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Bike Lock Can Be Picked With a Pen
Friday September 17, 2004, 12:29 AM ET
By THEO EMERY, Associated Press Writer
BOSTON - You don't have to be the Man of Steel to
open a Kryptonite bike lock. Faster than a speeding bullet, word is spreading
across the Internet, through cyclist hangouts and into bike shops that all it
takes to open a circular-key lock, like the one on the famous U-shaped
Kryptonite-brand lock, is a ballpoint pen.
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The U-shaped Kryptonite — consisting of a steel
curve with a locking horizontal bar — is a must-have among serious bicyclists.
It can cost more than $50, and for an extra $10 to $20, it comes with a
guarantee that says the company will pay customers more than $1,000 if product
failure results in the theft of a bicycle. |
In recent days, bicycle chat rooms on the
Internet have been flooded with irate comments from cyclists, some of whom have
posted short movies of themselves picking their own locks with the hollow shaft
of a Bic pen.
A spokeswoman for the Canton-based company, the
country's largest bicycle-lock manufacturer, said it plans to accelerate the
introduction of new versions of the lock because of the complaints.
Boston bicycle messenger John Anderson, 23, said
a friend showed him how easy it was to defeat a U-lock.
"He did it in about two seconds. I was like,
`You've got to be kidding me,'" he said. "People spend a couple of
grand (on their bikes), so it's kind of a bummer that people can steal them so
easily."
Benjamin Running, a 28-year-old graphic designer
in New York, helped start the furor after he posted on the Internet a video of
himself picking his own lock.
"These locks literally are viewed as the
industry standard, the lock that you must have. They're recommended by every
bike shop," he said. "I'm absolutely shattered by this."
Kryptonite spokeswoman Donna Tocci said in a
statement that the design still provides "an effective deterrent to
theft," but that the company is developing new products using a pen-proof,
disc-style cylinder.
"We are accelerating the delivery of the new
disc cylinder locks and we will communicate directly with our distributors,
dealers and consumers within the coming days. The world just got tougher and so
did our locks," the statement said.
The company made no mention of any refunds or
free replacements and did not say whether it had received any reports of bikes
being stolen with a ballpoint.
Kryptonite was founded in 1972 and is known as
the originator of the U-shaped bicycle lock. In had sales of about $27 million
in the year before it was acquired in 2001 by Ingersoll-Rand Co., maker of other
security products such as Schlage door locks.
Neal Todrys, president of Kryptonite competitor
Todson Inc., based in Foxboro, which makes the OnGuard brand of bike locks, said
none of the company's current products uses circular key locks. Instead, they
use flat-key locks.
He shuddered to think of the mischief possible in
Boston, with its huge population of students with two-wheeled transportation.
"It came to me as a shock, because you might
have thought that this would be discovered a couple of years ago. We were kind
of speechless," Todrys said. "It's a scary thing. I don't wish that on
anybody, or on any company for that matter."
Jon Currier, an employee at Belmont Wheelworks,
said the bike store took down all the Kryptonite models with pickable locks
immediately after he learned of the problem.
He said he doubts the problem will have any
long-term effect on Kryptonite, because the company has fixed design flaws
before that bike thieves have exploited.
"The name is the Jell-O of bike locks,"
he said. "They're the original and the survivors".
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