161–170 of 535 posts
I have an older RV that people sometimes try to steal (it's usually meth heads wanting to live on it; I've taken to leaving a plaque on the dash saying that if they want a hot meal instead, just knock on my door). The alarm is aftermarket, and silent. All it does is make the fuel pump go in reverse. (The fuel pump is also aftermarket) It's been hilarious a couple times.
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I don't get what people are stealing from parked cars? You can't remove radios anymore. What are they taking? Surely nobody's leaving a laptop or a purse in a car?
They will not hesitate in San Francisco to break a $300 window to steal the change out of your ashtray.
Edit:
For those unaware SF downgraded a ton of (formerly felony I believe) property crime to low level misdemeanors with very light sentencing guidelines (termed "catch and release" by many) which results in nearly zero law enforcement action being taken against them . The result of this is that all sorts of petty theft and theft adjacent behavior (like breaking into cars) is far more rampant than in many other cities because (obviously).
I support treating petty property crime as petty but you can't accidentally allow "crime with a victim" type crime to go unenforced in the process. Victimizing other people can't be an activity that has positive ROI in the long term.
I have an older RV that people sometimes try to steal (it's usually meth heads wanting to live on it; I've taken to leaving a plaque on the dash saying that if they want a hot meal instead, just knock on my door). The alarm is aftermarket, and silent. All it does is make the fuel pump go in reverse. (The fuel pump is also aftermarket) It's been hilarious a couple times.
> The alarm is aftermarket, and silent. All it does is make the fuel pump go in reverse. Would you mind disclosing what brand/model this alarm is? This would be great for a couple of “issues” I’ve been having. If you aren’t comfortable saying publicly, could you send me a message with the info? And Amazon/Aliexpress/eBay link?
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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
AFAIK, people don't really steal stock radios anymore. Or at least, it's not very common. 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.
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You’re in a public place, have no reasonable expectation to privacy, and the recording is not intrusive, so perfectly legal.
At least in Spain* it does not work like that, there are very stringent limitations on what you can record on the street, e.g. through dashcams or tesla sentinel mode: https://www.aepd.es/sites/default/files/2019-09/informe-juri... For example, you can't use dashcam recordings of an accident in trial. * And I don't want to spend a bunch of time reading law but quite sure this is very tied in with GDPR, so I'd say tha…
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Since I've lived in US cities, yes. Almost daily do I hear a car alarm. Probably just a factor of: 1. More cars around me in the city than in the small town I came from. 2. More things that can set off the alarms (loud motorcycles being a big one).
I live in Berlin in an area that has many parking cars. I rarely hear an alarm go off. Maybe 2-3 times a year, if at all. I also only know this from anglo-saxony media.
I have an older RV that people sometimes try to steal (it's usually meth heads wanting to live on it; I've taken to leaving a plaque on the dash saying that if they want a hot meal instead, just knock on my door). The alarm is aftermarket, and silent. All it does is make the fuel pump go in reverse. (The fuel pump is also aftermarket) It's been hilarious a couple times.
Also, anyone ever take you up on the hot meal?
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People in dense cities learn to deal with it one way or another. Somewhere like Manhattan, I can practically guarantee you there are going to be sirens (which are probably even louder) during a given night as well.
Boston does this better, where if there isn't traffic, sirens aren't run. At night, sirens are relatively rare. Especially compared to Seattle and Boise where I've also lived. In Germany, I only ever heard a couple sirens the whole time I lived there, and none directly on my street.
How odd. — I rather value my sleep.
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I sometimes wonder about the ratio of assaults, etc. the panic button has ever curtailed to the number of loud horn blares that have awoken people, distracted people to the point where they've had an accident, etc.
It's definitely a "find your car in the giant lot" button if you ask me
> 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.
I wonder why author think that it hard to steal modern cars. This IS a billion bucks business. Car part prices are high as never. Why not some person to buy replacements from shady market?
FYI, for well over a decade now even plain looking keys that you put in a lock and turn have some RFID thing inside of them the car authenticates against, before it will cooperate. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32826625117.html
Still, you may have a point. It don't know what it's like in the USA, but in Australia this has lead to a corrosponding up tick in home break & enters. Since the car can't be stolen without the key by doing anything less than towing it away, they steal the keys. Regularly.