STATISTICS

85% of cars are stolen with car keys !

Thieves uncover key to car theft

Sheila's Wheels

Thieves are aiming to steal ignition keys to take cars rather than attempting to break into the vehicles, it has been revealed.

Key theft is particularly prevalent among criminals who target the more expensive cars, insurance company esure found.

Improvements in vehicle security systems have made it harder to break in and cut the number of cars stolen each year in the UK, the firm said.

But since the beginning of this year, as many as 93% of esure's car theft claims where the vehicle was worth more than £10,000 and had either failed to turn up or been found burnt out involved the original keys being used to steal it.

Of those, 72% followed a burglary at the policyholder's home.

Esure said a new trend this year was "gym locker car thefts" where criminals follow people from the car park into their sports centre and force their locker open to steal keys and then the vehicle.

Other types of theft include keys being stolen by violent car-jacking and incidents where owners had opened the boot with the keys still in the ignition and thieves took their chance to steal it.

Copyright © PA Business 2008

Insurance Case Studies - Keys left in or on cars: a continuing problem

Financial Ombudsman-

when assessing ‘keys in car’ cases – where motor insurers have rejected claims for theft, or attempted theft, because the ignition keys were left in – or on – the vehicle.

car stolen from driveway – whether firm was right to reject complaint on the grounds of customer’s ‘carelessness’

Miss L’s car was stolen from the driveway of her home while she was inside the house. She neither saw nor heard the theft. When she put in a claim to the firm, it asked her to send it her car keys. However, she was only able to produce the spare ignition key. Taking this as evidence that the key had been in (or on) the car when it was stolen, the firm rejected Miss L’s claim. It said that by failing to ‘exercise reasonable care in safeguarding her car’ she had breached a general condition of her policy. Miss L objected to this. She said that the key had definitely not been in the car when it was stolen. She had lost the key a month earlier and had been using the spare. She was adamant that she had not been ‘careless’, as the firm had suggested. After the firm rejected her complaint, she came to us.

complaint rejected We agreed with Miss L that she had not been ‘reckless’. As we noted in our last issue, someone is reckless if they recognise a risk, but deliberately ‘court’ it. Miss L had not done this, so the firm was wrong to say that she had breached the ‘reasonable care’ condition. However, the firm’s policy also contained a specific (and very comprehensive) clause that excluded claims for cars stolen when the keys were left in them. The firm had specifically highlighted this clause when it sold Miss L the policy. And as we were not satisfied with Miss L’s explanation that she had lost the original car key, we concluded on balance that it was likely that she had left the key in, or on, the car. We were satisfied that the circumstances of this theft did fall within the scope of that exclusion. She could be said to have ‘left’ the keys in the car because she had gone into the house, and was too far from the car to be able to prevent it being stolen. In addition, the fact that the car was parked so close to the road meant it was relatively vulnerable to an opportunistic thief. We therefore rejected the complaint.

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/ombudsman-news/38/keys-in-car-38.htm

Top 10 Key Theft/Carjacked Cars

Emerging methods of car theft – theft of keys

An area of growing concern is the increasing number of cars being stolen with the aid of the owners' keys.


Thatcham, the insurance industry's research and testing centre, estimates that up to 80% of vehicle thefts are now carried out in this way.

Click here to view The Top Ten cars taken!

www.crimereduction.gov.uk

Emerging methods of car theft – theft of keys

Findings suggest that criminals are now concentrating on stealing car keys in order to get around immobilisers.



An analysis of 8,303 incidents, over three and a half years between 1998 and 2001, of thefts and attempted thefts of cars in the Northumbria and Greater Manchester areas concludes that there does appear to be some evidence of an increase in the theft of keys over time, particularly through burglaries.

For cars registered after 1997, keys were used in 85% of incidents where the method of theft was known.

Read the full report here...

Norwich Union Risk Services

Car key crime has doubled in two years


Car key theft is an increasing problem and millions of motorists are failing to protect themselves, a new study has warned.


Norwich Union, in conjunction with vehicle tracking and recovery firm TRACKER, has revealed that the number of incidents where vehicles have been stolen using car keys taken from the home have doubled in the last two years.

Read the full report here....