Over the past few weeks, we’ve been working on a major update to the state level pages at carinsurancelist.com. During the preparation of all 50 pages, one thing became pretty obvious: auto theft rates have declined substantially across the entire country over the past 10 years. It was also interesting to note that a high auto theft rate in a particular state was a fairly accurate predictor of high car insurance rates in that state.

The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) recently released a report which reinforces the data we’ve compiled for each state. Still, there are some specific metropolitan area in the country which have high auto theft rates (interestingly, 8 of the top 10 are in California).

According to the NICB report:

The FBI’s preliminary 2010 crime statistics published last month indicate a 7.2 percent drop in vehicle thefts from 2009’s number of 794,616. If that estimate holds when the final statistics are published in the fall, it would result in the lowest annual vehicle thefts since 1967.

These findings go against the grain of conventional wisdom. In a down economy, property theft crimes tend to increase rather dramatically. Why are auto theft rates bucking this historic trend, particularly coming out of the worst recession since the 1930s?

There are a couple of reasons that make sense.

The first is that newer model cars, even economy models, are now equipped standard with a fairly robust anti-theft system. Most of these systems are active, rather than passive, which means that the system is armed when you exit the vehicle and lock the doors. Starting circuitry is disabled, so hotwiring a car is not the easy task that it once was for a joy-riding car thief.

It’s also no small matter that there are a lot fewer older vehicles on the road today as compared to just a few years ago. The government-sponsored “cash for clunkers” program in 2009 got a lot of older vehicles off the road that may not have had active theft deterrent systems.

A secondary reason is that with the general acceptance of remote entry devices (key fobs), the simple act of locking a car and arming the theft deterrent system requires no more than pushing a button (beep beep!) when exiting a vehicle.

The biggest deterrent to car theft is making it more difficult for a potential thief to steal your car. Anything that adds a layer of security and takes a thief more time to disable (steering column lock, an electronic cutoff, etc.) or that makes your car easily identifiable or traceable is going to make your car a less attractive target for someone who wants to steal it.