Originally Posted by
124Spider
That number is only a bit over four times the actual number of annual bike thefts in the Netherlands (a bit over 100,000, which isn't that horrid given that bike ownership in the Netherlands is over four times per capita that of the USA, and 24% of Dutch people ride a bike daily.
Just because someone said it on the internet doesn't make it so....
Your number is based on thefts which were entered into official police reports while the higher number (~500,000) is estimated based on public surveys which asked whether they had a bike stolen and whether they had reported it to the police.