When car theft makes the media headlines it’s rarely for the right reasons – but this week has been the exception in the UK.

The British Insurance Vehicle Security Awards BIVSAs) highlighted the good work of vehicle manufacturers in raising levels of security fitment and performance over the past two decades, pointing to a 75% reduction in theft since the dark days of the mid-1990s.  “Modern cars are impossible to steal” and “Victory declared against car thieves” are just some of the latest headlines.

However, is it really time to declare the end of the fight against vehicle crime?  For a start, there are 107,000 people a year in the UK who had their car stolen and would easily disagree, especially when so many understand how statistics can hide the real trends and issues.

AVCIS Conference Shows A Different Side…
On the same day as the BIVSAs, SBD also attended the annual Association of Chief Police Officer’s Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service (AVCIS) National Vehicle Crime Forum, hosted by Thatcham.  The event was well represented by members of the police and the Home Office, as well as a number of Vehicle Manufacturers, insurers, and companies of the private sector.

The message from AVCIS painted a very different picture of vehicle theft – improved security has indeed helped to reduce the number of stolen vehicles in the UK, but where thieves have been forced to change their methods of operation, they have definitely not been defeated.  Instead, there is still an ongoing fight against increasingly organised criminal groups and sophisticated methods.

SBD have already reported in our blog, Profit-motivated thieves adapt in the Australian market, on the importance of starting with the right data and statistics to fully understand the local dynamics of vehicle theft – an area that Police themselves admit that they lack the resource to fully investigate.  Worse still, many police auto-theft investigation units are being closed down due to decreasing budgets, whilst government funding to AVCIS has recently been cut.

Other recent conclusions from SBD research were also confirmed by fellow stakeholders from the AVCIS conference:

• Key theft is a rising issue – more criminals are turning to home burglary in order to steal the vehicle keys as the easiest method of overcoming security systems.  However, more can still be done to improve traceability of stolen vehicles and parts.
• Customer awareness is vital – the more vigilant a car owner is to the threats, the less likely they are to be caught out by car thieves ways, especially unskilled methods such as finding unlocked vehicles as easy targets.
• Sophisticated methods are difficult to trace – it is widely accepted that sophisticated methods of theft (often described as “high tech” theft) are now becoming more common throughout Europe, but there is a general lack of understanding of how thieves are operating, due to the absence of any significant evidence left behind on the vehicle if it is recovered.
• Vehicle recoveries are declining – recovery rates continue to fall, another sign that shows the increasing involvement of organised criminal groups in vehicle theft.
• Vehicle theft is no longer decreasing – Germany, France and Holland have already shown rises in the number of stolen vehicles; the UK may not lag too far behind.

These concerns are clearly shared by those within the industry, but the challenge now lies in spreading this understanding to the wider media and to the insurance industry.

With the media reports of car theft being solved, police investigation teams will continue to be closed and insurers will continue to reject claims for theft on the assumption that the keys must have been used and that the claims are fraudulent.  In the meantime, thieves will only find more ways to steal the car and defraud the owners – where the industry stands still the thieves will not.

Declaring that the war on car thieves to be over may therefore be only the start of the problem.

Want to cut through the hype and get a genuine picture of vehicle theft? SBD’s continuous investigation and direct contact with insurance organisations ensures that you get the true story behind vehicle theft trends across the globe. To learn more contact Kavitha at kkuppuswamy@sbd.co.uk.