BERLIN, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- The economic losses of motorists whose cars were stolen rose by 8 percent to 324 million euros (372.6 million U.S. dollars) in total between 2016 and 2017 in Germany, figures published on Monday by the German Insurance Association (GDV) showed.
According to GDV, rather than reflecting a higher incidence of theft, however, the development owed to a greater preference among thieves for pricier vehicles. While the number of stolen insured cars fell by 4 percent to 17,493, the average value thereof rose by 13 percent to 18,5000 euros during the same period.
In absolute terms, vehicles of the Volkswagen, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz brands were most popular among the often-organized criminals. Measured by the ratio of theft incidents to the number of vehicles driven, the Audi "Q7" luxury SUV series was the car with the single greatest risk of being stolen on German streets in 2017 - out of only 1,000 registered vehicles, 15 were reported as having been unlawfully taken from their proprietors.
The figures were based on insurance data compiled by GDV and did not include cars that only had Personal and Third-Party cover. As a consequence, the assessment indicated a lower number of total theft incidents than recorded by German police. The 17,493 stolen vehicles with theft insurance counted in the study published on Monday were equivalent to 0.04 percent of all cars owned in Germany last year.
Broken down by region, motorists in Eastern German states, especially those driving premium cars generally faced the greatest risk of theft. The capital Berlin led the ranking with 3.6 out of every 1,000 insured vehicles being stolen, followed by Hamburg (1.9 out of 1,000), Brandenburg (1.4 out of 1,000) and Saxony (0.7 out of 1,000). By contrast, only around 0.1 out of 1,000 cars were stolen in Bavaria which registered a total of merely 821 theft incidents in spite of having 13 million inhabitants.
However, the ranking was more heavily skewed against western Germany when it came to the average amount of damage resulting from vehicle theft. In this alternative ranking, the state of Hesse, which is home to the financial hub of Frankfurt, occupied the first place with 25,500 euros per stolen vehicle, ahead of Hamburg (22,700 euros) and North Rhine-Westphalia (20,000 euros).
