Dutch disease

Michael O'Hare wonders why the Dutch all have such crappy bikes:

I asked about this and everyone immediately said "if you had a good bike it would be immediately stolen." On reflection, I'm not satisfied with the answer, for a couple of reasons. First, the Dutch are about as law-abiding as Americans, perhaps more. Second, the serious lock that has kept my pretty good bikes secure on sketchy streets in two US cities for decades is available for purchase all over the world.

Third, and most important, I don't see how this belief could be justified by real data, because there were absolutely no bikes worth stealing anywhere I looked. I didn't follow up to ask whether my informants actually knew anyone who had tried this and lost a bike to theft, but I can tell you if I tried to make a living, or even walking-around money, stealing bikes there, my business would never begin, owing to want of targets.

I think I've come upon a national urban legend illusion, perhaps initiated with facts before the era of proper locks, but maintained only by oral tradition and lack of data.

Personally, my experience backs up the Dutch. I have, in the last ten years, purchased three bicycles, along with three top-of-the-line Kryptonite locks. Ratio of bikes-with-kryptonite-locks:bikes-that-were-stolen? 1:1. The last two times, the thieves were considerate enough to relieve me of any anxiety I might have felt about locking my bike insufficiently securely by leaving the lock locked around the bike rack to which I had secured my vehicle.

The last time this happened was this winter, with a 12-year-old Schwinn that had scratches on the paint and loose spokes on the front wheel. I had locked it to a post about ten feet off U Street, a very busy thoroughfare at virtually all hours. Short of painting the entire thing with some sort of fast-acting poison, I'm not sure what else I could have done to protect myself against theft.

This is one of the reasons I have delayed buying a new bike; having obtained permission from my housemates to lock the bike in the vestibule, I'm now deciding whether to try to find an even scragglier bike, or get the nice one I actually want.