Has anyone ever considered engineering a disable feature into bikes? What if there was, for example, a lock for the crank that would require too much work to defeat/break. The thief wouldn't steal the bike because his costs/time/difficulty would go up. Car stereo manufacturer's had this same issue a couple of decades ago. One brilliant solution was a removable faceplate for the the stereo. The owner just pulled that out (about the size of an iPhone 5) and took it with him/her when leaving the car. Another solution was to put a matching chip in the speakers...if the stereo was stolen and connected to an unmatched set of speakers, it wouldn't work. Let's get creative and end bike theft!
It's been done a few times. Biomega and Puma made a bike with a structural wire that could be used to lock the bike; cutting the wire made the bike unrideable. There's the n'lock, which lets you turn MTB style handlebars sideways for hallway storage, but also acts as a theft deterrent, since you can't ride the bike with floppy bars. Removable pedals (Wellgo QRD, MKS EZY, etc). And dozens more.
There's a problem with designs like this. Bikes are very portable; thieves can walk with them, shoulder them, stick them in a van. The designs do not discourage the thief from cutting your U-lock in the first place - they only discover the bike is unrideable as they try to leave, and your bike still has value in parts.
