People living in Belgium who want to have their bicycles officially registered will be able to join a new, national system from next year to help retrieve them when lots, among other benefits.
According to official police statistics, 26,510 bicycles were stolen last year, an average of almost 73 per day. The real figure is likely to be much higher – as much as three times as much – because many do not report the theft.
The voluntary scheme that will be implemented provides users with a difficult-to-remove sticker printed with a unique QR code, and by scanning the code, it will be possible to see whether a bicycle has been stolen.
The system that will be implemented nationwide is based on the one that has been used in Brussels since 2019, called mybike.brussels. In Brussels, some 36,000 of the estimated 450,000 bicycles in the region have now been registered via this platform.
Unlike traditional bicycle marking systems, the new one does not release any personal data. Previously, those who wished to protect their bicycle against theft could have it engraved at their local municipality, but this dated system had a number of disadvantages.
"The advantage of our system is also that we register the bikes and not so much the owner," a spokesperson for Brussels Mobility said. "If a bike changes owner, the old owner can pass that on, transferring the QR code to the new owner."
Faults with previous system
Traditional engravings used in the system before worked for bikes with steel or aluminium frames, but not for carbon racing bikes, hence the sticker system. The old system also presented a complication if you sold or gave away the bike, leaving the new owner with the national register number of the original owner.
The bicycle marking with the national register number also unintentionally released personal data. Based on the national register number you can see the date of birth of the owner and their gender.
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Moreover, the system did not yet make use of the digital possibilities offered by online databases and smartphones. Under the new system, strong, durable stickers are added to bicycles with a unique QR code as identification.
If your bike has been stolen, you can provide the QR code of the bike when reporting it. In this way, the bicycle can be classified as stolen in the database. If someone scans the sticker of your bike, they can let the owner know where his or her two-wheeler is located via a smartphone app.
However, this system only works when everyone whose bike is stolen actually reports the theft in the app. "After all, there are still too many people who do not report if their bike is stolen, because they think that this is a waste of time," according to Brussels Mobility.
Various places across Belgium already devised new systems for bicycle markings to solve these issues in recent years, meaning there was also no longer one uniform system for the whole of Belgium. This will now change.
