[ghh]

In Holland, there's a national stolen bike registry too, and an ecosystem with bike dealers and police participating in it.

- It's hosted by the government - the equivalent of the DMV [1]

- It's based on RFID tags placed INSIDE the frame, so serial numbers can't be filed or welded off. You have to physically destroy part of the frame to get to the tag.

- Tags are installed by bike manufacturers on the more expensive theft-prone bikes, and registered by the bike dealer, so you yourself don't have to do any registering.

- Police have scanners that they use to scan public bike parking lots randomly [2]. Try google image search for 'amsterdam centraal fietsenstalling' for a picture of a parking lot.

[1] https://fdr.rdw.nl/ [2] https://translate.google.nl/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=y&prev=...

[facepalm]

That sounds very cool. I think in Germany if your bike is stolen you are simply out of look. Hope they'll take a page out of Holland's book soon.

[solarexplorer]

Not necessarily. I had my bike stolen in Germany and reported the serial # to the police. A few years later they called me to return me my bike. So they obviously have some sort of database. I don't know if it's just for the town or country wide...