Tile’s Bluetooth Bike Trackers Can Help You Find a Stolen Bike

In America, 1.5 million bicycles are stolen each year, amounting to an estimated $350 million in snatched up spokes, sprockets, gears and chains. Bike theft is big business, and shockingly, there has been little progress made in the way of bike tracker technology.

For most of us, having a bike stolen is a painful and emotional experience, but for bike David Weiner, bike builder and founder of Priority Bicycles, it meant something even deeper, “Having something taken from you that you’ve worked so hard to build is just so disheartening.”

When one of his prized prototypes was seized from a New York City street, Weiner vowed, never again.

An early backer in Tile, Weiner had been proselytizing the power of the tiny Bluetooth-enabled tracker for finding all of the little things that can go missing as a busy entrepreneur. But could it work as a bike tracker?

While wrenching on his next commuter prototype Weiner decided to hide a Tile in the frame; a small, preventative measure to call upon in a moment of despair.

When the dark day came, and the new bike was stolen, Weiner decided to leverage the collective power of the vast Tile Network to see if there were any way he could be reunited with his aluminum steed. He marked the bike’s Tile as lost, and waited.

A few weeks later, on a business trip to San Francisco, he received a notification that his bike’s location had been updated. The whereabouts of his lost bike were no longer a mystery.

When Weiner returned to New York, he used the Life360 app to navigate his bike’s location -- with an angle grinder in tow -- and reclaimed what was rightfully his.

John F. Kennedy once remarked, “Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride.” While we appreciate the sentiment, we’re pretty sure Kennedy never experienced the pleasure of being reunited with a stolen bike using by using Tile as a bike tracker.