Car Theft Ranking Is Not Too Alarming

You say you’re fed up with Orange County: the traffic, the high cost of housing, the hectic pace? You’re thinking Fresno might be nice. Maybe Sacramento. Or even someplace in San Diego County.

Well here’s at least one reason to stay put. Your car is much more likely to be stolen in any of those counties than it is here. Twice as likely, in fact, in San Diego County, which has the dubious distinction of ranking first in car thefts among California’s 58 counties.

According to statistics just compiled by the Tustin-based Western Insurance Information Service, San Diego County had 1,645.19 car thefts per 100,000 residents in 1988 and the first part of 1989. Orange County, with 792.36 vehicle thefts per 100,000 residents, was ninth.

San Francisco County was second with 1,335.52 thefts per 100,000, followed by Los Angeles County with 1,326.95, Sacramento County with 1,082.06 and Fresno County with 907.73. Riverside County placed sixth with a rate of 849.82. In seventh place was San Bernardino County, whose rate was 849.24. Alameda County ranked eighth with a rate of 805.09, and San Joaquin County placed 10th with 684.77 thefts per 100,000 people.

Sierra County placed last with a goose egg--not a single car reported stolen.

The median rate, according to WIIS spokeswoman Debbie Rosenzweig, was 287.67.

If you happen to drive a 1988 Hyundai Excel, you might want to look into life in mountainous, remote Sierra County--or at least stay out of San Diego County. Those particular Hyundais are stolen more often than any other car in California, according to Rosenzweig. In second through 10th place are various models of Toyotas. And the 1987 Hyundai Excel came in 11th.

I have my own unscientific theory about why Orange County’s car-theft rate is so low compared to the state’s other densely populated counties. We spend so much time in our cars here that the thieves don’t have a chance--after all, it’s pretty difficult to steal a car that’s stuck on a clogged freeway, especially with the driver still in it.

But for those rare moments when we do leave our cars, car alarms can help foil thieves.

Even the most sophisticated alarm can’t make a car totally theft-proof, of course. “But thieves tend to pick the cars that are easiest to break into,” says Officer Ken Daily of the California Highway Patrol’s San Juan Capistrano station.

Daily, who has a factory-installed alarm on his personal car, says there are several types of alarms.

“There are motion detectors, which have a switch that is tripped when the car shakes--such as when someone hooks it up to tow it away,” Daily says. More sensitive motion detectors can also be attached to windows, sounding the alarm if a thief jimmies or breaks the glass. Motion detectors can also be wired to the engine compartment, he says.

Other alarms protect the ignition. “There’s an ignition bypass, where you ground the ignition with a switch and then hide the switch somewhere in the car. That sets it up so that if you turn the switch on, the car can’t be started,” Daily says.

Some alarms use a siren, while others simply set off the car’s horn, Daily says. Most will sound for a few minutes, then reset.

Another theft-prevention device makes no noise at all, but Daily says it’s one of the most effective. It’s a J-shaped piece of metal that attaches to the steering wheel, or in some cases to the wheel and brake pedal. Of course, neither that locking device nor alarms linked to a car’s ignition system can keep a thief from ripping out your car’s stereo.

Some radios in more expensive cars are electronically coded so that if they’re removed and installed in another car they won’t work, Daily says. But if yours isn’t coded, you might want to try disguising your Blaupunkt or other expensive system with a fake front to make it look like a cheap radio, he suggests.

Or try a pullout stereo system, suggests Jennifer Keesee, a sales associate at Anaheim Electronics, which sells and installs both car alarms and stereos. Keesee says most of her clients don’t need a sales pitch because “either they’ve just had their cars broken into or they’re getting new cars and just don’t want to go through it.”

Car alarms start at about $170, installed, and go up to $550, depending on the type of alarm and the extra features, Keesee says. Some can be turned on and off with remote-control devices; others are passive, controlled by the car’s ignition. If you’re the forgetful type, Keesee says, you might want to get an alarm with built-in passive arming, which automatically turns on the alarm after a certain amount of time if you forget to do it.

If you do have an alarm, don’t neglect to turn it on, even if the car is in what you consider a safe place.

Keesee said it’s not unusual for car thefts to occur in your own driveway.

“That happens all the time,” Keesee says. “People come in and say, ‘It was in my driveway. I thought it was safe.’ But it isn’t.”

Most insurance companies offer a discount to customers who install car alarms, Rosenzweig says. “It’s something the customer is doing to try to help protect their vehicle, so they do take that into account.”

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