By Brian Hickey
Imagine the shock of parking your car in a church parking lot and returning to find it gone. That’s the reality for one Carleton University student late last year.
“I thought my car had been towed, or that I had parked the car somewhere else,” says Tony Haddad. “But a couple of phone calls later I realized that the car had been stolen.”
Haddad hasn’t seen his 1995 Toyota Tercel since and says he still can’t believe a thief would take his car from the grounds of a church.
The Canadian property crime rate has fallen steadily since the early 1990s, but the rate of auto theft has been increasing. So much that the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) says Canada now has a higher rate of auto theft than the United States and Mexico.
This unexpected reality has forced the IBC to declare auto theft a key industry issue. And it’s trying to make Canadians aware of the problem.
The IBC reported that over 165,000 vehicles were stolen in Canada last year at an average of rate of 452 vehicles a day. The Ottawa Police reported 4,823 auto thefts in that same period.
Sgt. Dan Lapointe of the Ottawa Police’s organized auto theft section, says it’s startling how many cars are stolen because the owner neglected to take the keys out of the ignition or lock the doors.
That may sound farfetched, but how often are vehicles left unsupervised while warming up on cold winter days? Or how many times are keys left dangling in the ignition while the owner pays for gas?
Apparently these old habits are hard to break. A 1992 Statistics Canada survey reported 23 per cent of stolen vehicles were not locked, 20 per cent had keys inside and two per cent were left running.
Lapointe says by leaving your running vehicle unattended, you’re inviting an auto theft to occur and a dangerous situation to develop. The outcome could be a chase that ends up putting the public and police officers at risk.
“Material items like cars can be repaired or replaced, but people can’t,” says Lapointe. “The safety of the public is paramount.”
Statistics show that vehicles are being stolen in Ottawa for short-term nuisance crimes such as joyriding. This is apparent from the city’s high vehicle recovery rate – around 80 per cent.
Things are different in Montreal where the vehicle recovery rate is around 50 per cent, among the lowest in the country.
Over the last six years, the IBC reports that over 250,000 stolen cars have never been recovered, making auto theft a $1-billion-a-year social menace. Insurers spend nearly $600 million to fix or replace cars, while taxpayers spend $250 million in police, health care and court system costs related to auto theft.
IBC says many luxury vehicles are stolen and shipped to Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, where vehicle registration tracking systems are less advanced. There, the vehicles are sold for twice their value.
It’s no wonder then that insurance companies have joined police forces across the nation in an effort to increase awareness of the problem and promote theft deterrence.
Linda Chiarvesio, manager of external relations at the IBC, says some insurance companies even offer discounts to clients that use approved theft-deterrent devices such as alarm systems, steering wheel locks, gas line cut-off switches or concealed ignition switches.
While auto theft in Canada may be at an all time high, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The answer lies with the car owner. Auto theft may be unavoidable at times, but owners can still take responsibility for their vehicle by making it more difficult for criminals to steal and make a profit.
Buying a car might be the biggest investment you ever make, so do what you can to protect it. Is leaving your brand new Jeep running while you buy a pack of cigarettes a risk worth taking? Of course not, so don’t make the same mistake so many others have made.