Taking your scooter inside with you is not THE solution to theft
Here's why I think Redditors are wrong about what you must do to prevent theft!
When I first bought my Ninebot Max, I remember remarking how nice the build quality was. Sure, it felt like a tank, but it also looked more premium than pictures show. I felt excited about how fun it would be to ride and how much time I’d save not having to rely on public transportation and being able to get to my destinations without being sweaty.
As soon as I rode it, the excitement quickly turned into a new emotion: worry. You see, I’ve owned several acoustic bikes as city commuters, and they all eventually got stolen. My road bike was actually stolen right in front of my law school, which I found infuriating considering the bike rack is in direct view of armed security.
My commuter bikes were all cheap $200 Walmart bikes, and they still got stolen. My Ninebot isn’t a super premium scooter, but it certainly is several times more expensive than my bikes were. It’s more comparable to my phone and laptop than my bikes. So, the worry about locking up outside began to creep up. I wouldn’t leave my smartphone or laptop outside. What should I do with my scooter at the end of a trip?
I did what I normally do when I quickly want to get up to speed on something I don’t obsess over myself, and went to Reddit. The nice thing about Reddit is it’s full of people who obsess over all kinds of different topics for you. It’s like fast-forward obsessing. Here’s what the Redditors had to say:
“NEVER LOCK YOUR SCOOTER OUTSIDE OR LEAVE IT UNATTENDED!”
“BRING IT INSIDE WITH YOU!”
“SOMEONE WILL STEAL IT!”
“NO LOCK CAN STOP A THIEF WITH AN ANGLE GRINDER!”
“IF A BUSINESS WON’T ALLOW YOU TO TAKE IT INSIDE, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE, THEY SHOULDN’T GET YOUR BUSINESS!”
Great. All the things that make e-scooters and e-bikes so convenient became a wash by the inconvenience faced at the end of the trip. I had to decide whether I’d listen to Redditors and make taking my scooter inside with me an absolute or whether I’d need to personally obsess over this issue.
On the one hand, the Redditors ARE right. Bringing your scooter in with you is the best way to avoid theft. As I went down the obsession wormhole, I began to watch the LockPicking Lawyer’s videos and then videos of angle grinders cutting through seemingly beefy locks like butter. A determined thief with the right tools or the right skills can indeed make away with your precious.
On the other hand, bringing it in with you is such a hassle
The wormhole I opened made me miss the ignorance I used to feel about theft. I never used to make my life revolve around protecting my vehicle from theft. I was so oblivious to theft that I got away with using a cheap combination cable lock for 3 years before my first bike was stolen and then used a cheap $15 Masterlock u-lock for another 3 years before my other bike was stolen. I realized that neither lock would have been particularly troubling to thieves and could have practically been defeated with a whisper, but my ignorance afforded me 6 years of worry-free riding for $421 including the locks.
I rode my bikes everywhere around Chicago and never wondered about whether they’d be stolen. I did have the luxury of having a bike storage room inside my apartment building, so I never had to leave them outside overnight. However, I rarely locked up my bikes inside the storage room. I simply didn’t think theft was that likely.
So, I feel at odds with the newfound knowledge of the prevalence of theft and the feeling of blissful ignorance not worrying about it. Always bringing my scooter inside just sounds like a giant hassle. I wouldn’t even think of trying it with my e-bike, which I bought after my scooter and which is way bigger and harder to bring in than my 45 lb. Ninebot Max. By comparison, the Ninebot is much more portable and practical, while my RadCity 5 Plus is more comfortable and has a higher top speed. I definitely prefer my Ninebot for city commuting, but even so, it’s a hassle to bring inside.
