Bike Theft in Europe: a disturbing reality
2.5M to 3M Bike stolen in top 5 EU countries
A recently published study conducted by INSEE (French public statistics) showed that 354,000 households have suffered from bicycle theft in France in 2016. It represents 2,3% of bike-owning households around the country. This number has been constantly increasing since 2012.
The study also shows that only 7% of the victims are recovering their stolen bikes.
INSEE collected this data from 2012 throughout 2017 and has analyzed the situation of over 16,000 households in a representative panel. This survey is the most accurate and latest up to-date. It provides a snapshot of the bike theft reality beyond the number of police reports, which, as the study shows, represent only a fraction of theft — only 19% of victims are reporting theft to the police.
Another research “Les Français et le Vélo”(French & bicycle) also indicates that in cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, 21.6% of cyclists have already experienced a stolen bike and 6.5% have experienced theft several times. The study generally demonstrates that the larger the cities, the larger the risk of theft.
A third study, conducted by FUB (Fédération des Utilisateurs de Bicyclettes — French cycling association) in 2017, polled 117,000 bicycle users across France. When asked “are bicycle theft rare?“ the answer was a massive “no“ for 77% of the respondents. Furthermore, in cities from 100,000 to 200,000 inhabitants the answer is no for 82% and increases to 89% in cities over 200,000 inhabitants.
A European issue
The problem of bike theft is quite similar in other European countries. For instance, 300,006 bike have been stolen in Germany in 2017 according to police statistics.
In the United Kingdom, according to the report “Crime in England and Wales” published by the Office of National statistics, 96,510 bike have been stolen from november 2017 to september 2018.
In Italy this number seems to be even bigger with 320,000 bikes stolen in 2013, according to the FIAB (Federazione Italiana Amici della Bicicletta).
In Germany and the United Kingdom these numbers only include theft reports processed by the police. Just like in France only a small percentage of theft are declared to the authorities.
In Spain, the study “Barómetro de la Bicicleta en España 2017“ indicates that 10,3% of respondents have declared to have been a victim of one bike theft and 5,7% more than one, in the last 5 years. This makes more than 800,000 bikes stolen per year in Spain.
In total, across these 5 largest European countries bike theft can be estimated between 2.5 million and 3 million per year.
Read the entire white paper (English & French) and get links to all data quoted on our Blog here: https://www.crowdloc.community/single-post/2019/02/13/Bike-Theft-in-Europe-a-disturbing-reality
