A study has revealed the Dutch cities where you’re most likely to get your bike stolen. The winner: The Hague. The administrative capital of the Netherlands has been crowned as the city with the most bike thefts, followed by Nijmegen and Utrecht.
The Hague came out as number one with 9.765 stolen bikes in 2022, way ahead of its closest competitor, Nijmegen, where just 2.315 reports were filed regarding bike thefts. The city where your bike is least likely to be stolen, on the other hand, is Almere, where just 380 bike thefts were recorded in 2022.
The study "Bicycle theft in the Netherlands" was undertaken by Bureau Beke, a research agency specialised in crime investigation, in a bid to understand just how prevalent bicycle theft is in the Netherlands. Given that we are a land of fietsers, it’s not that surprising to know that bike theft is a common occurrence. The more shocking side of the story is how much it costs: the study estimates that around 600 million euros of damage is caused by bike theft annually in the Netherlands.
According to the Cyclists’ Union, between 468.000 and 772.000 bike thefts occur in the Netherlands. Though not surprising given how many bikes there are in the Netherlands, the actual number could be higher given that many people do not officially report their stolen bike to the police.