Tips for Visitors / New Bikers

Edinburgh is a very safe city for people - but highly unsafe for Motorcycles

Visitors

Never leave your bikes unattended on the street - ESPECIALLY overnight !! Can’t stress this enough, even in built up areas / places you think your bike(s) are safe - they are not. The thieves will openly cut locks and steal bikes in broad daylight.

Small gangs of hooded youths on (stolen) E-bikes / Surrons & mopeds head out in groups between 2 and up to 10 people and they will snap a steering lock / angle grinder any normal locks / chains etc & push your motorbike away with the help of the other bikes within seconds. They are fast, do not fear the law and operate with impunity.

Most often any stolen high value bikes disappear never to be seen again, lower value bikes are often found damaged / abandoned / burnt out etc. Either way 90% of the time your bikes gone along with any belongings.

The police are so under resourced & do not have the right powers in place (eg in London where they can knock thieves off moving bikes) So unfortunately calling them is mostly pointless (unless the attempted theft is actually happening at the time, in which case call 999)

IF you must park your bikes in Edinburgh - please follow these tips

  • Out of sight is best - hide them

  • Use a cover & either a HipLok or equivalent lock which cannot be cut with an angle grinder

  • Use a tracker to alert you asap and hopefully help in tracking any high value bikes (warning, some trackers can be blocked with simple jammer devices so aren’t always as good as you’d hope in an emergency)

  • Do NOT assume underground carparks are safe - they are actually targeted by thieves as they offer easy entry and cover from prying eyes.

Edinburgh Residents

The most common emails I get tend to be from people who have fallen into the “Underground carparks are safe” trap - they are unfortunately now targeted by thieves as they offer easy entry and cover from prying eyes.

Also it seems as more folk keep their bikes off the street, the thieves are having to enter carparks to find bikes.

Monimoto Trackers - We sell these as cheap as possible and offer anyone with an EH postcode our members discount and we keep these in stock - pop me an email if you’d like more info.

Hiplok Locks - We also sell these as they are practically invincible to angle grinder attacks - and Edinburgh thieves seem to carry these. We always try to keep a few in stock (D1000 and the larger DX1000)