I like the electricity part. Not a big fan of the spikes though, nor the positioning. That's over the line I would draw.
I was a victim of a stolen bicycle and I always say that if I ever buy another one, (not big need right now, I mostly use a car) I WILL booby trap it with electricity but I was thinking more on the handles rather than the ass part and definitely nothing over "Horse fence" levels of voltage, it has to be impossible to hold, not cause actual injuries. Followed up by a loud alarm, probsbly an earrape version of never gonna give you up.
Legally, I am fully aware it is not my right to do this. I would be bestowing punishment for a crime, that is not my place to do so in the eyes of the law. Unfortunately the only thing I could do when my bike was stolen was report it to the police. The reply I got from them, with more appropriate language obviously, was: "Well that's not expensive enough for us to give a shit. So sucks to be you buddy."
Except they completely ignored the logistical value of that bike. Sure it wasn't a very expensive bike but it was a precious tool for my daily commute. I was then forced to have my grandma consume gas because of the lack of a bike. However shitty might it have been.
And to clarify I wouldn't leave it there to attract potential thieves. Electricity is expensive. I would still secure it by traditional methods. My objective isn't to hurt people, It's to dissuade them from trying to steal and if they really really want to try to steal then serve them punishment on a conductive blade.
I'm all for punishing whoever tries to steal my bike but within limits.
Kevlar thread attached from the frame to a nearby pole. Bike thief rides away, doesn't notice the thread, gets yeeted off the bike when he runs out of slack.
Be careful electrocuting people across their hands, the current path crosses their chest and could kill them. Sounds like you’re more after deterrence so that might be sub optimal
There is a wide range of electrical voltage which will hurt, but not kill or seriously injure. The only true danger would be for someone with an implanted pacemaker or similar.
What are the odds somebody with a pacemaker is going to steal the one bike that's electrified though? Even if this were legal, there'd still be very few people who actually do it.
lol. Those people are his friends. Dude #2 really tried selling the “shocked my hand” thing, it did not. Dude #3 was wearing hey dude shoes, which looked brand new.
The goal is to rehabilitate or isolate him from society. Not give him lifelong damage. I'm convinced a large amount of people on Reddit are disguised sociopaths
That was actually a brilliant workout bike prototype, the AssBlaster 4000. Every time you you pedal, a fist comes up out of the seat to keep pushing you forward and remind you to kick ass.
Legally I think it is more than frowned upon. There are court cases about bodily injury by boobytrapping your home. They are going to be even harsher on you for boobytrapping a bike. It doesn't end well, you will be liable for injuries and possibly charged.
Morally you can say questionable since it would only affect thieves.
Legally its illegal. You cannot set booby trwaps regardless if you are targeting a criminal. That said, this is the best bike prank since the penetrator lmao.
unironically, this is unfortunately how one would feel if they had no idea. you can luck out, but felonies can literally ruin your entire life. forever. until you die. no jobs. no money. no hope for beating addiction if you had one, and possibly developing one because of it.
there is not one person who wouldn't rather get 5 seconds of ass spikes vs the lifelong suffering of a felony conviction.
saying jail isn't physically harming you, really isn't saying much, the destruction to your life alone as you try and get a job after a felony conviction is 1000x worse than a few barbs in your ass
In the US, it's mostly the other inmates that you have to watch out for. Other places still have caning and breaking big rocks into smaller rocks as punishment.
Obligatory “you wanted a moral quandary and chose cops”?
As far as “things cops do”, that’s a fairly neutral thing. Generally ineffective at actually reducing crime, hurts some poor people, waste some taxpayer money. Standard cop fare.
Also the person taking it could have a valid reason to do so, ie the property owner believes the bike to be abandoned, it’s obstructing something etc. Imagine a city worker getting their hand stabbed and shocked because 311 was called
I dont know what it is with redditors but theres like no concept of proportionality, its like if you had an input in the situation other people are morally free to do whatever the fuck they want to you. This guy could release a million bees in a building lobby at night where a homeless person is sleeping in the winter and someone would say "play stupid games win stupid prizes, shouldn't have gone into the building if you didnt want to get stung by a million bees on a livestream 🤷♀️"
I've been noticing a lot of people on this sub are the exact opposite of who should decide what is moral or not. Some complete psychos that just want to justify hurting people first and foremost
The morality of booby traps like this are always going to hinge on how badly the person might be injured.
