UK Bike Theft Stats

Just found this, sure it's probably been posted before, but it may be of interest to somebody....

http://www.motorcyclenews.com/upload...urvey_2007.pdf

[the_lone_wolf]

I'd like to see their methodology, as it's unclear what the survey is showing on a couple of points, most notably:

The younger the rider, the higher the theft risk. Bikers aged between 16-19 are 2.5 times more likely to
suffer a theft than bikers aged 40-44 and 4.3 times more likely than bikers aged 65-69.

Have they considered that this may be because older bikers are more likely to have a garage? Or that they ride bikes which are less desirable to thieves? Or to put it another way, is a 19yo with a garaged touring bike 4.3x more likely to have it stolen than a 65yo with a garaged touring bike? When producing that "4.3x" statistic, have they used a sample where the only difference between surveyed persons is their age? If not, then how can they isolate age as the causational factor

Originally Posted by the_lone_wolf

I'd like to see their methodology, as it's unclear what the survey is showing on a couple of points, most notably:

Have they considered that this may be because older bikers are more likely to have a garage? Or that they ride bikes which are less desirable to thieves? Or to put it another way, is a 19yo with a garaged touring bike 4.3x more likely to have it stolen than a 65yo with a garaged touring bike? When producing that "4.3x" statistic, have they used a sample where the only difference between surveyed persons is their age? If not, then how can they isolate age as the causational factor

+1 tbh it's really hard to get anything out of these stats unless you know the background info. Like London is no. 1 for bike thefts, but then there are a lot of people and a huge amount of bikes in London, so you can't tell to what extent it's over- or under-represented re thefts...

Without the background info you're left to just use common sense to interpret the findings (e.g. your bike is more likely to be stolen if it's out on the road where thieving scum can see it and get to it easier), in which case why bother with the stats at all??

[the_lone_wolf]

Originally Posted by Fizzy Fish

+1 tbh it's really hard to get anything out of these stats unless you know the background info. Like London is no. 1 for bike thefts, but then there are a lot of people and a huge amount of bikes in London, so you can't tell to what extent it's over- or under-represented re thefts...

It seems to have been done by postcode, so areas of dense population will be over represented. A nice example is the portsmouth PO postcode, compare it's position in the league table to southampton SO, which is basically the same but doesn't have the isle of wight's effectively rural figures lumped in with it

Who'd want to nick a scooter?

Originally Posted by shifter

Who'd want to nick a scooter?

chavs!

Originally Posted by Fizzy Fish

chavs!

Chavs with exceptionaly bad taste!

[the_lone_wolf]

Originally Posted by shifter

Chavs with exceptionaly bad taste!

and no concept of a "getaway vehicle"

Yes, living in Sleepy Hollow but happening to have a BS postcode will no doubt do wonders for my premium

Yes I think they have misinterpreted/misrepresented the statistics too. Sometimes mixing cause and effect - e.g., "The bigger the No Claims Bonus, the lower the theft risk".

They have taken two identical bikers/bikes with the only exception being the fact one has had a theft and had to claim, thus having a reduced level of no claims bonus. They found that these two things were linked (theft & level of no claims bonus) and linked them in whichever way they wanted to.

If you've suffered a theft and had to claim, your no claims will be reduced, so really I think the theft is the cause of the no claims level, not the no claims level is the cause of the theft.