Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

news.umich.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 576 posts

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#351

Post by [deleted] »

gadders wrote: post #222
Waterluvian wrote: post #14

I knew someone with a shitty pickup truck where he wired a light switch into the fuel pump and hid it under the steering column. The truck would be stolen something like 5 times a year and every time he would find it abandoned a km or so away when the gas in the line ran out. I drove in it once to get lunch and near the beginning the car begins sputtering and he's like, "oh right, you're thirsty" and reached under an…

In the UK in WW2 for a period of time everyone had to disable their vehicles when unattended by removing the rotor arm https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/47622/

[deleted]

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#352

Post by kube-system »

EGreg wrote: post #333
Terr_ wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, let's intentionally omit locks from equipment that is designed not to fall into enemy hands. Slow down there with the sarcasm and think about the actual requirements or use-cases first. Your average operable military vehicle is in one of three situations: 1. Actively occupied or guarded from theft by current owners/operators with guns who will not tolerate strangers getting close. 2. Parked somewhere in the m…

How many tanks and materiel did Ukrainians take from the Russians? On October 2022 it was an estimated 453 Russian tanks. I guess 1, 2, 3 don't work that well in battle https://www.newsweek.com/how-russian-tanks-captured-ukraine-... Also for other things too: https://nypost.com/2023/05/11/ukrainians-strike-russians-wit...

Are you suggesting that locks would have prevented this?

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#353

Post by talldatethrow »

Brusco_RF wrote: post #331
talldatethrow wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how this could possibly reduce the battery lifespan. Flashing the lights takes a few watts. The vehicle will then be started and charged and never reach any lower level of discharge where damage would occur. Yes, if you flashed your lights everytime 500+ times and got your battery to a meaningful low voltage where it barely started every time, sure. But not in the use case presented here.

Consider two cars with fading batteries at the end of their lifecycles. They are on their last start before needing to be replaced. They both have exactly enough energy to start the car with nothing left over, however one car has this system installed so it needs to flash the headlights/wipers/windows first. That car fails to start

That's like saying we should also turn off keyless entry sensors to make our battery last an extra day too, since theyr draining power as your car sits all weekend, and then one Monday morning your car won't start when you need to go to work. Does it really matter if your car starts 3000 times from a battery or 3001 times?

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#355

Post by jeffreygoesto »

Colleague had a Mini Cooper in the 80es where the Choke could be pulled but pushing it back did nothing. There was one traffic light that was always red (for the street with no priority) where the owner went around and pushed the lever back. The car was stolen once and found with the carb flooded after a mile or so.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#356

Post by talldatethrow »

AnnikaL wrote: post #199
jjnoakes wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can a gf shoot her exbf that she gave the keycode to last month? How is this different from a physical key?

If anything, it might be easier to change a keycode than to change a lock.

This a good point, except that I've found that people with keycode locks on door and garages hand out the keycode like candy for some reason.. way more than anyone else hands out physical keys.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#357

Post by Toutouxc »

elzbardico wrote: post #232
matsemann wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, never considered valet parking to actually be a real thing. Isn't it annoying having to wait for someone to drive your car? I'd almost pay more not to have to do it.

Pal, I've seen wallet parking across several countries in the world. Latin American, Western, and Eastern Europe, I just got curious about where you live to never have seen it. And to answer your question: No, valet parking is usually useful because the parking place is far from where you're going (usually a hotel or restaurant). Having the valet saves you the walk from the lot to the place where you're going. It is…

Not who you’re replying to, but I’m from the Czech Republic, have been driving for 10+ years, live in Prague (the capital), I have never even seen valet parking anywhere. Even the local Hilton hotel doesn’t have it.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#358

Post by gruez »

rocqua wrote: post #326
thomastjeffery wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the system already check the latency from key fob to car antenna? Better yet, you could use two antennas in the car, and triangulate the key fob.

The latency check is usually not sensitive enough to prevent a car being stolen from the drive-way from a relayed key that lies near the front door. For reference 20 meters is about 66 nano-seconds.

Why not? A 2GHz is very attainable in modern CPUs and translates to 0.0005ns per cycle. This isn't theoretical either. 802.11mc[1] is a real standard and is accurate to 1-2m.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11mc

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#359

Post by Terr_ »

EGreg wrote: post #333
Terr_ wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, let's intentionally omit locks from equipment that is designed not to fall into enemy hands. Slow down there with the sarcasm and think about the actual requirements or use-cases first. Your average operable military vehicle is in one of three situations: 1. Actively occupied or guarded from theft by current owners/operators with guns who will not tolerate strangers getting close. 2. Parked somewhere in the m…

How many tanks and materiel did Ukrainians take from the Russians? On October 2022 it was an estimated 453 Russian tanks. I guess 1, 2, 3 don't work that well in battle https://www.newsweek.com/how-russian-tanks-captured-ukraine-... Also for other things too: https://nypost.com/2023/05/11/ukrainians-strike-russians-wit...

So what? None of that wall-spaghetti supports an argument for keyed ignition locks as the solution. It's not like those Russian troops had just stepped away to get coffee.

If anything, it suggests other things like:

1. Russia shouldn't have tried a desperate blitzkreig through muddy terrain.

2. The Russian military should have had better policies/equipment to destroy or scuttle the ofabandoned tanks.

3. Russian tank-drivers should have had better training so that they didn't get their vehicles stuck in embarrassing ways.

Plus it's not like the opposing force will be a bunch of joyriding delinquents: Even if you completely remove your abandoned truck's steering-wheel and pedals, your way out, they've got mechanics and tools and factories, they can just fit their own. Truly denying them any valuable salvage is actually a lot of work/damage.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#360

Post by scintill76 »

oxfordmale wrote: post #103
gruez wrote: post #16

>At the end of the three-year project, the team aims to have a commercially viable prototype that can be scaled up to commercial production, first as a theft deterrent device, and potentially later as a complete vehicle entry and control system that could replace traditional keys and fobs. What's the point of this? Modern cars already have engines that are cryptographically tied to keys[1]. They're not perfect, but i…

What about a classical mechanical key? I am referring to a laser cut key, the type that can't be easily lock picked, other than in Hollywood movies. The problem is relay theft, where thief's relay the signal of your fob key inside the house to the car via a simple antenna and amplifier system. Cryptographically signing won't help. However, this can be fixed by adding a motion sensor that makes key fobs go into a slee…

> However, this can be fixed by adding a motion sensor that makes key fobs go into a sleep mode when they have been inactive for a minute.

Now I'm wondering how hard it would be for the thieves to shake the ground outside the house enough to fool the motion sensor...

Post reply on HN