My Ninebot Max has become my primary commuter whenever I’m in Chicago. I no longer live in the city, but I commute several times a week and always ride my scooter throughout the city. Whether I drive or take the Metra train, the Ninebot is easy enough to take with me and still offers the range and speed I need to get anywhere I want. I say easy enough, because it isn’t perfect and can still be quite heavy to take up the stairs into the L train, for example. Still, it’s fantastic for city commuting and is easy enough for me to carry around when I need to. Plus it’s built like a tank, and Redditors rave about how reliable it is, which I’ve found to be accurate. I rode it through the Chicago winter without a problem.
It is, however, too heavy and unwieldly for my fiancé to easily lift, especially when I leave it in the trunk of our car and she has to take it out to run grocery errands. She quite literally has yelled at me to stop leaving it in the trunk because she can’t lift it out without getting her outfit dirty. This isn’t to say that it’s not portable. It’s just to point out that while portable, it is still relatively big, heavy, dirty, and gets in the way. And that’s precisely why bringing it inside is unfeasible long-term for me and what I suspect is the case for many other riders.
To be fair, I do bring my Ninebot inside with me to my office rather than lock it up outside. This is mostly to charge it and to store it overnight occasionally. I also bring it inside with me to Jiu Jitsu class. However, space is limited in the gym and I have seen other students bring their scooters in as well. I also know the owner of the gym very well and have his permission to bring it inside with me. I suspect it will one day not be feasible to bring inside with me for a variety of reasons.
Whenever I go to meet up with friends at a bar or go to a store or to a restaurant, I lock up outside. I use a Kryptonite Evolution 4 Series chain lock, to be clear, as I’m much more aware of the dangers of using locks that are easily defeated. However, I know that my chain lock can be cut with an angle grinder and still choose to lock it up outside.
The main reason is because of how awkward it actually is to bring your scooter in with you in a social setting. Scooters are portable enough to put in car trunks and lift onto trains, but they’re still big heavy things that people can trip over, and they definitely get dirty. Scooters like the Nami Burn E-2 or the Segway GT2 are much bigger and more unwieldly than my Ninebot Max and would be even worse to bring inside a bar or restaurant. Sure, you could wheel them in through a store with you, but to me at least, it would feel incredibly awkward and embarrassing to walk through a store pushing my scooter. It’s not a social norm to do the same with a bike, and while I appreciate and value freedom as a right, I just don’t think wheeling a scooter or bike through a store is polite. Plus, there are many places banning them due to fire concerns which are likely raised by their insurance carriers.
Redditors insist that if stores or shops don’t allow your scooter inside, to boycott them and go somewhere else, but I’m not willing to change my life that drastically. I like what I like and I shop where I want to. I also understand that businesses may have liability insurance concerns about micromobility vehicles and don’t think they deserve boycotting due to legitimate fire and insurance concerns. I suspect there are other riders like me who simply feel uncomfortable wheeling their scooters inside of businesses and buildings in an attempt to avoid theft. Rather than give them an absolute about what they must do, I believe different riders should have different options available to them. If bringing your scooter is right for you, that’s great!
If it doesn’t work, rather than give up on micromobility in general, I think the real solution to this problem is a combination of the right lock paired with theft protection. For some people, it’s a hybrid of sometimes storing micromobility vehicles indoors, and sometimes parking and locking outside. For the latter, using the right lock for the setting and vehicle and pairing with the added peace of mind of theft protection is appropriate. PEV owners can rejoice that peace of mind theft protection is available to them through a StableCare Membership.
The jist…
The reality is that theft is always possible and angle grinders are an increasingly popular tool used by thieves. It's foolish to live in blissful ignorance about it when the value of PEVs can be in the thousands, but it’s also draining to live in a world of constant fear of having your valuables stolen from you and having nothing you can do about it. Peace of mind exists for a variety of possessions, and it enables us to continue to live our lives doing what we love. Rather than question whether we made the right decisions to buy micromobility vehicles or change our lives drastically in an effort to always have a place to safely bring our scooters into, there’s a world where we can enjoy the benefits of micromobility vehicles and not worry about theft. It’s the world I’d prefer to live in.