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If You Don't Want Your Car Stolen, Make It Pink

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the how-to-quit-smoking-too dept.

pickens writes "A study in the Netherlands illustrates car thieves' preferences. From 2004-2008, the most commonly colored vehicle stolen was black. This may be because black vehicles look more luxurious. Following close behind black were gray/silver automobiles. Of the 109 pink cars in the study, not one was stolen. A bright and uncommon color, like pink, may be as effective deterrent as an expensive security system. Ben Vollaard, who conducted the research, wrote, 'If the aversion to driving a car in an offbeat color is not too high – or if someone actually enjoys it – then buying deterrence through an uncommon car color may be at least as good a deal as buying deterrence through an expensive car security device.'"

18 of 390 comments (clear)

  1. Hm... by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Of course, if everyone who didn't want their car stolen drove a pink car, then thieves would start stealing pink cars, and some other color would become the least popular.

    --
    Palm trees and 8
    1. Re:Hm... by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think that analogy fails: the technical differences between operating systems are a bit more significant than the technical differences between car colors. I could be wrong, though, and it may also be the case that nobody is painting a car worth stealing pink...

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      Palm trees and 8
    2. Re:Hm... by ElectricTurtle · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That is terrible logic. It assumes that either a) everybody (or a least a majority) cares more about their car getting stolen than its color or b) thieves care more about the motivation of owners' choice of colors than the color itself.

      --
      I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
    3. Re:Hm... by troc · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Linux servers don't generally hang about in the average family home being badly managed by the average non-techy person like the average Windows box does :)

      Linux servers are usually seen hanging out in specially constructed and managed server farms (a.k.a. dungeons), administrated by gangs of pale, bespectacled geeks and BOFHs and generally up to date with decent security.

      to get slightly back on topic, the only pink cars I see in Holland tend to be bubblegum pink Nissan Micras, poverty-spec MINIs plastered with estate agency stickers and random old stuff that's been hand-painted by hippies. None of these would be particularly attractive targets even if they were black.

      --
      Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
    4. Re:Hm... by hedwards · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Thieves do care about the motivation of the owner's choice of color more than the color itself. The reason why they don't steal pink cars is that they stick out and are quickly spotted. Were it to become the dominant color it would be stolen far more frequently than it is now. Thieves like Black and grey cars simply because they blend in to the background. It's a stupid suggestion by the summary that it has to do with the luxurious look, that's bullshit, thieves choose based upon what's easy, profitable and available. It's no surprise that they choose the ones that blend into the background first.

    5. Re:Hm... by Belial6 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think the diversity of Linux vs. the weakness of the MS mono-culture is pretty much a myth. Not %100, but enough that it isn't a valid argument. The vast majority of users are running either Ubuntu or Fedora. XP and Windows 7 have have as much of a difference as Ubuntu and Fedora. Sure there are other distros out there, but pointing them out is a little like pointing out that some people still run win98. Then, you have to consider that the people who would run a Linux distro that is not Ubuntu or Fedora are the kind of people that would specifically go out and search for different options. Those people would be the ones already running Linux and Non-Ubuntu/Fedora OSes. If you brought all of the Windows users over to Linux, 98% of them would end up on Ubuntu.

      As for targeting the applications, Gnome or KDE... Exactly the same issue as with the rest of the OS. You write two simple front ends. One for KDE and one for Gnome, or you just hope the user doesn't notice that you are using the wrong widgets. It is the exact same issue as malware on various versions of windows. Media players? Target VLC or MPlayer. Even better target any of the libraries that get heavily reused like the ogg decoder.

      If you target any application that is installed by default by both Fedora and Ubuntu, you have targeted most users, and the percentage would only rise with more users switching from Windows.

    6. Re:Hm... by marcosdumay · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "The vast majority of users are running either Ubuntu or Fedora."

      Or Susie, or plain Debian, or slackware. From the Distrowatcher, Debian based distros are the mos common, they are 1/3 of them. Of course, saying "Debian based" isn't enough information for an attacker (unless he targets synaptic, or should he target aptitude instead?), the most used is Ubuntu (all versions of it) with something near 20% of the instalations. So, the best you can target at is 1/5 of the population. Also, Ubuntu systems are mostly low profile, if you want to get the best computers, you'll have to go for Red Hat (the most used on that segment), and you'll discover that from the point of view of the attacker, one Red Hat install (or any distro on a hight profile system) differs way more from another HR install (even of the same version) than a Windows NT install differs from a Windows 2008 one.

      Anyway, diversity alone is not the end all explanation for Linux machines not being infected so often. Usability, bug count, the expertize of users and admins, and even the smaller number of instalations (on some segments) are also important.

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      Rethinking email
  2. Solution to theft by quatin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Have stuff nobody wants.

    1. Re:Solution to theft by Aphoxema · · Score: 3, Insightful

      My dad drove a POS 94 Ford Ranger up until a few months ago and he never locked the doors. The only time it was broken into in the whole time he owned it was when kids were going around the movie theater parking lot stealing change out of cars. I bet they made a whole lot of money doing that...

      I had a cousin who never locked his doors because if someone was going to steal his shit he didn't want them breaking his windows to do it. Eventually someone got into his car to steal his stereo, but even though the doors were unlocked they had smashed the driver side window.

      --
      "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
    2. Re:Solution to theft by tophermeyer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Electricians I used to work with would replace the guts of their old broken power tools with the guts of the new shiny ones, leaving the old busted plastic casing.

      To be funny, they would then put the old guts into the new shiny cases and leave them lying around for people to find and steal. Eventually people stopped stealing tools from their job sites because even their new pretty tools didn't work.

  3. Maybe it's simpler than that. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Perhaps the thieves prefer to drive something hard to pick out of a crowd?

    Pretty easy to find the stolen pink anything. Not as easy to find the stolen blue Civic. If you have a choice of cars (and in most cases thieves do) you'd pick something you can get away with for longer.

  4. Or you could by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Drive a stick shift :)

    1. Re:Or you could by sznupi · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Not in the Netherlands; and most of the world for that matter.

      --
      One that hath name thou can not otter
    2. Re:Or you could by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Well, not so much a luxury as something for "people who don't know how to drive a car". The extra cost isn't the issue, so much as the image.

  5. Resale Value by bencollier · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Of course, the crazy colour will also affect resale value, so the money you save in insurance you lose in depreciation.

  6. Only part of the story by Palestrina · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For example, pink cars might garner a greater degree of derision, leading to a greater incidence of vandalism. They might be pulled over more for speeding. Their owners might be more often victims of other crimes. Mechanics might inflate prices more.

    What you want to look at is the "total cost of ownership" for the car over a period of time, as a function of color.

  7. Re:How to fail with statistics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Actually, that's not necessarily true. Looking at the theft rates for all the non-standard colors (everything besides black, silver, and blue), it looks like a 0.1% theft rate is common. This means that if there are fewer than 1000 cars in the study, having no pink cars stolen could be expected without representing a thief's real aversion to pink (since it's impossible to steal half a car).

  8. Re:How to fail with statistics by gurps_npc · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Your grasp of statistics is poor. Consider the effect if there were only a SINGLE pink car in a study. Then when you say 0 pink cars were stolen, your study is no better than me saying my car has never been stolen. Now imagine what would have happened if the single guy with a pink car happened to have his car towed for illegally parking and didn't realized what had happened till after the article was published. Now you have 100% of pink cars being stolen. Sample size is ALWAYS important, regardless of the percentage.

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    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com