San Francisco County leads state in rate of stolen vehicles
The California Highway Patrol released more factoids today about vehicle thefts in California last year. As we reported yesterday, overall thefts were down in '07 by 8%, which followed a decrease of 5.5% in 2006. The most surprising news, perhaps, is that San Francisco County is where you are most likely to have someone make off with your ride.
The obvious question here is if the number of stolen vehicles keeps going down in the state, what factor does that play in determining auto insurance rates. Darrel Ng, a spokesman for the Department of Insurance, said that the agency looks at each auto insurance carrier's losses and profits when determining what rates to allow -- not the state's overall numbers on auto theft. The state numbers do, however, come into play indirectly. The fewer vehicles stolen, the fewer the losses of some insurance firms.
Now, some fun facts:
*227,412 vehicles were stolen in the state last year -- or about one every three minutes.
*60% of the stolen vehicles were cars, 29% personal trucks or vans, 3% motorcycles and 4% commercial trucks (think Sopranos!).
*The three most popular cars to steal are the Honda Accord, Honda Civic and Toyota Camry. The 1991 Accord was the most popular model to steal (4,265), followed by the 1990 Honda Accord (3,648) and then the 1992 Honda Accord (3,308). The CHP says they were popular cars in the first place and still have high resale value.
*The recovery rate for stolen cars dipped a little last year, from 95.6% in 2006 to 93.6% in '07.
*Los Angeles County, as usual, led the state in total number of stolen vehicles, with 62,109, although the county also has the most registered vehicles (7,586,782). That was nearly a 7% drop from 2006.
*The percentage of all registered vehicles that were stolen in the following counties was:
San Francisco, 1.3%
San Diego, 1.02%
San Bernardino, .82%
Kern, .85%
Los Angeles, .81%
Imperial, .78%
Riverside, .74%
Orange, .37%
Ventura, .25%
Santa Barbara, .23%
--Steve Hymon
