Off-road bike riding is fun, relatively inexpensive, and a great way to spend a weekend. But what about the often forgotten costs of theft and the abundant lack of dirt bikes with insurance?
The dirt bike culture is booming in Australia and more people are choosing to spend their weekends carving up the countryside on off-road bikes than ever before. But with the increase in off-road bike sales also comes the inevitable increase in dirt bike thefts, and with many people not realising the importance of bike insurance quite a widespread problem is occurring in that people aren't covered for these thefts.
Off-road bike owners often don't realise the importance of bike insurance. Most dirt bikes aren't kept on public roads, but locked in garages which gives the assumption of safety. The biggest "cost" that riders generally associate with their bikes is that they'll get involved in a small crash while out riding. As the dirt bikes are built to handle these small accidents with minimum damage, the need for motorcycle insurance is often dismissed as an unnecessary cost.
Australia's National Motor Vehicle Theft Reduction Council has done a study into motor vehicle thefts and found that about 1 in ten stolen vehicles is a motorbike. In addition to this less than a quarter of these are actually recovered, whereas actual cars have a recovery rate of around 80 percent. These alarming figures, combined with the increase in the number of motorcycle thefts themselves, highlight the need for dirt bike insurance.
Another, often overlooked, side of bike insurance is that you can get extras which not only cover your riding gear, but also any items that you have stored and locked in the bike's panniers. This can include cameras, laptops and music players. So if your equipment, but not the actual bike, get stolen, you'll still be covered.
