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E-bike stolen? The tracker that led a rider across Glasgow

UK newsPublished 5 min read
An electric bicycle chained to railings on a wet city street at dusk with a delivery bag strapped to the rear rack

A Glasgow delivery rider whose e-bike had just been taken pulled out his phone, watched the tag he had hidden on the frame report in from a mile and a half away, and went after it. The e-bike stolen tracker story made the national wires a few months later, and it is worth reading twice: once for what the tag did, and once for the bit at the end that no police force in the country would recommend copying.

What happened

Vikas Dahiya, 27, works around 25 hours a week delivering for Uber Eats, Just Eat and others on top of a 40-hour hotel job. By his account, five locked bikes had been taken from him in eight months, costing roughly £3,200 in replacements, repairs and lost earnings. So he started tagging them.

In April he saw a man make off with his e-bike and followed the tag's reported positions about a mile and a half across the city, with officers who happened to be nearby. Police Scotland later confirmed the incident:

"Around 7.10pm on Friday, 17 April, 2026, officers were made aware of the theft of an ebike in the Mitchel Street area of Glasgow."

A man was arrested and the investigation was ongoing. Video of the moment, sent to an agency, shows Dahiya sprinting at the man and taking him to the ground — which is the part the coverage led with, and the part to leave out of your own plan.

The bit that worked, and the bit that should not be copied

Strip the drama out and there are two separate things in this story.

The first is a small, cheap radio tag doing exactly what it is built to do. An e-bike moving through a city centre at seven in the evening is surrounded by phones. Every handset that came within Bluetooth range of the tag picked up its broadcast and filed a rough location under Dahiya's own Apple Account, without anybody touching a screen. That is the only reason a trail existed at all.

The second is a person putting himself in front of somebody who had just committed a theft. It ended without serious injury. It very often does not. Police Scotland's published guidance on stolen bikes tells owners to leave the recovery alone. It warns that even negotiating a buy-back puts the owner at risk, and points them at the 101 non-emergency line for instructions instead. If a theft is unfolding in front of you, that is a 999 call, not a chase.

The useful version of this story is the one where the tag's location goes to an officer and stays there.

What to do instead

  1. Ring 999 if the theft is in progress, or report it and get a crime reference number if you have discovered it after the fact.
  2. Give the police the tracker readings, with timestamps, rather than a summary. Screenshots are fine.
  3. Report the bike stolen on BikeRegister so any force that stops it can match the frame to you.
  4. Tell your insurer early — most policies have a short reporting window.
  5. Keep watching the tag and keep passing updates on. That is legitimate and useful. Going to the address is neither.

Why delivery riders are hit hardest

A courier's bike is not a hobby item; it is the tool that pays the rent, and it spends its working day parked outside restaurants and flats for two or three minutes at a time. That is a theft pattern locks are poorly suited to, because the exposure is short, constant and public. It is also why riders were early adopters of hidden tags: when the bike is gone within ninety seconds, knowing which direction it went is the only lead anybody has.

There is a layering argument here that gets lost in the headlines. A good lock buys minutes and pushes a thief towards an easier bike on the same railing. A frame marking and a database entry make the bike awkward to sell on and easy to return if it is recovered. A hidden tag does neither of those jobs — it only tells you where the thing went. Riders who lose the fewest bikes tend to run all three, and treat the tag as the last line rather than the first.

Insurance rarely fills the gap either. Repeated claims push premiums up fast, and the replacement cost of an e-bike puts it well outside the small-claims comfort zone.

How Beacon Tag suits a working bike

Weighing roughly 10 g and standing 9 mm proud, the Beacon Tag disappears inside a seat pack, under saddle foam or taped into a frame bag. It is sealed to IP67, which on a bike ridden through Scottish weather every evening is not optional. The CR2032 cell runs up to two years, so there is no charging routine to forget on a shift.

Within about 60 m you can make it sound at up to 100 dB, which is how you find a bike wheeled into a communal close rather than driven away. Past that, position reports come from passing Apple devices — dense in a city centre, sparse in a lock-up on the edge of town. It is a lead, not a live feed, and we would rather describe it that way.

The catch, said up front: Apple Find My only. Minimum software is iOS 14.5, the device must be an iPhone or an iPad, and Android is not on the list. Under £15 buys a box of two, key rings included — one for the bike, one for the keys you keep losing at the end of a shift.

Get a two-pack and tag the bike before the next shift.

More on the wider picture in our look at the current bike theft figures, and our returns and delivery terms if you want to know how quickly one gets to you.

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