S.O.S. (Save our Scooters)

You don’t have to be a masochist to own a scooter; but there are two obvious reasons why it probably helps. Firstly, scooter owners are much more likely to suffer serious accidents than car owners. And secondly, scooterists stand a much higher chance of making an appearance as the victims of crime statistics when their pride and joy goes missing. Highly organised gangs of thieves see our two-wheeled friends as an easy source of tax-free income. Given this, it is perhaps surprising to learn that a high proportion of the many scooters stolen every year are uninsured against theft.

Scooter theft statistics in the UK make sobering reading for owners and insurance underwriters alike. A huge proportion of the UK’s scooters - as many as ten per cent - were stolen last year. To make matters worse, the vast majority of scooters are never recovered.

But, in reality, much of this crime could be prevented if individual owners, manufacturers, and local authorities undertook a few basic security measures to stop scooters being seen as such a soft touch by the organised gangs. Past experience suggests that scooter crime can be - and has been - effectively tackled where there is a real determination to minimise the opportunities for theft. The following examples illustrate the point.

Town centre car parks - particularly in the capital - are a Mecca for thieves. One central London car park recorded 36 bike thefts in a single month - most of them scooters. However, once the car park’s owner introduced ground anchors, only three thefts were recorded during the following month. That total is still too high of course, but, clearly, progress is being made. Other measures to improve bike security, such as the introduction of Thatcham-approved immobilisers, keeping scooters under lock and key in a garage, improving alarm systems, and making more effective use of chains can all make a huge difference.

Professional gangs have targeted the scooter market for a number of years now as a lucrative source of revenue. Their methods are crude but effective. Typically, scooter thieves hire an unregistered van, tour a neighbourhood and load 20 to 25 scooters into the rear of the vehicle. Once the van is fully loaded, the scooters will be ferried to the continent and sold on to bike rental companies at £200 to £300 a time, making a profit of five or six thousand pounds for a night’s work.

Some unscrupulous rental companies overseas will be only too happy to acquire a virtually new scooter for £300. The bike will then be ridden to death and probably thrown on the scrap heap at the end of the year. The local authorities, regrettably, are sometimes less than rigorous in checking the credentials of these operations. An insurer I know, just back from holiday, told me he had asked the owner of a Spanish bike rental company how the speedometer on the bike he had rented came to be marked in MPH. He was cheerfully advised by the proprietor that this feature had been laid on specially ‘to please the tourists!’

Those scooters getting the white van treatment that are not sold to rental companies are often broken down into spare parts. Unfortunately the manufacturers don’t tag individual bike parts with an identity number so there is nothing to prevent garages purchasing stolen items and using them to refit second hand bikes.

Preventing scooter theft is nine-tenths common sense. A relatively small initial outlay on one of a range of theft prevention devices can make a big difference. Insurance providers have an important role to play in countering the threat of bike thieves. They should be able to assist their customers by advising them on the latest theft prevention strategies and providing them with useful information on how to make their scooters more secure.

All scooters, for example, should arguably be fitted with Bauer locks, which work in the same way as a chain except that they are integrated into the back of the seat. Scooters fitted with Bauer locks are significantly more difficult to steal, and riders who use them can secure their bikes without having to carry a cumbersome chain around.