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You may have already read our article on how vehicle crime trends have been changing of late, with hijackings on the rise and surpassing car theft numbers, as well as more road-related crime happening in the Western Cape.

To add to all of that, police minister Bheki Cele released new crime statistics for Q1 2021/2022, and the reports show a big jump in hijackings in the country.

The South African Police Service (SAPS) has chosen to compare this year’s crime data to Q1 2019 instead of Q1 2020, per BusinessTech.

This is a bit of an unusual approach but is to account for the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, which as Cele said, will otherwise give “skewed and abnormal crime trends, caused by the different levels of lockdown”.

Compared to 2019 then, the statistics show that hijackings have increased substantially in the last year.

Aggravated robberies such as carjacking are shown to have increased by 92,2% compared to Q1 2019. Meanwhile, compared to Q1 2020, carjacking increased by only 13,1%.

The lockdown levels during 2020 are where the stats really jump around.

Cele called the level 5 lockdown a “crime holiday” for South Africa, adding that:

“The figures as distorted as they are must also sharpen the SAPS operational responses to make South Africa safer for all who live in it.”

South Africa’s most populous cities saw the biggest numbers. The highest number of carjacking cases were reported in Gauteng (2 704), then KZN (820), and then Western Cape (589).

However, when it comes to the top carjacking stations during Q1 of 2021, the Western Cape has three of the top four:

Most carjackings in the Western Cape were reported to Phillipi East (78) and Nyanga (67), while Sandton in Gauteng had 68 reports.

Duma Ngcobo, chief operating officer at Tracker South Africa (which published data about the changing hijacking trends), confirmed that hijackings were on the rise.

He said that the most likely cause was opportunism, especially for vehicles carrying lots of goods to capitalise on.

The other ways that hijackers can catch you is by impersonating cops in what is called blue light robberies, flagging you down with a fake car problem, or even via online selling platforms.

Just know your rights when you get pulled over by police, avoid quiet areas, go somewhere very open and public when you feel threatened, and rather be safe than sorry.

[source:businesstech]