That they stole your bicycle is one of the worst experiences that you can suffer as a cyclist. Unfortunately, it is more common than desirable.
Despite extreme precautions and spend more money on locks and other security measures, thefts continue to happen.
Most locks that exist in the market are designed to prevent thieves from taking the bicycle. A company in California has gone further and has developed a device that directly vomits who tries to steal your bicycle.
The padlock is called
Skunklock And, instead of limiting yourself to protecting our bicycle, it attacks the one who tries to cut it. As? Through a mechanism that is activated by releasing an aggressive gas in the presence of the thief.
He feels difficulty taking oxygen and is induced to vomit almost instantly. The gas, with chemical compounds, remains isolated and inactive in an inner chamber, so that the use of the device is at all times safe.
The Mota lock
Skunklock has been conceived and created by Daniel Idzkowski and Yves Perrenoud, two engineers resident in San Francisco, tired of seeing how their bicycles were stolen again and again.
It is no accident that the idea has sprouted in the minds of two inhabitants of one of the cities with more bicycles in the world. The ‘Mota lock’ (that is the translation of its name) is, in appearance, a normal, U -shaped lock, but it may be the beginning of the end for the continued bike robberies in many cities in the world.
https://youtu.be/ba1OLoPIBfY
User insurance
Skunklock only triggers the gas when someone tries to break it to take the bicycle, so there is no danger if you fall to the ground or receive an involuntary blow. Nor does daily use lose properties or that gas has less pressure.
In addition to the chemical deterrence that makes it so different from the rest of the locks known so far, Skunklock has a steel lock and high tensile strength, a tempered steel locking bar with a retention device and a closing mechanism of closing high security.
Another of its characteristics is that it does not use electronic, which makes any element of the device be disconnected and avoids the deterioration that it could suffer in the case of exposed to moisture.
60 seconds
Daniel Idzkowski, one of the two Skunklock creators, remembers that most bicycle locks are very vulnerable, to the point that less than 60 seconds are enough to open them or, with the right tools, even section them.
In San Francisco, as in other cities in the world, professional thieves come to name the bicycles for the number of seconds that are needed to make fun of the security measures that protect them.
Do you really work?
The American company that sells Skunklock has carried out remote tests with the lock, and the two founders have even proven their own invention several times. And the results of these tests seem to give them the reason, because about 60 centimeters away, 9 out of 10 alleged thieves ended up vomiting.
But it is not necessary to approach so much to notice its effects, because at a safe distance of 3 meters the unpleasant smell is already recognizable.
The lock has the additional advantage that, in moments, it generates an anomalous scene in public, so that the thief stops going unnoticed by the rest of the pedestrians.
Is the gas for legal use?
As for its usability of the lock and chemical gas that it emits, Idzkowski ensures that the chemical components that it includes, with which thieves are dissatisfied, have exceeded various public use tests with excellent results, so their use is legal in 50 states of the United States.
The gas, which has an effect similar to that caused by the defense pepper gas used to repel aggressions, would also comply with the legal regulations of the member countries of the European Union.
