CURIOSITIES:How to keep your car safe

Ever had your car stolen? I haven’t. Had it broken into, which is depressing enough, but never stolen. A lot of people have had one go poof though, especially around here. Just last week, the Costa Mesa gendarmerie made arrests in three car thefts Friday and Saturday, two near South Coast Plaza and the third ending in a high-speed chase on the 73 Freeway.

The No Question Best Line of the Week Award went to CMPD Lt. Dale Birney. “We’re having a theme weekend,” Birney said. Why is there so much unauthorized borrowing of cars around here? Are we bad people? Poor breeding? Early childhood issues? None of the above.

There are about 1.2 million cars stolen in the U.S. every year, which means a car is stolen every 26 seconds, which means whoever owns that thing should keep it locked for heaven’s sake.

The problem is particularly acute wherever there are large parking areas where people leave their cars for long periods of time — like amusement parks, the beach and big retail centers. Know of any of those around here? Thank you. So do the car thieves.

Stealing cars is big business in California, as one would expect, but here’s something interesting, assuming you find utterly useless information interesting, which as it turns out, is my job. Car theft is much more common here on the Left Coast than on the Right Coast.

In fact, of the top 10 cities for auto pinching, none of them is farther east than Las Vegas, which wins the blue ribbon for the most car thefts, which makes sense, with a gazillion cars and trucks in parking lots that are far away from their owners, who disappear inside casinos and hotels for hours at a time. Here is the rest of top-10 list following Las Vegas — Modesto, Stockton, Phoenix, Visalia, Seattle, Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego, Fresno and Yakima. See? It’s a western thing.

Auto abductions, which are like alien abductions only without the mother ship and the probing, dropped about 5% last year in most of the country, but not here, wouldn’t you know.

Hondas and Toyotas top the list of cars most likely to get pinched, apparently because their parts are the easiest to sell. And that’s what stealing cars is all about these days — selling parts — everything from sound systems to alternators to door handles.