Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition
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@Rhywden said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
@remi I'm not sure that it's so easy to get out of that situation. After all, the only reason for someone to (try to) remove the serial number is to hide the fact that it's stolen.
Or maybe, as was said above, the serial number contains a postcode (or address etc.) that's not yours and you don't want the bike to be wrongly associated with an address that's no longer the right one. Or the serial number was registered with the insurance of the previous owner and you wanted to put a different number. Or that bike had been stolen once in the past and reported and later found again, and you were fed up with police checking the number and telling you it's stolen so you decided to erase it. Or the bike got involved in a DIY accident that juuuuust happened to look like you tampered with the number. Or you any other lie you can concoct on the fly. Or the simple truth, which is that you actually did buy it this way in a flea market and have no idea.
None of those seem very convincing, and might reflect some dumbness from your part (but that's not a crime... alas!) but the point is that there are actually many other reasons why a patch of metal might end up being tampered with on a bike frame, given the infinite
smartnessstupidity of the human race.I certainly hope that your police doesn't arrest you (and confiscate your property) on the sole basis that "it looks to me [the police officer] like the only way you could have gotten it is illegal, therefore it is illegal." That sounds much more like a police state than a law-based system (must... resist... the urge... to do... a "Germany" joke!).
As such, the police would be perfectly allowed to confiscate the bike in order to determine who it actually belongs to. At least over here, the law states that you cannot take possession of stolen goods so you're basically shit-out-of-luck (and money).
They might, maybe, be allowed to confiscate it for the length of time needed to verify ownership. But since the number is now unreadable, they can't link the bike to anyone other than the person who had it when they found it, i.e. you. So after the 5 seconds needed to check that, well, the number is unreadable, they would have to conclude that there is no way to trace that bike to any other owner and therefore give it back to you.
(though conceivably the police might use that as a foot-in-the-door for further investigations, such as checking your ID and so on, kind of like it's been known for UK police forces to use out-of-date insurance checks (which allows them to randomly stop a car) as a pretext to stop someone they suspect strongly-but-not-strongly-enough-to-get-a-warrant of something else ("oh, look, while I was looking at your insurance papers I just happened to glimpse the suitcase full of drugs, now I have probably cause to search and arrest you!"))
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@remi said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
@Rhywden said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
@remi I'm not sure that it's so easy to get out of that situation. After all, the only reason for someone to (try to) remove the serial number is to hide the fact that it's stolen.
Or maybe, as was said above, the serial number contains a postcode (or address etc.) that's not yours and you don't want the bike to be wrongly associated with an address that's no longer the right one. Or the serial number was registered with the insurance of the previous owner and you wanted to put a different number. Or that bike had been stolen once in the past and reported and later found again, and you were fed up with police checking the number and telling you it's stolen so you decided to erase it. Or the bike got involved in a DIY accident that juuuuust happened to look like you tampered with the number. Or you any other lie you can concoct on the fly. Or the simple truth, which is that you actually did buy it this way in a flea market and have no idea.
None of those sound convincing at all. Sorry.
Take this one:
Or the serial number was registered with the insurance of the previous owner and you wanted to put a different number
Counterquestion by the police:
So you know the previous owner after all? And where is the new number then?
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@Rhywden said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
None of those sound convincing at all. Sorry.
I still doubt that you would need to be able to convince the police it's not stolen if they just happen to control you in the street (for whatever reason that allowed them to do that). If so, can you convince them that your phone isn't a stolen one? Or your jacket? Or... anything, really.
There is a reason we have things called "laws" that prevent police from arresting you just because they feel like it (well actually they still can, because they have more force than you do and if you don't obey it's "resisting arrest", but they're not allowed to and most of the time won't do it unless they have a good (for... policing levels of good...) reason for it).
Or the serial number was registered with the insurance of the previous owner and you wanted to put a different number
Counterquestion by the police:
So you know the previous owner after all?
Well I just met him at the flea market (I can even describe him for you: he was a dark haired, medium build, 20-something man with no special feature... i.e. a bland description that would match thousands of people, but hey, that's what I remember), but he told me he had done this registration so I would have to remove etc.
Or maybe the guy I bought it from had removed the number already and told me this was the reason when I asked for it, as I was suspicious it might have been stolen (i.e. I was suspicious, I did what I thought was due diligence and thought everything checked out... maybe I was mistaken, but that's not a crime... and again, unless you can prove that it's actually stolen, you can't seize my property).
And where is the new number then?
Didn't have time to get it / have it engraved yet, forgot about it etc. (you know, the catch-all "excuse" for "I haven't done something"... as a teacher you must be familiar with it
).I told you, don't try getting
smarterdumber than a lying human brain, you'll never win. Which is why police would not rely on such flimsy "evidence" (which is not evidence at all), or at least not unless you live in a police state, not a free one.
