CAR owner Mr Aloysius Ng tries to make his car look nondescript to potential car thieves - he does not leave his laptop in the car, and takes his CashCard out after each trip.

No thief would want to break into a car like his , the 24-year-old undergraduate from the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) reckons.

However, an observant eye will see what he does not - a pair of Oakley sunglasses, worth about $300, perched atop his rear view mirror.

Like him, many Singaporean drivers take general precautions when they leave their vehicles in the carpark, a my paper survey revealed.

This is good news at a time when thefts from vehicles are rising - 465 in the first quarter of this year, compared to an average quarterly figure of 392 last year, according to the police.

On Monday, two thefts occurred in Rochor Road and Arab Street, between 5pm and 7pm. One car owner lost a laptop worth $1,700, while the other had a $1,500 laptop, $400 modem and a $300 hard drive stolen from his car.

On Wednesday, the police arrested two men, aged 41 and 43, who were believed to have stolen from at least 200 vehicles since last year. Their loot: $20,000 worth of items, including 17 CashCards and auto-passes, seven bank books and a pair of sunglasses.

my paper checked out 200 cars in Raffles Place and Rochor Road yesterday and found that only two had laptop bags on their front passenger seats. One in five contained shopping bags and bag packs.

Still, one third of the cars surveyed had CashCards tucked uncovered in their In-vehicle Unit.

Laptops, CashCards and cellphones are items most commonly stolen from cars, police said.

Some cars also have visible items which are expensive but not commonly thought of as valuables, like sunglasses and CDs.

Mr Kelvin Chua, 24, a SIM student, has about 50 CDs which he puts on the dashboard.

Sometimes, he leaves his $1,600 Takamini guitar in the rear seat as well. This puts the total value at $2,600 - it will be "very jialat" (awful) if they are stolen, he said.

However, he admits to being "too lazy" to keep his CDs in the boot or somewhere discreet.

It is also a common habit to leave haversacks in the car.

Though they often contain non-valuable items, they may attract thieves nonetheless.

However, for civil servant Mr Ethan Yeo, 29, it is "not worth the trouble" to put his bags in the boot. "If the thief takes it, it's too sad for him, because there's nothing in there," he said.

But even if the item stolen is not valuable, it will still hurt the driver's pockets to replace the smashed windows.

Replacing a windscreen or window costs about $100, though it is generally free with insurance cover, says Mr Joey Lim, 42, owner of car workshop Harmony Motor.

Another driver, Ms Zhuo Hui Ting, 25, who is unemployed, confesses she regularly leaves her bags and other belongings on the car seats.

"This kind of thing, you need to be bitten once, then you'll learn," she admitted.

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