| Motorcycles and Twowheelers: Bike insurance and security - "Motorcycle Theft From the Point of View of a Reformed Thief" Saturday, 13 March, 2010 | Home | Suggest a Link |
We support this site using affiliate marketing as a way to earn revenue. All the ads, and many of the links mentioning other products, services, or websites are special links that earn us a commission when you use or pay for their product/service.
Please do not use our site if this alarms you.
Information gathered from stats and reports on convicted motorcycle thieves. As well as, from the victoms of motorcycle theft.
The market for stolen bikes right now is so big, it is ridiculous!
Most bikes get taken around 2:00-3:30 am when no-one is up looking out the windows. The thieves will first drive around and look for bikes they and/or their customers want. Then they will return with their van and three or four other guys to help throw the bike in the back of van. It is a one, two, three process taking no longer than 5 minutes. Once the thieves have your bike, they take it home, pop the ignition, get a new ignition done, get the bike stamped up through the junk yard, get a new salvage title, new numbers and that's it.
Thieves are looking at: R1S, R6, CBR600 - looking at anything that is fast. Most thieves are into the fast Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha or Kawasaki bike, not the Harley, Buell, Triumph. Why? Because that is the bike scene. The customer will tell the thief what they want. Most will charge $100 per cc of engine the bike has; the Hayabusa is $1500 on top, R6 will cost you $600.
The easiest place to snatch a bike is from an apartment complex. Thieves have cutters for all the high-end cable locks. a screwdriver will pop any Kryptonite lock.
People think that gated communities are safe. They are not. The keypad entry sequence is easy to compromise. A decoy will enter the complex and get the security guard to work with him, and his accomplices take the bikes while the guard is distracted. The bikes and thieves are gone and the guard loses his job the next day.
The next easiest place to steal a bike is at hotels. A lot of people attend bike events and leave their bikes parked in a dark-ass corner. Thieves love this. This is not very smart; this is the first place they are going to look.
The next easiest place is the track. There are about 6000 bikes at these tracks. The bike owners will leave their bike to go watch the events. The thief is watching your bike, and watching where you are at. Their accomplice will make sure you stay at the track while the thief takes your bike. Thieves communicate by Nextel and keep each other informed as to the best opporutnity to steal your bike.
The safest place to put your bike to prevent it from being stolen is inside your house or your garage. Thieves will not waste time trying to break into your house to get your bike. If you have it in a complex or a storage unit, yes, they will get it. If it is in your garage, they will not try to take it - not worth taking the chance to get shot for your bike.
When I lived in Sunnyvale, ca and owned my 1987 Kawasaki EX-500, I lived in an apartment complex. I had a car port, no garage. I had my bike locked to the support pole of the carport with a $80 high-end cable lock. I also had a $2 two-inch masterlock on the front rotor of the bike.
The thieves enter my complex with their pickup truck around 2:00 am. The bastards cut through the expensive cable lock with no problem at all. Do not waste your money on this crap. Next, the thieves try cutting off the 2" Masterlock on the front rotor. The bastards could not get a good angle and made enough noise to wake me.
I look out and yell, "you're busted." They scatter like roaches.
I call Sunnyvale's Finest, they catch the idiots speeding at 2:00 am down the expressway, find bolt cutters in the back. A clean bust.
I go to Court, the punks get sentenced, I get restitution and learn all the personal information on the thieves. Go by where they live. Guess what? They live in a high-security condo complex. Go figure.
What have I learned from this:
I have 2 motorcycles. One is a NTV 600 Revere, the other a SLR 650. The NTV is 15 years old and the SLR is 8 years old. I insure both bikes third party, fire and theft for £154.00. I think this is a very reasonable price that I am quite happy to pay.
I am frustrated with the cost of petrol, though. Both bikes will return 50 to 55 mpg, which compared to a car and some sports bikes is better than average, but I travel approximately 15,000 miles per year which costs around £1300 each year in fuel. This
Read this article in full
To most riders, motorcycle helmets do not fit into their dream accessory. They feel helmets are restrictive and unnecessary and do not add to their aesthetic appeal. But it is important to know why you need to wear a helmet while riding a bike and what it does for you.
Motorcycle helmets act as a protection device for your head. Nearly all motor crashes in which riders do not wear helmets, result in major head injuries. To drive this point further, according to a survey done in the state of California, in 900 crashes, there were 980 head and neck injuries.
Read this article in full
There are quite a few differences between car and motorcycle shipping. While a car has a reliable handbrake and four wheels for extra stability a motorcycle is quite different by design having only two wheels and nothing to keep the bike stationery except the stand.
You might think that motorcycle shipping would be cheaper than car shipping because of the difference in size of vehicles but this is rarely the case. The closed carriers that are often used should be specially designed to carry motorcycles and this will mean that there will either be palettes specially designed for the purpose
Read this article in full
These days, simply being careful while out and about with your bike and using safety gear is not the only protection you need! Motorcycles have a far higher rate of accidents per unit distance than cars. This is due to the exposed rider and the fact that many automobile drivers fail to see these smaller vehicles in the traffic stream.
Also, as the law and lawsuit trials become more and more "complicated," you might even end up paying for the guy who was talking on his cell phone while driving, failed to see you and pushed you in the ditch. Of
Read this article in full
This is the truth about motorcycle security chains the major manufacturers don't want you to know. In recent testing it was found that the top 5 chains all failed within 63 seconds with the Irwin Record 42" bolt croppers. One in particular lasted a mere 3 seconds!
 |  |  |  |  |
