WALKING back from a meeting, the shops, or out of your house on a morning and not seeing your motorcycle where you left it is a situation no motorcyclist wants to experience.
Speaking from experience, it is a feeling of confusion, disbelief, anger, and sadness, all bundled up into a four-word phrase which goes something like; “oh for f**** sake’!
The good news is, according to the Motorcycle Crime Reduction Group (MCRG) fewer people are saying that phrase, as in the first part of 2023, thefts are reported to be on the decline.
The number of bikes still being stolen in the UK though is a staggering one, with 9,492 being reported between January and May 2023, although that is a 2.6 percent decrease compared to the same period in 2022. Bike theft decline steadily throughout the first quarter too, with the MCRG seeing a drop in March, April, and May.
Of the bikes stolen across the UK, 58 percent were motorcycles and 42 percent were classified as either scooters or quads. Naturally, London saw the greatest number of thefts, given that this has the highest concentration of bikes nationally, but even there, thefts fell over the January to May period by 16.4 percent, with Manchester also seeing a fall in thefts of 24.9 percent. It wasn’t all good news though, as some regions saw an increase in thefts that went against the grain of the rest of the UK’s stats. Avon and Somerset was one of these regions and saw a 21.5 percent increase in motorcycle thefts.
There is more good news though, and that is that more bikes are getting recovered after they have been stolen, with a reported 7.4 percent increase in the number of bikes finding their way back to their owners.
While the news is positive, it’s by no means a green flag to become more complacent when it comes to motorcycle theft, if anything, riders should be doubling down on bike security. As the thefts fall, motorcycle thieves who make a living out of this, or use stolen bikes to facilitate other crimes, will become even more desperate to get their hands on a bike, meaning they could go to even greater lengths and become even more brazen in their theft attempts.
