How long will an unchained bicycle last on a city street before someone steals it? Using hidden cameras and cheap bicycles as bait, an Argentine publicist set out to gauge crime in different neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires. The longer it takes for the bike to be stolen the safer the area, is his hypothesis. “It’s not a statistic but in a way it shows that the places where the bicycle gets robbed really quickly perhaps the quality of life is poorer,” said Mariano Pasik, 37. Pasik speeds up the videos, sets them to music and puts them on a website . He hopes other videographers will join his nonprofit “Bicycle Test” project and create a worldwide insecurity index. It could become an informal crime gauge akin to the “Big Mac Index”, which compares the cost of the same McDonald’s sandwich in different countries to give an idea of buying power of people in different places, Pasik said.
在城市的街道上，一辆没锁的自行车放多久不会有人偷？一位阿根廷的广告业人士使用隐蔽摄影机以及充当诱饵的廉价自行车，着手判定布宜诺斯艾利斯不同地区的犯罪情况。他的假设是自行车（安全放在街上）没被偷走的时间越长，该地区就越安全。37 岁的马里亚诺?帕西克说“这不是数据统计，但在某种程度上它反映出，在那些一眨眼自行车就被盗走的地方，生活质量或许也低些。”帕西克给所摄录像加速，配上音乐，放在网站上。他希望其他录像制作人也能加入这个非营利性的“自行车测试”计划，然后得出一个世界范围内的不安全指数。帕西克说，这可能会成为一种非正式的犯罪状况判定标尺，类似于“巨无霸指数”，后者通过比较同样的麦当劳汉堡包在不同国家的价格，从而得出不同地方人们的购买力状况。
Pasik said the project is part art, part reality show, part journalism and part fun. But it is definitely not vigilantism. Pasik blurs the thieves’ faces and was shocked at comments on his website where people have called for the death penalty for thieves. “What you see on the videos is that they aren’t professional thieves, they aren’t people who went out to rob. They are people who ran into temptation and decided to commit a crime, they become thieves at the moment they take the bike,” he said. On the videos, the thieves often seem more like opportunists than hardened criminals. “You see the person thinking and thinking and thinking, coming and going. Sometimes they talk by phone. They go away. They come back. It’s more about an internal dilemma between good and bad, than about the bicycle itself,” Pasik said.
帕西克称这个计划是艺术、“真人秀”、新闻报道和娱乐的结合体，但肯定不是维护治安的手段。帕西克把偷车贼的面部模糊处理了，当看到网站上有人呼吁判这些贼死刑的留言时，他感到十分震惊。他说：“你从录像中看到的是，他们不是职业小偷，不是出来打劫的人。他们只是受到诱惑，决定触犯法律，自偷车那一刻起才变成了贼。”在录像里，这些偷车贼通常看上去更像机会主义者，而不是惯犯。帕西克说：“你看他想了又想，来来去去。时而打个电话，走开，又回来。这更像一场内心的善恶斗争，与自行车本身倒没多大关系。”
Fans of the site have offered Pasik free bicycles and sent in their own tests from Uruguay and Spain. A neighbourhood “passes” the bicycle test when an hour passes or when the filmer gets tired or runs out of batteries. So far in the “Bicycle Test”, no woman has stolen a bike.
这家网站的拥趸们给帕西克提供免费自行车，还从乌拉圭和西班牙寄来自己的测试结果。一个地区“通过”自行车检验的条件是：拍摄时间已逾一小时或者拍摄者累了抑或电池没电了（车还没被偷）。到目前为止，这个自行车测试中还没有女士偷车。