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@remi said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
@Rhywden said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
None of those sound convincing at all. Sorry.
I still doubt that you would need to be able to convince the police it's not stolen if they just happen to control you in the street (for whatever reason that allowed them to do that). If so, can you convince them that your phone isn't a stolen one? Or your jacket? Or... anything, really.
There is a reason we have things called "laws" that prevent police from arresting you just because they feel like it
Where I was I talking about an arrest?
Over here, bikes are opt-in registered with a number. At the police. Removing this number is a sure-fire sign that the bike is stolen. There are no excuses or reasons to remove this number. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Rien. Niente.
As such, the sign of removal means that the onus of proving ownership is now on you. Your phone example falls flat on its face because a phone does not have such a I'm stolen sign.
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@Rhywden So if one person opts in, then sells their bike, does the number stay with the bike? Can the new owner register it with a different number? Or do they have to just update the existing registration? Can the registration be cancelled? If it's cancelled, then would a new registration (potentially by a new owner) get a new number?
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@djls45 said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
@Rhywden So if one person opts in, then sells their bike, does the number stay with the bike? Can the new owner register it with a different number? Or do they have to just update the existing registration? Can the registration be cancelled? If it's cancelled, then would a new registration (potentially by a new owner) get a new number?
The number stays with the bike and you can, of course, transfer the registration to a different person.
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@Rhywden said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
Over here, bikes are opt-in registered with a number. At the police. Removing this number is a sure-fire sign that the bike is stolen. There are no excuses or reasons to remove this number. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Rien. Niente.
Jawolh! Kein Egzeption ist möglich!
Let's shift things a little bit to show you how wrong you are.
Imagine you're a policeman and see someone in the street with a bike, a metal saw and a freshly sawn bike lock. What possible explanation other than a stolen bike can there be? There are no excuses or reasons to saw a bike lock. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Rien. Niente.
Or... is there really?
My brother wouldn't have been able to prove it's his bike nor who he bought it from (it was second hand bought months earlier, he probably never got a receipt or anything for it). He obviously didn't have the key for the lock he sawed through. He might have said something about the police that watched him at the station, except that it may have just been a patrol passing through (so are you going to track all police patrols of the day to find the correct one, and hope that the correct one actually remembers what was for them a tiny incident in their day?). He had registered a stolen bike some time earlier, but that doesn't prove anything either. So, you're going to seize his bike because obviously he had stolen it?
Let's suppose that you do. Then what? You're going to track... nothing, because there is no other trace of that bike. You're going to charge my brother of... what exactly? Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Rien. Niente. And so you're going to give him the bike back, because you can't prove that it's not his, even if it looked mightily suspicious (and would definitely agree that it would have looked so!). And you know from the second you stop him in the street and he tells you all that, that this is how it's going to end (well maybe you're going to check a couple of minors details, and check his ID to see if he's not a known-offender or something similar, but that's about it).
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@Rhywden said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
Over here, bikes are opt-in registered with a number. At the police. Removing this number is a sure-fire sign that the bike is stolen. There are no excuses or reasons to remove this number. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Rien. Niente.
Over here, after (certain criteria are met) confiscated goods where the owner can't be determined/found/etc... are sold at public auction. So the bike may have been stolen at one time, but now I legally own it.
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@Rhywden said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
@djls45 said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
@Rhywden So if one person opts in, then sells their bike, does the number stay with the bike? Can the new owner register it with a different number? Or do they have to just update the existing registration? Can the registration be cancelled? If it's cancelled, then would a new registration (potentially by a new owner) get a new number?
The number stays with the bike and you can, of course, transfer the registration to a different person.
So it's just like a VIN for an automobile. And we know there's no reason that anyone would want to remove or alter one of those, right?
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All of this is
, since:- it's even easier to put a sticker over the number (there's no law against decorating bikes)
- in reality, cops don't care about stolen bikes anyways
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@Rhywden said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
transfer the registration to a different person.
No officer, I didn't sell him that bike!
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@dcon said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
@Rhywden said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
transfer the registration to a different person.
No officer, I didn't sell him that bike!
Making a false accusation of a crime is usually more problematic. It's also why you should have some kind of proof that you bought something legally anyway.
I mean, what do you do if you buy something which turns out to be broken - which happens way more often than your example?
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@Zerosquare said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
All of this is
, since:- it's even easier to put a sticker over the number (there's no law against decorating bikes)
- in reality, cops don't care about stolen bikes anyways
The number is always in the same place so if you put a sticker there - yeah, not suspicious at all.
And of course they care. They'd love it if more people registered their bikes because then they wouldn't have to do auctions on a regular basis.
