Why you should lock your bike: A numerical study

MyAssetTag.com, who are the front runners in providing asset tags solutions, has the latest numbers for bike theft trends, and they’re not good. The folks who staff the asset tag retailer – they’ve got your bike tags here – have gone digging through public records made available by the FBI, and made some phone calls to secondary sources and the occasional university. In a (tiny) nutshell, there’s sad news to report for bike aficionados.

Even the conservative estimates aren’t great, and the highest numbers are terrifying, for bike-owners and non-bike-owners alike. According to the FBI’s 2010 Uniform Crime Report, almost 200,000 bikes were reported stolen in 2010. Other sources estimate well over a million bikes stolen in 2010, given that only about 1 in five bike thefts are reported. It’s a cruel, cruel world.

Another way of saying: the Midwest reported $1,711,476 in damages from stolen bikes — and this in a region which reports a considerably smaller number of thefts than do other areas of the United States. For some local color, here in the headquarters of the world (that is, downtown Brooklyn): 68 people for every 100,000 residents of the northeastern United States reported missing bikes. That’s 37,871 bikes reported in the Northeast. A total of bikes stolen only in the Northeast is closer to 200,000. In this fact, that is, lie contributing factors; alternately, this fact harbors others. These include the ideas that New Yorkers are lazy and/or mistrust the police; that thieves are scared of New Yorkers; or that less New Yorkers are infrequently thieves.

Thought you were off the hook because you live in dear old suburbia? Bike thefts are split almost evenly between suburban and metropolitan areas – but not as evenly across the country. 59,944 bikes were reported stolen from the western United States. This means that for every 100,000 people on the western coast, as many as 415 were victims of bike theft, with damages totaling as much as $106 million. Even the Midwest, which boasts the least amount of reported bike thefts, has lost its residents as much as $9 million in stolen bikes — and that for just one year, in 2010.

Students fare no better. In fact, bike theft rates are worse on university campuses. 1 in 13 bikes is stolen on a university campus. An average of one bike per university is recovered.

In universal (and increasingly dismal) terms: an estimated $58 million in bicycle damages was reported in 2010 – at the FBI’s numbers. Total damage in 2010 in stolen bikes and bike-related merchandise, reported and unreported, lands somewhere just shy of $300 million. In other words, says MyAssetTag.com, buy a damn lock – or register your bike with an asset tag. Your bank account will thank you.

– R. Fogel

Related links:
More information on Asset Tags
Property crime data at the Federal Bureau of Investigation