We’ve all heard those amazing stories in which someone’s bike gets stolen and through the magic of Craigslist, friends, or sheer dumb luck, they get it back. This will likely not happen to most of us if our bikes get nabbed. But a new gizmo, called the BikeSpike, could increase the odds that your dearly departed bike stays out of the proverbial shady bike store and returns safe and sound to you.
The BikeSpike was developed by an engineering collective called Three Man Rocket and a digital innovation house called ColorJar. (We can only imagine that their offices are very, very cool.) It’s a little black box that attaches securely to a bike and tracks its location with GPS and cell technology. It’s possible to set it to a level of sensitivity so delicate that if anyone so much as jostles your bike, you will hear about it, via text message or email. And if an evil bike thief gets your bike, you can track it and pursue either vigilante justice or regular old get-the-cops-involved justice.
Team BikeSpike is also allowing other developers to tinker with this thing, and they envision all sorts of other uses for it — tracking competitive cyclists, exercise apps, road-quality reporting. But their main pitch right now is about keeping your bike safe. The whole set-up is pretty pricey: After you buy the BikeSpike, you’ll need to subscribe to a smartphone-like data plan to make it actually work. But if you love your bike — and we know you love your bike — it could be worth it.
