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If You Don't Want Your Car Stolen, Make It Pink
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.'"
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
Nobody wants to be that guy on youtube arrested at the wheel of a pink Miata.
Have stuff nobody wants.
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.
Drive a stick shift :)
Of course, the crazy colour will also affect resale value, so the money you save in insurance you lose in depreciation.
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.
Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkWf4crJ9uI#t=2m18s :)
The "Hello Kitty Car".
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
If only there was some way to replace the paint colors with colors of our own choosing. If only we possessed that level of technology...
from : http://leasticoulddo.com/comic/20100719
All of them. At least, new-ish cars in the Netherlands, in 2004-2008. ...you could have easily looked that up, TFA links to its sources.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Zero. There were exactly zero pink cars stolen. (The study, if you had bothered to look at it, includes all reported thefts of all cars less than 3 years old in the Netherlands from 2004-2008).
I really hate it when people start prattling along about errors with statistics when they don't bother looking at the actual statistics.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Did you really just put this disclaimer in a reply to the post ending with "I really hate it when people start prattling along about errors with statistics when they don't bother looking at the actual statistics"?...
One that hath name thou can not otter
From TFA:
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/5262
It's resale value, not the fear of getting caught
Is it only resale value that drives the preference of thieves for cars in common exterior colours or does the probability of apprehension also play a role?
The recent history of car theft gives us some idea. Red is obviously a bright colour that attracts attention - including that of the police.
Red is also a colour that has fallen out of fashion since the turn of the century (Figure 1).
In the beginning of the 1990s around 25% of all new cars were red, now the number is close to 5%.
The decline of red doesn't only go for the Netherlands, but is a worldwide trend according data from DuPont.
If thieves are primarily interested in resale value and do not care much about being spotted in a bright coloured car, then we should see higher rates of theft for red cars in the 1990s.
That is exactly what we find. Figure 3 shows that, just with the colour silver/grey, the popularity of red in new car sales is tightly linked with the prevalence of red among stolen cars.
This suggests that car thieves do not seem to be particularly worried about being picked out from traffic by police.
Figure 3. Popularity of colour in new car sales vs. theft risk by colour, the Netherlands
http://www.voxeu.org/sites/default/files/image/Vollaardfig3.png
Source: CBS/RDW
Conclusion
Differences in theft rates between cars in common and uncommon colour suggest that resale value is on the mind of car thieves.
We find evidence that it is indeed the resale value rather than the fear of getting caught that is driving this difference.
If the aversion to driving a car in an offbeat colour is not too high - or if someone actually enjoys it - then buying deterrence through an uncommon car colour may be at least as good a deal as buying deterrence through an expensive car security device.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
When my boys were growing up, they were constantly stealing my underwear. I made them do their own laundry but they didn't get to that chore as often as they should have so they felt free, despite my protests, to dip into my underwear drawer. Nothing worked until I died my shorts pink.
My girlfriend thought it was funny but I was just happy to be able to rely on having a clean stash of underwear.