In the Western Cape 14% of SA hijackings took place

On the road there is nearly 1.4 million registered cars/motorcycles, the Western Cape has 18% of South African’s total, and accounted for 14% of the country’s car thefts and hijackings during the 2018/19 period.

Naked, which overlays the National Traffic Information System (eNaTis) database of registered vehicles (cars and motorcycles) on 2018/19 crime statistics, which the figures come from an analysis by the artificial intelligence driven car insurance provider from the SAPS to understand vehicle theft patterns across all nine provinces. According to the National Hijack Prevention Academy Guidelines, with ever more sophisticated anti-theft devices that drivers can acquire for their cars such as GPS trackers and more traditional ones such as immobilisers, gear-locks and alarms, motor vehicles should be safer than ever, but instead these steps have resulted in a dramatic increase in vehicle hijackings.

In the month July 2018 to June 2019, vehicle crime statistics released by South Africa’s primary theft retrieval firm, Tracker, cover vehicle theft and hijacking and provide insight into the time of day and day of the week when vehicle crime is most likely to occur in South Africa.

The majority of activations as a percentage of Tracker’s installed base are in Gauteng, followed by KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape. In the Western Cape, the suburbs most affected by hijacking are Philippi, Khayelitsha and Maitland, and the areas most affected by theft are Philippi, Claremont and Dunoon. Tracker’s data indicates that the most activations (activated means that Tracker initiated recovery action) for hijackings take place on a Friday between 11am and 1pm, followed by 8pm to 11pm.

Vehicles are activated for theft mainly on a Saturday between noon and 2pm.

By: Ellouise Muller