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A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

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Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#71

Couldn't they just make the car blare non-stop alternating sirens for 10 minutes at a time, 4 times an hour for 12 hours, loud enough to get through drywall and double-paned windows, at the slightest perturbation? Although I don't own a car, I'm happy when I hear throughout the day and night that my neighbor's cars are well protected.

We had that in the 90's and 00's, cars still got stolen

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#72
Maybe I'm missing something, but in some of my international travels, rental cars had a keypad that had to be entered correctly prior to the key working. No key code entry, no run.

Put the keypad in 3 times incorrectly in a row, system blinks rad, you sat for an hour unless you called the rental place for an override key.

Voltage fluctuation aside, it seems like the same system.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#73
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guarantee you I, or anyone else with ~30m of training can get into 95% of homes without leaving much evidence that the locks were tampered with. House locks are very easy to pick open.

Most thieves are not trained in covert entry, they aren't lock pickers, they're desperate addicts looking to get some things to pawn for a fix.

Of course. Most thieves break in use the time honored "brick + window" method.

But I was refuting the specific idea that house locks are a tamper evident seal. They are trivially easy to bypass in a tamper evident manner.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#74
The GM EV1 had this solved early on: they didn't use keys at all - just a numeric PIN that you entered on the door and on the center console to start. ;)

http://www.kingoftheroad.net/charge_across_america/graphics_...

Slap your PIN in and hit the RUN button and it'd fire right up.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#75
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. What's even worse is that it takes a huge research grant to come up with this. > With a new $1.2 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation...

That amount of money is absolutely nothing compared to the waste that goes on in the startup industry. Remember the $445 million self driving pizza oven delivery van?

Startup waste is generally funded from investors though. This seems like it might be funded by government grants which are funded by taxes.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#76

This is a very engineering solution to a very not-engineering problem. Would this deter thieves? Possibly! Would thieves eventually be able to work around it? Also probably! Would it increase the friction of getting in and driving? Definitely! Today, your house keys are basically useless for security -- getting into your house is trivially easy both destructively and not. But we all use house keys because they feel s…

Another reason you have locks is to show intent to keep others out.

You can't shoot someone that walks into your home through an open door.

You can shoot someone that rams your door to open it.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did similar, except wired into the ignition circuit and with the control being a little cheap ebay RFID thing with the sensor on the underside of the dash. I kept a little RFID tag on my keys, chuck my keys up onto the dash when i'm ready to go and the truck is started with a pushbutton. I also put a cheater switch in the glove box in case i forgot my RFID tags. In my case it was motivated more by maintenance heada…

Hey! How do you know how to do that? Nobody can start this car but me, butthead!

Watched this movie last night :)

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#78
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…

Wasn't there a rash of thefts of Kia and Hyundai cars recently?

Yeah, they’re targeted specially because they do not have immobilizes.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#79
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…

Wasn't there a rash of thefts of Kia and Hyundai cars recently?

Because Kia tried to save money by removing said security systems from base models.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#80
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. What's even worse is that it takes a huge research grant to come up with this. > With a new $1.2 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation...

That amount of money is absolutely nothing compared to the waste that goes on in the startup industry. Remember the $445 million self driving pizza oven delivery van?

Domino's has a near $14B market cap. Disrupting pizza delivery is a worthwhile venture!
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