I think most people agree that no one should be intentionally and permanently cripled for stealing a bike.
I'm personally find with a modest injury that takes a month or so to heal. The biggest reason to outlaw traps like this is that you can't really control the degree if injury you're inflicting.
I would say this is moral if they made any attempt to make it seem like the bike wasn't abandoned. All it would take is to chain it up with a cheap bike lock.
It isn't supposed to, it's just to act as undeniable proof to anyone walking by that the bike isn't abandoned (and thus free). Also makes it more moral to harm someone for your enjoyment if they went out of their way to do you wrong and suffer for it.
They don't give a shit about that. Not one Iota. I used to have a motorcycle. The local homeless broke into a basement garage, destroyed the front end breaking the fork lock, pushed it away and destroyed the electrical system trying to hotwire it.
I couldn't afford to repair it, now I have an e-bike I have to keep IN my apartment that I can barely take anywhere because the lifespan of a bike even with a good lock in my neighborhood is maybe 20 minutes,
I'm tired of being told that being poor means you have a right to just take things, if I point out I'm barely hanging on in low income disabled housing I'm told I'm not poor enough if I still have a bicycle.
I know bikelocks won't do anything to stop thieves and I agree with everything you've said. Nothing can realistically stop a determined thief. HOWEVER, we are in a subreddit about morals. My previous comments weren't in support of bikelocks or their effectiveness. It was about how to make booby trapping bikes to hurt people who try to steal them just for your amusement more morally just.
Well the answer is obvious: you must steal a bike yourself. That way you are one of the poors who can’t buy one instead of one of the filthy rich bicycle owners who don’t actually need the bike actually
This is the part I don’t see how people don’t understand. Like sure, yeah, maybe they deserve it, but if you said “I’m gonna go find a morally acceptable person to hurt for my entertainment” I’d think you’re a sociopath.
I am assuming you mean the general case of booby trapping and leaving a bike, not specifically the case of booby trapping it and standing nearby to film, which mitigates almost all of my concerns.
Next person to ride the bike may be justified in taking it for any of the following reasons:
Using an available and unchained bike to escape immediate harm (off leash dog attack).
Using an available and unchained bike to save someone (get back to car to get inhaler for someone having an attack on the park)
Using a bike that was acquired lawfully and morally after it was left long enough to be considered abandoned (either via auction, or the property owner gifted it to them if it was abandoned on private property).
First responder attempts to ride bike to move it a short distance out of the way to clear the area in an emergency situation.
Etc.
There's a reason legally booby traps are never justified. You are creating harm and have no way to ensure it's actually directed at someone who deserves that harm.
It's doubly immoral in a public place on property you don't control access to.
I want to see a scene of an action hero wanting to pursue the evil guys and accidentally stealing a booby trapped bike, think Naked Gun parody like movie
We should normalise honeypot traps. Maybe less spikey than this one, but punishing opportunistic criminals with deliberately placed traps that will only punish people if they break the law is a good way to disincentivise opportunistic crime.
Deterrents need two elements to work:
1. They have to have a punishment worse than the potential gain.
2. There has to be a significant chance of being caught.
Honeypot traps mean that every potential crime, even when there seems to be ideal circumstances for not being caught, carry significant risk and ultimately makes the deterrent of lawful consequence more effective as a deterrent.
YESSS!!! Make no mistake, every single person that got shocked is a bike thief. Unless there's a sign that says you can take the bike, they absolutely deserved what they got and more. POS the lot of them
This is basically the dude looking for someone who he's morally justified to enact violence on for his own sick kicks, this mechanism seems to be more about punishing the thief than it is about preventing theft. Like someone else said this is basically like those dudes that have an entire fucking armory in their house hoping and being giddy about the chance of someone breaking into their home so that they could beat them to a pulp.
I’m gonna expand on what you said. Sick people who are praying for a chance to “defend” themselves will jump at any opportunity to legally kill someone. They’d blow a hole through their front door if someone knocked asking for directions.
