Woke up this morning to see City TV go on about the threat of more and more drivers stealing bicycles because of the high price of gas. They went on to tell us how we can better protect our bikes from these desperate drivers with different locking techniques. You could tell they tried hard to not show their sympathies for the poor drivers.

Really, have we lost all sense of responsibility with the high price of gas? Are we supposed to forgive them and overlook their thievery? I feel really bad for those who have no choice but to drive, the elderly and those with physical challenges. I have zero sympathy for those whining about filling up their sports cars to drive across the block to the beer store. SUCK IT UP! You cannot live in denial, the writing has been on the wall for decades. Your pain is certainly no excuse to go and steal a bike.

I digress. Back to responsibility. Check out this diddy from the Toronto Sun, it quotes Sean Wheldrake, Toronto’s Bicycle Promotions Coordinator up to his regular shifting of the blame.

…”Here in Toronto we have 2.6 million people and probably a million cyclists, yet we’re having 10,000 or 12,000 bikes stolen a year, so I wouldn’t call it a big problem,” Wheldrake says, adding that the oft-repeated mantra that Toronto is the bike-theft capital of North America simply isn’t true…

…”It’s totally unfounded,” Wheldrake says. “Bike theft is directly related to property theft, so there’s obviously a lot of U.S. cities that have a lot more (bicycle) theft than we do.”…

So is this the excuse to do nothing or the apology for doing nothing? It clearly indicates that Toronto has no intention on taking any sort of leadership role in combating bike theft as long as they can point to some U.S. cities who have higher rates of bicycle theft. Need more proof? How many ‘Post and Rings’ have you seen retrofitted to prevent them from being cracked open by a 2′x4′? Something they have known about for two years now.