This blog is a follow up to our blog titled “Roadside Assistance for Cyclists and Blocking Bike Lanes”. You can read it here.
We are sharing the roads with more and more of those whose form of transportation is a bicycle. For that reason, we thought we’d share more news and views relating to cycling and road safety.
Banning cars in cities – it’s happening
Bicycles are the sole mode of transportation for many. So we all need to do our part in safely letting cyclists get to where they need to go. An interesting article explores how some cities are looking towards eventually banning cars altogether.
Cities leading this charge are Oslo, Madrid, Hamburg, and Copenhagen and a few others. Each is addressing the issue with their own unique approach and at their own pace, but all have roughly the same goal in mind. You can read the entire article here. (13 Cities That are Starting to Ban Cars).
Stolen bike? What can you do?
So someone stole your bike, now what do you do? Likely a call to the police is the first thing.
Did you know that Canada has an online stolen bike registry managed by the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC)? You can check it out here. The way it works is, in order for a stolen bike to be posted online, it requires the police to post the information.
Windshieldink Alerter can help find your stolen bicycle
At a recent networking event in Toronto, the Windshieldink team was chatting about the Windshieldink Alerter platform. This platform was developed as a crowdsourced vehicle recovery solution, albeit intended for cars and trucks.
Briefly, Alerter allows organizations to link their email to a missing vehicle license plate and post the license plate online in a database. The Windshieldink app allows users to check a suspicious vehicle against the database. If the vehicle is flagged as missing or stolen, a message can be easily sent to the organization from the app. (Click here to learn more about Alerter).
A person who recently had their bike stolen asked if Alerter can help find their missing bike. Our initial response was “no”, since a bike doesn’t have a license plate number. The person mentioned that a bike does have a unique serial number. They asked if it can be used in Alerter in place of the license plate. We never thought of that hack! Great idea, and yes it can work the same way. The serial number will function in Alerter the same way as a license plate number works.
This is how Alerter does it
Once a bike serial number is entered into our Alerter system, a person can assign their email address to it. If a fellow cyclist or any other person sees a lonely bike in an obscure place, they can use the Windshieldink app to automatically check the Alerter database using the serial number of the bike.
The app alert pop-up image will show information about the bike and any further instruction provided by the person creating the alert. It’s three simple steps to check …
- Input the serial number of the bike (e.g. AB12345) in the “License Plate or #ID” field,
- Input “Ontario” as the Origin
- Tap the verify button,
You’ve made a cyclist very happy by using Alerter!
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The Windshieldink app is free and available on the App Store and get it on Google Play.
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