TheScooterScoop

We all hate scooter thieves and we don’t have it HALF as bad as they have it in France. According to Charles Bremner at the UK Times “Small scooters account for three quarters of the 85,000 motorcycles stolen annually in France. Only 8 per cent of the thefts are solved.” What?! Over 63 THOUSAND scooters are stolen in France EVERY YEAR?! And only 5100 are recovered? According to LoJack, just over 70,000 Motorcycles were stolen in the USA for 2005… and the entire USA is a liiiiitle bit bigger than France, right?

(update: Crashtest clarifies that Texas is a liiiitle bit bigger than France. Europe is kinda cute when you think of it that way.)

Well, even better than LoJack in France is making sure your dad is Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister and chief law enforcer. Seems when his 19 year old son’s Piaggio (?) 50cc was swiped they sicked a team of detectives on the case who even busted out the DNA testing to recover it and bust the two 17 year olds responsible for the theft.

Of course this didn’t go over well with the common man as you would imagine and is detailed in this snippet from the article. Click the title link to read the whole bloody story.

The operation, thought to have cost thousands of euros, drew mockery from the Federation of Angry Motorcyclists. “This is quite funny, but it has nothing to do with the ordinary motor-cyclist,” said Frédéric Brodziak, the chief motard en colère (angry motorcyclist). “When we go to the police, they always tell us that we have not the slightest chance of finding our two-wheeler. Sometimes we know the thief, but the police say it is impossible to go into estates like that to retrieve our property.”