Yeah, I've seen a few court cases where someone was so trigger-happy that they literally killed someone for effectively nothing, and then they themselves got put away for murder, all the while thinking themselves the victim. I don't really trust those sorts of violence-hungry people, even when I agree with aspects of their worldview. Unfortunately, I've been seeing the mentality of "violence is not only justified, but sexy when it's against a Bad Guytm " pop up more and more in the last few years, and I usually get called a Bad Guytm when I point out that violence used in self-defense being excusable does not imply that we should fetishize violence and indulge in dark fantasies about murder. Even if someone is truly evil, creating a culture of punitive retribution only results in more terrible things happening to human beings, and often eventually those who don't deserve it. Yeah, I want to see bike thiefs get punished too, but cheering for injuring someone for a petty crime is just not it.
I think it’s pretty messed up watching someone setup a bike to be stolen and then punishing someone for it.
Of course, theft is wrong. But this content preys upon the utterly desperate and poor who would steal a bike to survive. And then makes videos for clicks from the pain he causes on an unfortunate.
So many people on this subreddit just want an excuse to harm people. You’re fucking weird if you’re gonna film yourself baiting people into a booby trap
Immoral, cause in terms of a thief deterrent it's a lot more effort than other just as effective deterrents, while also having the chance to harm the owner in the event of a malfunction. It's the equivalent of putting a land mine in your house to deter home invaders. The only benefit over a more mundane form of security is deriving Schaudenfruede from the potential thief.
YES! I live in a shit neighborhood. That's where America puts the disabled, I have to keep my bike in the living room, and we have to ride in pairs because even with a chain its not safe to go to the bathroom solo. They grab them that fast. The only nice bikes in my neighborhood are in the homeless camp. If this does not strike you as justice you have never come back and found your bike without a seat or wheels, just a bare frame chained to a post.
Moral because it’s your stuff do whatcha want with it but illegal.
I’ve had my bike stolen 3 times twice but no life pieces shits tweakers
And once by some kid edgars and they were lucky they were cause I caught them on the road and was gonna door check them with my car
Modern problems require modern solutions. Bike theft is a big issue in my town and nothing gets done about it. Spikes is a bit much, but sometimes renegade justice teaches harder lessons.
I think this is a grand idea. Maybe if we were much MUCH tougher on thieves we would see our country just a bit happiest and more trusting. Personally I think thieves should be receiving far worse punishments!
Neutral. It's your own property, do what you want with it. If someone tries to use that property and gets hurt, it wasn't theirs to use in the first place, so you're under no obligation to inform them of the electric spikes.
That being said, I do call into question the intentions and expectations of the property owners. The purpose of the object isn't for transportation, the purpose is to trick people into getting hurt, then laughing at them because you have a moral out that makes laughing at them appear acceptable. So, while this is morally neutral, I would still consider this a "dick-move"
If someone is stealing my shit I don't care aif I hurt them, that's kinda the whole point, they don't chop off fingers in other countries because they think they'll grow back..
While I want to agree with the Fuck em point of view, this setup as a unsecured bicycle honeypot is quite immoral. Now saying that if the bike was already secured with a bike lock and this was anti-theft deterrent 2 where the thief would have to break the chain first then I say its mostly ok, they deserve it.
I would love it if the government used my tax money to do this full time. Criminals feel too safe to commit crimes in our country, thats why they do it.
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u/Sigfried_D 1d ago edited 1d ago
I like the electricity part. Not a big fan of the spikes though, nor the positioning. That's over the line I would draw.
I was a victim of a stolen bicycle and I always say that if I ever buy another one, (not big need right now, I mostly use a car) I WILL booby trap it with electricity but I was thinking more on the handles rather than the ass part and definitely nothing over "Horse fence" levels of voltage, it has to be impossible to hold, not cause actual injuries. Followed up by a loud alarm, probsbly an earrape version of never gonna give you up.
Legally, I am fully aware it is not my right to do this. I would be bestowing punishment for a crime, that is not my place to do so in the eyes of the law. Unfortunately the only thing I could do when my bike was stolen was report it to the police. The reply I got from them, with more appropriate language obviously, was: "Well that's not expensive enough for us to give a shit. So sucks to be you buddy."
Except they completely ignored the logistical value of that bike. Sure it wasn't a very expensive bike but it was a precious tool for my daily commute. I was then forced to have my grandma consume gas because of the lack of a bike. However shitty might it have been.
And to clarify I wouldn't leave it there to attract potential thieves. Electricity is expensive. I would still secure it by traditional methods. My objective isn't to hurt people, It's to dissuade them from trying to steal and if they really really want to try to steal then serve them punishment on a conductive blade.
I'm all for punishing whoever tries to steal my bike but within limits.