This trend in vehicle theft reflects the current customer tendency in Australia to downsize their vehicles. Thieves simply adapt to the market in order to sell on their stolen vehicles and parts.

This detailed analysis of the latest vehicle theft trends comes from the National Motor Vehicle Theft Reduction Council (NMVTRC) in Australia, whose efforts have already helped to halve the number of cars stolen since 2000. The overall theft rate for all vehicles in Australia was once over 100 vehicles per 10,000 parc – one of the highest in the world – but this has now dropped to under 40.

NMVTRC split vehicle theft into two categories; short-term theft and profit-motivated theft. Any vehicle which is not recovered within four months of being stolen is considered to be profit-motivated theft. This approach allows them to get a clearer vision of car crime and then tackle the right issues.

SBD’s recent whitepaper re-defined the current theft situation, including the differences between short-term and profit-motivated theft and the types of thieves who are involved. Whilst the NMVTRC system doesn’t exactly match those definitions, this is as close as a measurable system can get to quantifying the proportion of profit-motivated theft. The NMVTRC can be commended on taking a complex situation and returning useful data.

The figure below shows the differences between the categorization used by NMVTRC versus SBD analysis.

This simple, general rule helps to give a more accurate representation of the vehicle crime situation, allowing detailed actions on specific issues rather than commenting on the overall trend. This is why NMVTRC are able to say that the number of small vehicles stolen for profit has risen sharply during 2010.

This approach has been used to form strategic plans and implement specific actions. For example, in 2010 it was concluded that many thieves were stealing old, low-value vehicles with poor security in order to collect money for their scrap value. The end-of-life process for scrapped vehicles has since been tightened to make it more difficult for thieves to put stolen cars into the process. NMVTRC have now released their Strategic Plan for 2011, which includes:

• Commission a study of current systems to assess potential of optimised theft reduction benefits for current electronic and other identification systems used by vehicle manufacturers. 
• Undertake a detailed technical and financial analysis of the potential impacts of establishing an Active RFID system for vehicle registration.
• Monitor development of WOVM in the EU.
• Improve industry responses to the theft of plant and equipment.
• Utilise vehicle security rating systems to raise public awareness of class leading vehicles and encourage industry best practice in secure access controls, theft resistance and vehicle identification.

SBD is proud to actively support the work of NMVTRC, who is taking the initiative on vehicle crime in Australia. We hope that other countries may follow this lead in breaking theft down and tackling their individual car crime issues.

For more information on SBD’s research into car theft and insurance in Australia and New Zealand, email security@sbd.co.uk