• About 800 connected padlocks installed on street furniture in the city of Nice will be activated next week in an attempt to limit bicycle theft.

  • Insurance is still included in the offer of the start-up ShareLock “in case” the attached two-wheeler was still stolen.

They bloomed everywhere in Nice, on the bollards that line the roads.

“And it only took about ten days to install 800 of them. That's the advantage of this system.

In a very short time, we can create an entire secure parking lot for bicycles,” explains Nicolas Louvet, co-founder of ShareLock.

Connected via a smartphone app, its “shared padlocks”, whose English name echoes a famous detective, will be activated next week.

With the blessing of the metropolis, which has entered into an agreement for the occupation of the public domain with the start-up.

Still lagging behind on the kilometers of new cycle paths it aims to create, the community wants in any case to put the package against the theft of two wheels.

In addition to the 462 places available in its “Parcazur vélo”, at the Nice-Ville station and at the terminus of the tram lines, it has chosen this young Parisian company to stem the phenomenon.

Declining in 2020 according to figures collected by

Nice-Matin

, it would still remain a real scourge in 2021. According to the latest "barometer of cycling cities" users questioned in Nice considered thefts to be "very frequent".

Insurance included “just in case”

The Sharelock solution, installed for the first time in a large metropolis (it is currently only active in the towns of Sceaux Saint-Ouen and Meaux), would it be one of the keys?

“Out of 1,000 rental sessions of our connected padlocks in the Paris region, there has been no bike theft and only one wheel theft, boasts Nicolas Louvet.

The system is super secure.

It takes three times longer to break it than a classic lock.

»

Installed in a sort of warhead 50 cm high and 20 cm in diameter (not counting the hoop that imprisons the bike), the device can only be released on the dedicated application.

The other originality, because "it's still not infallible", is that insurance is included "in case" the attached two-wheeler was still stolen.

“The basic formula [10 euros per month for unlimited use or 50 ct per 24 hours] gives the right to an immediate refund of 200 euros, specifies the manager.

And it can be more if higher insurance is taken out as an option”.

For electric bikes in particular.

The system can even, thanks to sensors, be directly connected to the municipal police to prevent theft.

“We are discussing it,” we explain at Sharelock.

What has already been agreed is that these connected padlocks will also be installed in other municipalities in the metropolis.

There should be a total of 1,500 by the end of the year.

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