4 motorcycles stolen in one week: a record

This first week of July marks a record for the GeoRide community: 4 motorcycles were stolen.

Thefts happen regularly, it has almost become routine for us. But this is the first time we have had so many in such a short space of time.

Read these striking stories.

Stolen Yamaha MT-07

On a fine evening on 28 June 2020, Yanis rides his motorcycle to his gym in the Val-de-Marne, near Paris. After training, back in the changing room, he finds several GeoRide alerts on his smartphone: a vibration alarm and a zone exit alarm.

When he steps outside, Yanis sadly finds that it is too late and his bike is gone. But thanks to GeoRide he can follow his two-wheeler's movements in real time and very quickly alerts the police. With all that information in hand, the police were able to step in and recover his bike!

The steering lock had been forced but fortunately the SC Project exhaust was not vandalised.

Bike recovered ✅

Stolen KTM 790 Duke

On that same day, 28 June, another motorcycle is stolen more than 9,000 km away, on Réunion Island.

While the bike is parked in an underground car park, the thieves break the steering lock at 23:50 and a vibration alert is instantly sent to the owner. At 23:51 the bike leaves the security perimeter and a zone exit alert goes out. The thieves wheel the bike away by hand in neutral.

At 00:15 the KTM's owner is standing in front of his bike with the police, recovered thanks to GeoRide and its real-time tracking. The bike was recovered in 25 minutes!

Bike recovered ✅

Stolen BMW F800 GS

Discover the incredible account of this GeoRide user who documented every step of his theft in Lyon. We turned it into a video available on our Facebook page.

Bike recovered ✅

Stolen Triumph Daytona

This beautiful sport bike was stolen from an outdoor car park on 5 July 2020 at 01:16 in the morning. The steering lock is broken, the bike is pushed for 600 metres and the thief manages to start it because the bike has no coded key.

The thief has fun with the bike and a fall is detected at 02:14. The bike is then loaded into a van, while the gendarmerie (French police force) is contacted and the chase begins. The gendarmes follow its trail and the thief is arrested at 03:29.

French regional newspaper La Nouvelle République even ran an article about it.

Bike recovered ✅

Too easy to recover a stolen motorcycle?

It is fair to question how easily these bikes are recovered: how come the thieves get caught?

To answer that question, let us look at several situations.

A thief carries the bike away:

• You receive a vibration alarm within seconds via a push notification or a phone call.
• You receive a zone exit alarm the moment the vehicle leaves the area it was in.
• You watch the bike's location update in real time.

Now let us add a few difficulties:

• The thief removes the vehicle's battery: you receive a disconnection alarm and the unit keeps working on its internal battery for a few days.

• The thief removes the unit from the vehicle: by the time he manages to pop off the seat and find where the hidden GeoRide unit sits, you will already have been warned by a vibration alarm and a disconnection alarm.

  Across the many thefts we have seen, everything happens very fast and thieves have no time to try to rip off a seat or search for a possible GPS tracker.

• The thief jams the unit's signal: although jamming is an urban legend, we planned for that possibility: you receive a network disconnection alert within minutes as soon as the signal is jammed.

  This permanent connection between the GeoRide monitoring system and your motorcycle also gives you extra peace of mind: you know GeoRide is protecting your bike.

As you can see, whatever happens, you will be warned. It is a simple principle, but it changes a lot: the sooner you know about a theft, the better your chances of getting the bike back.

In most of the thefts we have handled, the method is often the same.

The thieves load the bike into a small van (95% of thefts happen by carrying the bike away) and leave it somewhere to check whether it is fitted with a GeoRide. In the end this arrangement suits everyone: thieves are more likely to avoid being caught in the act, and GeoRide users get their bikes back.

On the other hand, we have not yet found a solution for those who have not switched to GeoRide...