I doubt it, bike thieves will just use a battery angle grinder with a cutting wheel on your bike lock, and everyone will absolutely ignore them doing it in the middle of the day.
They're much cheaper than an angle grinder, and fit in your pocket. I've used one to cut through the barrel of a d-lock with ease. I don't buy d-locks with cylindrical barrels any more. I learned this trick when thieves stole my friends bike this way :-(
Yes, this is the tool I was talking about. For a d-lock (aka u-lock), you'd need a quite large lock with a lot of space between the crossbar and the bike for a pipe cutter to work. The risk does exist nonetheless, which I wasn't aware of before. Thanks for pointing that out!
What are bystanders going to do? If you call the cops about someone stealing a bike they'll show up three hours later and shrug, if they show up at all.
If I were doing something undeniably thefty, like leaving a car on blocks or taking an angle grinder to a bike lock I'd expect to be confronted and maybe given a good beating depending on the details of the situation.
I live in the kind of city that most of HN would sneer at and make some quip about it being a rusting post-industrial wasteland of poverty. I guess we're not very enlightened but my Amazon packages don't go missing from my doorstep so I don't complain.
