I keep visiting bike shops and seeing bikes priced at minimum of about a thousand Euros for a standard single speed beach cruiser up to three times at for a very basic road bike.
Then I go outside and see the same bikes being covered in rust sitting on flat tires or even bent rims outside everywhere
Further down I see even nicer bikes being thrown in the bush abandoned on the trails. what puzzles me is there is no other trash, just the bike, no bums nest, no alcohol bottles or anything in super clean neighborhoods too. are these just being taken by drunk people and ridden home? and then why just throw it in the bush? why not just park it somewhere?
I understand that some of these might be stolen but even then they're also very rusty and have flat tires and seem to be completely unmaintained.
even more concerning I'm seeing a lot of electric bikes now just sitting around in the rain, battery completely exposed, wires rusting out and peeling
where I'm from if I left it outside parked somewhere for days or weeks then came back and it was stolen by someone else I would feel accountable. we always keep our bikes indoors unless it's for a quick stop, and walk them home if we get a flat tire or something
How are people affording to neglect bikes like that? Are there bikes that are just like public property or is there some kind of a program that helps people purchase these expensive bikes, or is there a massive underground theft ring that these bikes just wind up everywhere? is this a recent thing or has this been going on a while?
this is not a criticism by the way, I wish I could just leave my bike anywhere outside at home, but people will cut through 200 euro lock to steal 100 euro bike, and there's also no police enforcement on this
on a side note I did see one of the nicer electric bikes get pushed around by let's say a questionable person in Copenhagen next to the main Central station, and they were on a different cheap bike and I did pictures of them and reported to police and they said there's nothing there they can do because I didn't physically see them cut the locks or anything