131–140 of 535 posts
> Car theft rates have been since declining ever since, going from about 1.6 million annual incidents in the 1990s to around 800,000 in 2014. > Cars have gotten impossible to steal I’m confused how he makes this claim given his own statistic. So are all car thefts done with sophisticated hacking given the RFID tech is 25 years old? Still seems like a problem to me.
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Are panic buttons a US thing? I never saw one on a fob in Europe?
More specifically, a North American thing. They also exist in some other markets, but generally not in Europe, as you noticed. I have no idea if they are required by some obscure law, or if it is just tradition. Probably the latter. I don't know anyone who has ever used the panic button in a panic, but almost everyone can remember hitting it by accident.
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My car only beeps if I press lock twice.
Some people think that the honk/beep is to confirm that the car got locked and the alarm got activated. So they will press the lock button until they hear the confirmation.
If the author had a Ring doorbell (and looked at their crime reports), or participated on NextDoor, they would know that theft from parked cars is the number one problem in most neighborhoods. An alarm is still a good deterrent for people who do not park their cars in a garage.
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The best and only important deterrent is to not have anything to steal, especially in plain view. If everyone did this then theft from parked cars would drop to zero, and break-ins to near zero. Smash and grabbers don't care about alarms. They'll be gone in a few seconds anyway.
Right. The alarm makes them only target the easily available junk that is in plain view. With no alarm, the thief could quietly spend 30 minutes "working on" the vehicle so they could clear out your trunk, and maybe even a few parts like the radio/GPS
Your trunk should also be empty of anything valuable. There's no reason to keep much back there overnight. I guess thieves could steal my tire chains and donut right now, but that hardly seems worth the trouble.
If the author had a Ring doorbell (and looked at their crime reports), or participated on NextDoor, they would know that theft from parked cars is the number one problem in most neighborhoods. An alarm is still a good deterrent for people who do not park their cars in a garage.
The best and only important deterrent is to not have anything to steal, especially in plain view. If everyone did this then theft from parked cars would drop to zero, and break-ins to near zero. Smash and grabbers don't care about alarms. They'll be gone in a few seconds anyway.
Store your stuff in the trunk. Always. We all think it won't happen to us until it does.
Now if we could just disable the feature that causes the horn to honk when locking the vehicle with the key fob... As someone who lives on a residential street, but with a hospital at the far end, we have tons of patients, families, doctors, and nurses that park on our street to avoid paying for the garage. I get to listen to horns honking at all hours. A few cars (Acura comes to mind), do a bit better, in that they…
In the UK this is disabled in the ECU, as using your horn while stationary isn't allowed
Huh my car app has a 'honk' button that works when stationary, for finding it in car parks. Is that against regulation?
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Tesla probably has the best solution to this so far; they have cameras around the car that record movement and send it to the cloud. A tracking system would work only until thieves figure out how to disable it; at which point it just becomes another part to sell. The Tesla solution is nice because it live streams the carjacking to the owner, enabling them to pick out details about the thief that could be useful to ar…
This implies that Tesla can view the vicinity and location of your car at any time. Is that true? That would completely destroy any desire to own one.
Video is only recorded locally if Sentry mode is enabled (when parked) or Dashcam is enabled (when driving). Sentry mode prevents the car from going to sleep / opening the HV contactor, which costs a small amount of battery if it's enabled for long periods.
The car's location is accessible through the app, so this is sent through Tesla's servers.
If the author had a Ring doorbell (and looked at their crime reports), or participated on NextDoor, they would know that theft from parked cars is the number one problem in most neighborhoods. An alarm is still a good deterrent for people who do not park their cars in a garage.
The best and only important deterrent is to not have anything to steal, especially in plain view. If everyone did this then theft from parked cars would drop to zero, and break-ins to near zero. Smash and grabbers don't care about alarms. They'll be gone in a few seconds anyway.
Theft of airbags is very common as is theft of catalytic converters.
Airbag theft: https://wjla.com/news/local/the-dc-area-has-become-a-hot-spo...
Catalytic Converter theft impacting Prius owners. https://www.torquenews.com/8113/toyota-prius-owners-are-aski...
If the author had a Ring doorbell (and looked at their crime reports), or participated on NextDoor, they would know that theft from parked cars is the number one problem in most neighborhoods. An alarm is still a good deterrent for people who do not park their cars in a garage.
Personally, I don't think I've ever checked to see whether a car alarm is mine. What's the point?