For an unsecured bike and an experienced crew: under a minute. That's not an exaggeration — a motorcycle with no lock, parked in the open, can be lifted into a van in 20 to 60 seconds. Security camera footage of thefts shows this pattern over and over.
Every layer of security you add buys time, and time is the entire game:
- Steering lock only: seconds to defeat with a hard wrench of the bars — or irrelevant if they lift the bike.
- Disc lock: adds a minute or two, more if it has an alarm they have to work around.
- Chain to an anchor: now they need an angle grinder — noise, sparks, and several minutes of exposure. This is where many thieves walk away.
- Locked garage plus layers: most opportunists never even start.
Thieves are doing this math constantly: every extra minute is more risk of a witness, a camera, a dog, a porch light. The bike that takes five noisy minutes usually loses to the bike next to it that takes thirty silent seconds.
And because even good layers only slow a determined crew rather than stop them, a hidden GPS tracker covers the scenario where they win the time battle — it turns "gone in 60 seconds" into a live location you can hand to police.
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