I have no data about bike theft, but strong suspicions.
I doubt if either police reports, or insurance stat's, mean much, but
I imagine that they would be correlated. Surely nobody reports a
bike theft with expectations of the thief's capture in result, and
few with hope of gaining the return of their bike. The only sensible
reason for reporting is to gain a police case number for your
insurance claim.
That being so, one would expect crime reports to correlate with
places where insurance coverage is provided, most commonly in locked
houses, garages, or sheds.
Some bike lock companies provide insurance as part of the price of
the lock, "valid everywhere except Manhattan", I seem to recall.
That might be a source of less biased data, as might surveys of
organised groups of cyclists.
What percentage of "abandoned" bikes have been reported stolen first?
What percentage are likely to be truly abandoned?
Jeremy Parker
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