when this was possible are long gone. Porteños are no longer as honest as they used to be, or at least, as honest as people now nostalgically think they used to be. So just how honest are Porteños these days? To answer this question, the ad people came up with a brilliant idea. Why not place unlocked bikes around the city and see how long it takes for people to rob them? The results are documented in a series of videos that you can see here, and here.
In the above video, filmed in a plaza at Salguero and Charcas, in downtown Buenos Aires, you can see an average-looking guy casing the plaza, trying to figure out if he can get away with stealing an unlocked bike. His actions are at once funny and pathetic. It took just 6 minutes and 20 seconds for someone to steal the bike left in this plaza. In another experiment, this time at the corner of Perón and Riobamba, it took just 3:20min for someone to steal the bike. In all of the experiments done, the bike that lasted the longest was left near the corner of Lavalle and Maipú. It lasted 60:10min. In another test, this one in Palermo near the corner of French and Salguero, the bike lasted just 8min. All in all, it sure gives the impression that the so-called “port people” are not the most trustworthy folk in the world. Check out the videos and draw you own conclusions.
Unfortunately, the Argentine government does not publish crime data, as far as I know. This makes it exceptionally difficult to track trends in the country. It also makes it impossible to verify the truth of statements about declining crime, such as one recently made by Justice Minister Anibal Fernandez. In addition, this makes it hard to compare crime here with crime in other countries, so I’m not sure how Argentina’s bike theft numbers might compare to those in other nations. More about this can be found at www.stolenbicycleregistry.com. This site has links to FBI data indicating that in 2006 some 231,238 bikes were stolen in the U.S. That number has declined for each of the past five years. In the U.K., the Home Office estimates that 480,000 bikes will be stolen this year, according to this article. Clearly, bike theft is a global problem, a human problem. Even so, this does not make it any less pathetic that bikes are stolen so quickly in Buenos Aires.
Link: A video explanation of the experiment with English subtitles
Link: The Bicycle Experiment Homepage
Link: The Bicycle Test’s Facebook Page
*Kudos to La Nación for running a story about this in Sunday’s paper. While the experiment has been written about quite a lot, I hadn’t heard about it before La Nación’s story, which you can see here.
**In an upcoming post (which is almost finished) I will explore in-depth the history and nature of trust and honesty in Buenos Aires.
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Please revise your article to reflect the true meaning difference between STEEL the metal and STEAL the verb. thank you.
Good catch! Thank you.
In my opinion this study doesn’t work as a social experiment in a way that you could draw conclusive findings from it. Because nowadays, leaving a bike unlocked can be understood as the bike being abandoned by the owner. Who would leave a bike in the middle of a town square without a lock? The fact is, leaving a bike unlocked is not even done in developed countries such as the U.S. with much higher per capita income.
I recall this article was published earlier this month in TheArgentimes.
Hey anonymous,
Good points, though I’m not sure I agree entirely. 1) I don’t buy the idea that leaving a bike unlocked would be interpreted by many as the bike being abandoned by the owner. I agree that seeing unlocked bikes in places like Buenos Aires, or any major city in the U.S., is rare. But this does not mean that people would conclude from this that the bike has been abandoned. Only if a bike were obviously in completely awful condition, and almost worthless (really beat up and missing a tire, for example), would most people think it had been abandoned. I doubt that most people who see perfectly good bike and think, “That bike doesn’t have a lock. It must have been abandoned.” One thought does not lead inescapably to the other. 2) You’re certainly right that most people would not leave a bike unlocked in a town square. I certainly would not, at least not for a very long time. As for your last point, this seems to be your strongest point. In many developed countries, city government’s themselves provide free – but I believe in most cases cases unlocked – bikes for the public to use. Paris not too long ago actually put out about 20,000 bikes for people to use openly. Interestingly, after a year, about 3,000 of those bikes bad been stolen, and another damaged or destroyed. But, perhaps even more importantly, the rest are still available for people to use. Similar things have been done in quite a few cities. Here is a link to story on Paris and its experience.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/thieves-ride-off-with-3000-of-pariss-free-bicycles-868726.html
But even if these bikes are locked, it doesn’t undermine the experiment in that the whole point of the experiment is to see what happens when you do leave a bike unlocked in a public place. It would be interesting to take the experiment global and see what happens en masse in different cities around the world. It would be interesting to know what factors most influence the time it takes for the bikes to be stolen – population density? per capita income? per capita educational achievement? etc. The key question might be not whether the bikes are stolen, but rather how long it takes, on average, for them to be taken. Presumably, with enough time, the bikes would be stolen in almost every city on the planet, but the question, perhaps, is how long they last. As much as I love Buenos Aires, 3:30min is not very impressive.
Taos
I meant “locked” not unlocked when I referred to the bikes placed in European cities. Taos
Hey to the other anonymous,
Where did you get your hands on The Argentimes? I’d love to get a copy. I’ve seen the PDF version online, but I found it hard to navigate through and just gave up, even though it looked interesting.
Taos
Hi Taos, I am the anonymous with the “good points”. I can see your point too. I think the legal test that it is used to differentiate between stealing and taking an abandoned item is whether a reasonable person would consider it to be abandoned. I think that reasonably, nobody with the intent to keep the bicycle would leave it unlocked out in a high traffic area such a town square, in a relatively high crime rate city as Buenos Aires. It all depends where you leave the bike and if it is considered to be a place where one would expect the bike to be stolen if unlocked. This experiment kind of reminds me when I see “cops” on tv, I think they have stuff like this where they “bait” the thief. In any case, thanks for the opportunity and the forum to discuss this experiment. I had seen it at Criticadigital.com and back then I didn’t consider it from the social/criminal study viewpoint but more for the entertainment value.
