Why go to all the trouble of breaking into a car and then trying to start it? Sadly Detroit leads the new trend of car jacking - they even coined the term:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/23/detroit-carjacking_...
Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion
21–30 of 117 posts
Re: Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion
#22I wish bicycle theft was tackled in a similar fashion. A combination of factors seems to be at play here: Photo ID required to sell the car and technological hurdles that are too hard to overcome for small criminals. With embedded computer chips being so cheap nowadays, surely it should be possible to embed some sort of tracking system in bicycle frames.
Just out of curiosity, what town or city do you live in? How many times has it happened to you?
Re: Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are stolen for the marketability of their parts.
That still begs the question. Why are their parts better?
Not better as such, but have more value due to higher demand. Both cars have sold well so there are more out there that need repair from time to time and there are other models out there with the same (or compatible) parts, not just other civic/accord variants.
The age of a model can make a difference too when breaking for parts: newer cars will be covered by warranty, those not long past warranty are likely to be more reliable than those a couple of years older. After a few more years the value drops off because people will start to replace more than repair, so demand for parts falls.
Re: Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
That still begs the question. Why are their parts better?
Are you saying that they're stolen for the marketability of their parts because there are more that are stolen?
The marketability of their parts means that there are a lot of legally-owned Hondas which, of course, need parts replaced at times. And because everyone knows there are a lot of Hondas, the owners know it's easy to find a second-hand part from a junkyard or ebay to save money and thus for Hondas there exists a particularly lively market for old parts.
I always buy second-hand parts whenever it makes sense. It doesn't work that well with less popular cars, obviously. Either there aren't second-hand replacements that are easy to find or they're still too expensive (because of said scarcity...) so it makes sense to buy a new replacement part with warranty.
Re: Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion
#25I wish bicycle theft was tackled in a similar fashion. A combination of factors seems to be at play here: Photo ID required to sell the car and technological hurdles that are too hard to overcome for small criminals. With embedded computer chips being so cheap nowadays, surely it should be possible to embed some sort of tracking system in bicycle frames.
Just out of curiosity, what town or city do you live in? How many times has it happened to you?
In the Netherlands / Amsterdam it happens all the time - to be fair, people have adjusted to it, all you see is very cheap old bicycles, and it's not uncommon to just steal someone else's bike if your own gets stolen.
I read a cute news bulletin from the police the other day that they arrested a 60-some year old bike thief using a 'lure bike'. They do that regularly actually: https://www.google.com/search?q=lokfiets+site:politie.nl
Ahem. Anyway, point is, over here we adjusted by not owning expensive bicycles for the daily commute, so that's another way to deal with it.
Re: Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion
#26"Stealing cars is harder than it used to be, less lucrative and more likely to land you in jail. As such, people have found other things to do." Interesting. I wonder if there are any studies on what the other things are. What do perpetrators do when the crime they specialize in no longer pays?
Most types of crime have declined meaningfully in the last 25 years. The only segment I can think of that might have picked up some of those former car thieves, would be the drug trade (from pot to pharmaceuticals), as it did not see a decline.
With recent legalization of weed, I'd be interested to see what happens to those figures. At the very least I'd expect to see a lot less people getting arrested for having small amounts of weed on them.
(note: I watch Cops, main source of information there. Not sure if elderly bearded dudes wearing schoolgirl outfits for giving up fake names is representative of the US though).
Re: Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
That still begs the question. Why are their parts better?
Hondas are known for their reliability. If you don't crash it or trade it in, a Honda can easily go 200-300,000 miles and last for 20+ years. #3 and #4 on the "most stolen cars list" are the Toyota Camry and Corolla, which are the other cars most known for their reliability. If you're looking to steal a car built before 1997 (17 years ago), there are relatively few other makes that are still on the road. Cars from Am…
That sounds awfully low for American automakers. What exactly happens at 100,000 miles?
Generally cars will go through their first big part replacement cycle between 60-100k, these are wearing parts that come to an end at that age. That can cost a couple of thousands but that's just part of normal maintenance and will be 10x cheaper than buying a new car. These Hondas and Corollas sure as hell go through this phase and the next replacement cycle happens maybe another 100k later.
It's my impression that even these cheap little cars in Europe (such as Fiat Punto) can easily go 200,000 miles if only serviced so 100k sounds a bit odd. I've also assumed that the appeal to American cars with their big blocks is because they're built to last and eat hundreds of thousands of miles; this assumption might be outdated, however.
Re: Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you saying that they're stolen for the marketability of their parts because there are more that are stolen?
The marketability of their parts means that there are a lot of legally-owned Hondas which, of course, need parts replaced at times. And because everyone knows there are a lot of Hondas, the owners know it's easy to find a second-hand part from a junkyard or ebay to save money and thus for Hondas there exists a particularly lively market for old parts. I always buy second-hand parts whenever it makes sense. It doesn't…
I guess this is one of the times where begging the question is not a fallacy.
Re: Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion
#29Why go to all the trouble of breaking into a car and then trying to start it? Sadly Detroit leads the new trend of car jacking - they even coined the term: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/23/detroit-carjacking_...
Probably because the former used to be a relatively simple one-man job that required just a screwdriver and some basic car mechanic skills to do; the latter requires some more organisation, a truck, multiple people, etc.
Re: Why Stealing Cars Went Out of Fashion
#30Is this native advertising? > One of the factors that keeps car theft going in the United States is the reliability of old Hondas. Eventually, mid-1990s sedans should become too old to be worth stealing at all, but that hasn’t happened yet. “They keep running,” said Mr. Morris, and therefore they keep being stolen.
To be honest, "our cars are very reliable but they're likely to get stolen" isn't very good advertising, :p.