How Nearly 70 Percent of Stolen Cars Are Never Returned to Their Owners

• Vehicle theft in England and Wales is 74 percent higher than a decade ago, and 68 percent of stolen cars are now never recovered, up from 56 percent the year before, according to analysis of Office for National Statistics data.
• The Association of British Insurers says 93 percent of stolen vehicle claims now involve a keyless car, taken using a relay device that can clone a key fob’s signal through a wall or door in under a minute.
• A signal-blocking Faraday pouch costs as little as £5 and blocks the attack completely, yet most owners of keyless cars still do not use one.

The Odds Of Getting Your Car Back Are Getting Worse

Car theft in England and Wales has climbed to 121,825 reported incidents in the latest year on record, compared with 70,216 a decade earlier, a rise of 74 percent, according to figures drawn from the Office for National Statistics and analysed by vehicle recovery specialist Inn-Track. The three years to that point saw 78 percent more thefts than the three years before 2015, a level the analysis says has not been seen in nearly two decades.

The bigger change is what happens after the theft. Fewer than a third of stolen cars were returned to their owners in the most recent year measured. Some 68 percent were never recovered at all, up sharply from 56 percent the year before. A car stolen today is now more likely than not to simply disappear, whether into a shipping container heading overseas, a chop shop, or a cloned identity on someone else’s driveway.

Why Keyless Cars Are the Target

The Association of British Insurers puts the keyless share of stolen vehicle claims at 93 percent. Almost every theft insurers now deal with involves a car that never needed its key to leave the owner’s hand. The method is called a relay attack, and it relies on two people working together. One stands near the house holding a device that picks up the faint signal constantly broadcast by a key fob sitting on a hallway table or kitchen counter. The second stands next to the car with a transmitter that replays that signal to the door handle, fooling the car into thinking its own key is present. Industry demonstrations of the technique show the whole process, from first signal to driving away, taking under a minute, often on a driveway in full view of a house with the owner asleep inside.

The devices involved are not specialist equipment built by professional criminals. They are inexpensive, compact, and bought online with little difficulty, which is part of why the method has spread so quickly from a handful of organised crime groups to a much wider pool of opportunist thieves.

What Theft Actually Costs

Insurers paid out £187 million in car theft claims in a single quarter of last year, according to ABI figures, pushing the annual cost toward half a billion pounds if the trend holds. A stolen car that is not recovered within roughly 28 days is typically declared a total loss, at which point the insurer pays the car’s market value minus the policy excess, commonly £200 to £500 depending on the policy. A theft claim can also cost a driver two or more years of no-claims bonus and will usually sit on their insurance record for about five years, pushing up premiums on every renewal in that window regardless of fault.

Confused.com’s own claims data lists the Ford Fiesta, Volkswagen Golf, BMW 3 Series, Ford Focus and BMW 1 Series among the most frequently stolen models nationally, alongside the Mercedes C-Class, Audi A3, Range Rover Sport, Vauxhall Corsa and Vauxhall Astra. The company notes its figures reflect its own customer base rather than the complete national count, and that official police or DVLA data could show a different order, but the spread across ordinary family hatchbacks and premium models alike shows keyless theft is not limited to expensive cars. London, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Romford, Ilford, Dudley, Coventry, Walsall and Chelmsford appear most often as theft hotspots in the same data.

The £5 Fix Most Owners Still Skip

A signal-blocking Faraday pouch, which lines a small pocket with a material that stops radio signals passing in or out, costs as little as £5 and defeats a relay attack completely when the key fob is stored inside it. The cost is low and the problem is widespread, yet uptake remains patchy, and many owners keep their fobs in a kitchen drawer or on a hook by the front door, both within easy range of a relay device standing on the pavement outside.

A Thatcham-approved steering wheel lock adds a physical barrier that a relay attack cannot defeat on its own. The thief still has to deal with a visible, awkward lock even after the car unlocks and starts. Parking in a garage or behind a locked gate removes the line of sight a relay device typically needs, and a dash cam or driveway camera with motion alerts gives early warning if someone is loitering near a parked car at night. None of these cost more than a tank of fuel, against a repair or replacement bill that can run into tens of thousands of pounds for a mid-range car.

Trackers and the Category System

Security specialist Thatcham Research grades vehicle trackers and immobilisers under a category system, running from basic alarm systems up to Category S5 and S7 trackers that combine a self-powered backup battery with police-monitored tracking, designed specifically to keep working even when a thief disconnects the car’s main battery. Some insurers offer a premium discount for cars fitted with a Thatcham-approved tracker, and a small number of high-value car insurance policies now require one as a condition of cover following the rise in organised theft of premium models. Checking which category, if any, a tracker fitted to a car actually holds is worth doing before assuming it qualifies for a discount. Not every aftermarket tracking device meets the standard insurers are looking for.

What To Check On Your Own Policy

Some insurers now ask directly whether a car has keyless entry and price that risk into the premium, or require evidence of additional security measures such as a tracker or steering lock as a condition of cover. Checking a policy’s wording on security requirements before a theft happens, not after, avoids a nasty surprise if a claim is later challenged on the grounds that a stated security device was not fitted or was not in use.

Owners can also ask a dealer or manufacturer whether a software update exists to add a motion sensor to the key fob, which puts the fob to sleep and stops it broadcasting when it has been still for a set period, closing off the relay attack at the source rather than relying on a pouch every single night. Several manufacturers rolled this fix out in response to the rise in relay theft, though not every model or key generation supports it, so it is worth a direct call to check rather than an assumption either way. Dealers can usually confirm within a few minutes by checking the vehicle identification number against a database of known fixes, and in some cases a motion-sensor fob can be fitted retrospectively as a paid accessory even on a car that did not originally come with one.

With recovery rates falling and theft numbers climbing, prevention is doing more work than it used to. A stolen car that is never found costs an owner their excess, two years or more of no-claims bonus, and a theft mark on their record for half a decade, against a pouch that costs less than a car wash. For most keyless car owners, that is not a close call.

Sources:

• AM Online: Vehicle theft soars 74% in a decade as recovery rates plunge, Inn-Track warns
• WeCovr: UK Keyless Car Theft Explodes
• Confused.com: UK’s Most Stolen Cars Revealed
• Tracker: Organised Crime Gangs Target Keyless Range Rovers