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@remi Your situation still doesn't exactly match, though.
What he's describing, an ID etched on to the bike that matches with police records, isn't like a bike lock, because the ID doesn't keep you from using the bike. It does you, the legitimate owner, no harm, unlike a bike lock that (whether you legitimately own the bike or not) will prevent you from using the bike if you don't have the key. It's a lot more like a VIN or license plate on a car - and while there are legitimate reasons to remove a VIN, there aren't a lot (usually related to "have to replace the part of the car that the VIN is etched on because it was damaged"), and it's illegal to remove the VIN on a car in most places.
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@Rhywden: maybe it works that way in Germany. But it certainly can't be generalized to the rest of the world.
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@sloosecannon You might be right, but actually I thought (after I'd logged off...) of a better variation that absolutely, 100% works and shows even better how @Rhywden idea doesn't work in the Real World.
I have a marked bike. It gets stolen, the thief erases the number. Then by whatever stroke of luck I get the bike back (maybe the thief got arrested and somehow got linked back to me, maybe I stumbled on the bike somewhere like my brother did, whatever).
(edit: it's a very similar scenario to the one mentioned by @Dragoon, sorry I didn't see that post before...)
I am now the fully legal owner of a bike with a removed number, entirely within my moral right of having that bike.
Now, according to @Rhywden, it would be OK for police to confiscate my bike without any more discussion, because a removed number is "a sure-fire sign that the bike is stolen." Which is true, except that it was stolen, which makes all the difference. So I get punished (my bike is confiscated, or to avoid it I have to always keep a proof of purchase or whatever would by luck convince the police of my story) because for once police did their job and managed to restore stolen property to their owner.
I'm pretty sure he's going to tell me that in this case I should have the number re-engraved, but is that even possible (in a way that doesn't obviously look like a number was engraved on top of a previously erased one which would similarly trigger police) and if so, then why wouldn't thieves just do that (and if they can, then it's a shitty "protection" system)? And in any case, since that number isn't mandatory in the first place, maybe I (morally) should (and I would even dispute that, as I might perfectly well at that point think that getting a number is just a waste of time (money?) since it didn't prevent my bike from being stolen and didn't help in restoring it to me (since the number was erased when I got it back)), but not doing it isn't a crime, nor is it an indication that I am not the rightful owner of the bike.
Bottom line is, a thief can erase the number and concoct whatever story they like, in the real world it's almost certain that nothing will ever happen to them because of that.
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@remi They wouldn't return your bike, They'd destroy it as contraband. Your personal property insurance would pay for a replacement bike, since the police would provide documentation of its recovery and forfeiture.
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@TwelveBaud Depends on the places and how finding-back-the-bike happens (and also there is no guarantee that you have an insurance that would cover that!). I'm pretty sure there are places where police would return the bike to you, maybe if you asked nicely (I mean, they obviously do not destroy all seized stolen goods, if you had an antique or other family object they would get it back to you, so why would it be different for a bike?), and in any case there are other possible scenarios for the bike getting back to you, such as simply finding it somewhere (there was a uni not far from where I grew up where everyone had bikes and they just left them, usually unlocked, everywhere in the campus, so if you found your bike this way, you could have it back without breaking any locks or anything like my brother had to do), or buying it back in an police auction.
In the end, the only way the "bike without number is automatically seized by police" scenario can work is if erasing (tampering with...) the number is itself an offense. Then you need to add another mandatory layer of how to rectify that when a thief does it (e.g. some way to legally re-engrave it).
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@hungrier said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
but I've marked lots of things with my initials
Ah, that's what you call it when you lift your leg and ...
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@remi I'd like to know the chances of the number being erased in the first place.
That's where your argument falls flat on its face.
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@Rhywden said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
@remi I'd like to know the chances of the number being erased in the first place.
If the bike is stolen and of some value (i.e. the thief really hopes to get some buck out of selling it, not just a fiver in a dark alley), probably fairly high. And don't tell me they won't do it because this requires some tools, you also need tools to saw through a U lock (not a flimsy flexible cord lock that can be cut relatively easily) and I can tell you from personal experience that some thieves do it (and my bike wasn't even expensive, or expensive-looking so it's not like they were hoping to make a fortune out of it... from that day all my further bikes only ever had the most convenient lock to carry, without any regard for its strength, but that's another story).
That's where your argument falls flat on its face.
You'll have some explaining to do here. It doesn't matter whether that happens often or not. All that matters is that, unless there is a specific law that says it's illegal to remove that number, then having a bike with an removed number cannot be a crime, and in a non-police-state, police shouldn't be allowed to do anything about it unless they have some other evidence that a theft happened.
"The most likely reason" is probably good enough for police to stop you in the street, I'll grant you that, but it definitely should not be a valid reason to confiscate your property.
