Video: Bike thieves get a literal shock

It’s a simple premise. Take a bike, wire up the seat and handlebars so that they can deliver an electric shock and then leave it unattended. When a thief is tempted, shock them – and of course film the incident and upload the footage to YouTube.

The video is by twin brothers Jeremy and Jason Holden who operate under the name Twinz TV. It is one of several of theirs which revolve around a ‘bait bike’.

Another prank trailed at the end of the video is basically the same thing but with disconnected brakes instead of the shock. A third involves the bike being attached to some kind of cord which stops the thief dead (but not until they’ve first got up to speed).

As you can probably guess, Twinz TV have found themselves in trouble from time to time, most notably when they staged a hoax kidnapping in a public playground. The Telegraph reports that the pair faced gross misdemeanour charges after publishing the clip in 2014.