Thanks TaoS!!!!
Hey there anonymous,
Thank YOU for your cogent thoughts on this topic. It’s great to have this feedback with readers and it is almost always educational and interesting.
I am familiar with the “reasonable person” standard and can certainly see how it might be applicable here. But two things come to mind when I think about this. First, it seems to me that if there is a “reasonable chance” that the bike belongs to someone, and has not been abandoned, then nobody has the right to take it, even if it is unlocked and even if most people would not intentionally leave an unlocked bike in a public space.
It is easy to imagine circumstances under which someone might leave a bike unlocked: perhaps the person forgot the lock; perhaps the person didn’t initially intend to park and buy something; perhaps the person figured that it would be safe to leave the bike unattended for just a few minutes, etc. If any of these exceptions are even possible, it seems to me that no person should have the right to take the bike, let alone think that he or she has the right to take the bike under any kind of reasonable person standard.
Second, there is sometimes a disjuncture between what the law dictates and what ethical conduct demands. It seems to me that a reasonable person ought to error on the side of caution – and even be law be required to do so – when acting in ways that involve potentially unethical (not to mention unlawful) behavior. The law ought to keep this in mind when evaluating what a reasonable person might do under normal circumstances.
Your comments have helped me to think about this issue in a more interesting and involved manner, and I appreciate that.
NOTE: I’ve updated the post to include comparative “bike crime” data from the U.S. and the U.K.
Thanks again,
Taos
No we do not get the paper version of TheArgentimes here in Mendoza. It’s only a few pages so it’s ok for me to download and then read the PDF version from their website.
No problem Taos, why keep the anonymous facade, I am Ramiro the Argentine guy leaving in Chicago, I actually went to law school in Buenos Aires and I almost go to Chicago-Kent Law School here in Chicago this fall but couldn’t make work the schedule between work and school so I had to witdraw my application. I guess I am leaving too much personal info.
Anyways, I can see your point too, I think you can argue it both ways. I think the reasonable person that we are talking about has to be in touch with his/her surroundings. A reasonable person in Chicago would be likely less precatious than a person in Buenos Aires. I was a reasonable guy in Buenos Aires and never left my bike unlocked, I never even thought about that. I think most people don’t leave a bike unattended in the way that the guys at “liebre…” did… But I do see your point, and you could argue that and I am sure many will agree with you. I just think that it is “unthinkable” to leave a bike unattended/unlocked in Buenos Aires…
Anyways, great blog, thanks for the knowledge and the insight.
I think that the “experiment” is what you can expect from an “advertising creative”. Something cute for entertaining purposes, that impresses at first sight, but with very dubious value as a social “experiment”. We pretty much knew before watching the videos what would happen to the bikes. So what’s the point?
(if they wanted to do something useful for the community perhaps they should have left LOCKED bikes in different areas and see where they are stolen. Results from that study at least would be a useful piece information, especially if you own a bike and you are not stupid).
If you want to look at the time that takes for the unlocked bikes to be stolen (as you suggest), then you will have to make the case that time results are not random or spurious, that time really correlates with the level of security in the area (you’ll have to waste many more bikes than the ones already donated to thieves for “creative” purposes — and I guess it would be hard and funny to justify funding for a study like that — “we need thousands of bikes all over the world. Participants in the study will be compensated with a bike”).
The only thing I learned from this is what to do if you wanted to steal an unlocked bike.
By the way, there are published statistics on crime (however reliable they are — and this is not a particularly Argentine problem) and studies on crime trends, prison population, etc. (of course not as much as in countries with stronger statistics — and of course not about bike theft, which probably goes unreported most times). But of course, it takes much less effort and shows more effective to pay attention to a silly “experiment” like this one. saludos.
Hi Dani,
Many thanks for your commentary.
Could you be so kind as to provide a link to the official published statistical data on crime that you’re referring to? I would love to see this.
Saludos,
Taos
Hi Taos,
Thanks for your answer. Check out http://www.indec.mecon.ar
They have something under “Seguridad Pública”. Those stats are responsibility of the Ministry of Justice (indec just publishes them in the Anuario Estadístico). I haven’t kept track of the institutional changes in the last few years (I was more familiar with sources a few years ago), so I don’t know exactly who is in charge now. There used to be a Sistema Nacional de Información Criminal, but I can’t find anything online, so it may have changed.
Also, there is data at http://www.mpf.gov.ar/estadisticas.htm
Apparently most data comes from this office now.
Argentine stats on crime, prison population, etc. exist (with very low quality) but the state has done a very poor job of making them easily available. And that’s been a perennial problem, long before current problems at indec (if indec used to be reasonably stable and independent before the last year and a half, that hasn’t been the case for the offices in charge of crime statistics, underfunded and disorganized — the police probably doesn’t help much either).
By the way, crime stats are always to be treated carefully, since they might say more about the police than about actual crime:
“What such statistics do reflect are the specifically organizational contingencies which condition the application of specific statutes to actual conduct through interpretations, decisions and actions of law enforcement personnel”
Kitsuse and Cicourel, A Note on the Uses of Official Statistics,
Social Problems, 1963
Saludos y gracias,
dani
forgot to add, the mpf.gov.ar website seems to work on IE only.
Thank you, Dani! I’ll look into this. I’m meeting with a Justice Ministry official about all of this. I appreciate your help.
Taos
Ramiro,
Hey! I knew it had to be a lawyer!
Great to have your feedback on this.
Take care up there in Chicago,
Taos