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@Zecc
Guess he won't be getting that carton of ice cream the policeman was going to have to get rid of because of his extended shift.
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@Zecc Just out of curiosity, what language is Policja
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@HardwareGeek Based on the "kurwa" in the video, I assume Polish
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@hungrier Ah, I didn't notice that.
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Yesterday I was stackwalking and noticed this road design antipattern:
A crossroad with pedestrian signals, but no marking of pedestrian crossing whatsoever
? And it's the closest opportunity to cross it at all from the shops on the west side of it (the route destination in the map link) . Are even people who live in the neighbourhood across the street expected to take a car just to get to the other side?Being from Europe I am totally not used to that. Here pedestrian signals are always accompanied with the zebra marking, which additionally grants pedestrians the right of way when the signals are not working, and before cars turning on non-directional signal (directional signals must not conflict with any other including pedestrian). And any basically any place except gas stations on the motorway does have a way to get to it on foot.
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@Bulb said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
Here pedestrian signals are always accompanied with the zebra marking
Not in the UK, where the rule is either one or the other: with zebra markings, pedestrians can cross at any time and have right of way, and with lights they have a dedicated phase when vehicular traffic that would cross that space is stopped.
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@dkf It's not completely uniform across Europe. UK, and I think some other places, use the dotted lines (while here similar dotted lines mark bicycle crossing). But either way it is marked, which both leaves a clear path for the pedestrians—unlike the photo above where the signal is behind the car waiting on its signal—and alerts the drivers to the fact that there might be someone crossing.
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@Bulb Looks like the central barrier is different/replaced across where the crossing should be, too. So I guess the junction and lights were set up with a crossing and then it was removed for some reason during road resurfacing/redesign. That is a WTF in itself, mind you, unless there's a pedestrian footbridge/subway been added nearby to replace it.
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@bobjanova The metal end is different because it's designed to absorb impact energy if someone hits the barrier end on.
It also ends before the area where the pedestrians would cross.
From another angle:
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@loopback0 It looks like pedestrian are expected to walk the line
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@Bulb said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
(the route destination in the map link)
oh hey, MicroCenter.
@Bulb said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
Are even people who live in the neighbourhood across the street expected to take a car just to get to the other side?
Put simply... yes, probably.
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@Bulb said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
A crossroad with pedestrian signals, but no marking of pedestrian crossing whatsoever ?
That's very much an aberration, at least in the places I've lived (here in the United States of Uhmerica).
@dkf said:
with zebra markings, pedestrians can cross at any time and have right of way, and with lights they have a dedicated phase when vehicular traffic that would cross that space is stopped
That's what we generally do, too, but we don't call the former zebra crossings.
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Ford Mustang Driver Doing Donuts in an Empty Parking Lot Ends Exactly How You'd Expect
Please, we beg of you: Don’t be that guy.
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@boomzilla If he'd been a Chicago guy, I'd have asked he was called Elwood…
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@dkf the police called it Dukes of Hazard but the bridge operator thought it was more Blues Brothers.
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@boomzilla Probably better than being [the police following] James Bond.
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@remi said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
@boomzilla Probably better than being [the police following] James Bond.
Them brakes on the police cars....
Not able to stop within 30m, from urban speeds, in an uphill section.
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@acrow It's American police [cars] in a James Bond movie. It's almost a given that they are here for comedic value more than anything (see sheriff J.W. Pepper).
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There's a Jeep Wrangler Dangling Off a Cliff in California After Some Fool Drove Up a Bike Trail
So…how ya gonna get that down?
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@boomzilla said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
There's a Jeep Wrangler Dangling Off a Cliff in California After Some Fool Drove Up a Bike Trail
So…how ya gonna get that down?
I'd say siphon out the gas/oil/other dangerous chemicals and tip it over.
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Hey! That's a Jeep, not a Lime scooter!
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De Lijn bus ends up in the water in Bruges
A bizarre accident in Bruges; where a public bus ended up in the water.
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@Luhmann TFA said:
Apparently, the bus had to make a sudden manoeuvre to avoid a fire engine.
Unlike certain other sorts that shall remain unnamed
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Chevrolet Releases California-Compliant Horse And Buggy
DETROIT, MI—General Motors is making waves after a surprise unveiling of a line of exciting new California-compliant vehicles. After a week of building anticipation, officials at the company revealed its latest innovation for the West Coast: the 2021 Horse And Buggy.
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@dcon How many miles-per-bushel does it get?
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@dkf said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:
@dcon How many miles-per-bushel does it get?
In CA, the emissions are more important!
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They're 100% biodegradable.
A Detroit guy Dukes-of-Hazzarded his car over an open drawbridge
