Be Car-ful on New Year’s Eve – and Day

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In the 2000 movie Gone in Sixty Seconds, Nicholas Cage and Angelina Jolie steal 50 cars in one night and barely get away with it. If only their characters knew what the National Insurance Crime Bureau knows, they could have stolen all those cars on New Year’s Day – and had time to spare.

That’s because the NICB has compiled all the car-theft stats for the major holidays. On Tuesday, the bureau released a report that shows the No. 1 holiday for car thefts in 2009 was New Year’s Day. Also on the Top 10 was New Year’s Eve. Here are the Top 11, with the actual number of cars stolen nationwide on that holiday…

  1. New Year’s Day (2,760)
  2. Halloween (2,325)
  3. Independence Day (2,207)
  4. Memorial Day (2,207)
  5. President’s Day (2,204)
  6. Labor Day (2,202)
  7. New Year’s Eve (2,189)
  8. Valentine’s Day (2,090)
  9. Christmas Eve (1,851)
  10. Thanksgiving (1,620)
  11. Christmas Day (1,336)

So what can you learn from this? Two big lessons…

  1. Be cautious when you celebrate Friday night and sleep in Saturday morning.
  2. While car thieves don’t take New Year’s Eve and Day off, they do apparently celebrate Christmas – it’s the least likely holiday for having your vehicle stolen.

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