Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha, BMW and Piaggio were among those invited to a moped crime summit In England at the London City Hall yesterday, where Mayor Sadiq Khan said manufacturers should take more responsibility for public safety by making their bikes harder to steal.
The Mayor said: “It is essential that the manufacturers step up to help us tackle this problem at the source. Put simply, the design of motorcycles make them far too easy to steal and this must be dealt with head-on at the point of design if we are to rid our streets of these crimes.”
There were over 14,000 motorcycle thefts in London last year according to the Mayor’s Office, and 23,430 crimes committed using motorcycles, a 163% increase on the year before.
Any additional security measures built into European models will doubtless make their way into those same bikes sold here in the USA.
The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) reports a total of 46,467 motorcycles were reported stolen in 2016 in the USA, compared with 45,555 reported stolen in 2015—an increase of 2 percent.
Although 2016 delivered another slight increase in motorcycle thefts, motorcycle thefts are down considerably since 2006. They have dropped from 66,774 in 2006 to 46,467 in 2016—a decline of 30 percent.
The top 10 states with the most reported motorcycles thefts in 2016 were California (7,506), Florida (4,482), Texas (3,692), South Carolina (2,057), North Carolina (1,847), New York (1,731), Indiana (1,397), Georgia (1,296), Missouri (1,195), and Nevada (1,177).
The top 10 cities for motorcycle thefts in 2016 were New York (1,209), San Diego (849), Las Vegas (818), Los Angeles (760) San Francisco (616), Miami (610), Houston (607), San Antonio (411), Phoenix (347), and Austin, Texas, (343).
The top 10 most stolen motorcycles in 2016 by manufacturer were American Honda Motor Co., Inc. (9,052 thefts), Yamaha Motor Corporation (7,723), American Suzuki Motor Corporation (6,229), Kawasaki Motors Corp., U.S.A. (5,221), Harley Davidson, Inc. (4,953), Taotao Group Co. Ltd (2,673), KTM Sportmotorcycle AG (762), Ducati Motor Holding (521), Genuine Cycle (463), and Kymco U.S.A., Inc. (453).
The most motorcycle thefts occurred in August (5,251) and the fewest in February (2,547), which continues to reflect a weather-influenced pattern that is consistent with previous years.