Car theft

[simonjedrake]

Originally Posted by Director76

Shopping around for insurance this week, reasonable quote from respectable insurance co (RSA)...ah they said, your vehicle will attract a mandatory theft excess of £1350, compared to a damage excess of £500, oh and the two excesses are additive (so £1850 theft excess). I live in a sleepy town with the car behind locked gates every night!

Keyless + desirable(ish!) car coming to bite us?

As I live just down the road from you and with many insurances being PostCode driven, have you tried getting a quote from LV who are pretty Volvo friendly....

[bigcj]

My local police recently did a check of 90 cars parked overnight, 20% were insecure and many with personal valuables on display. Perhaps we all have a part to play to make life more difficult for the scum who blight our communities. We have known for years that keyless provide opportunities for a certain category of criminal and there have been numerous articles providing advice on how to frustrate their attempts, yet many owners don't do anything to protect their asset. I don't disagree that manufacturers could do more but in reality some bright spark will work out a way of defeating a system and share it on the internet or within
the college of crime.

[Deman77]

Insurance industry is not motivated to reduce premiums. The larger the premiums the larger the profits even if you keep margins unchanged. You can see that with natural disasters - slight dip, recalibrate the models and the. More than make up for it. Even less motivation insurance brokers who take no risk and get larger commission on larger premiums. I am not saying they are dishonest just that they are not motivated to reverse the trend as it is much more profitable in the long run. Car manufacturers - whilst they may see a small advantage against competition they know it would not last as would be quickly be copied so it is not worth large development costs.

Unfortunately there is no one to lobby the government to reverse the trend - corporate world had no incentive in fact it works for them, the very rich would deal with their thefts themselves or will get the priority police attention plus it’s not that big a deal for them as it represents a very small % of their wealth, the broad voting majority don’t get affected as either don’t drive or drive cars that don’t get stolen. It’s the slightly better off part of the middle class again - who is low priority for the government and have been for a while.
Just accept this as another indirect tax increase (lower police service for the same taxes resulting in higher insurance costs).
The only thing I see reversing this is that our surveillance state push go so far that it will be virtually zero cost for government to turn on crime monitoring. Not sure I look forward to that.

[sjc123456789]

Some good points here -
I agree the insurance companies aren’t that bothered, they take money to insure you against a risk - they make money whatever the risk. That’s why all our pensions are invested in insurance companies.
You’re always going to have thefts - I set a tracking company up in 2001 after working for Panasonic / car electronics for 15 years. Back in the day it was the radio / cd / satnav etc - as well as cars. Now the electronics are cheaper and it’s the cars and their spares. We had tracking system (gps) based and got vehicles recovered in minutes in some cases - with the cooperation of the police.
But then, as now, some potential/customer baulk at paying for the service - saying they’re insured!

I think in all cases it’s up to the individual to decide on their risk and protect themselves. Information / knowledge is a powerful tool to help. Learn how thieves work and protect against that threat. Tracking devices can help - plus they can help track young, old or at risk people - it doesn’t have to just be for security.
Learn how the technology works and how to defeat it - have you ever had for example your phone in the same pocket as your car keys and found the car won’t open? Just as thieves can extend the keyfobs range, as many of us do with WiFi extenders - you can also stop them doing it. Try putting your keys in a faraday cage or putting them with something that will distort the signal, (basically a metal, tin foil, crisp packet type container) a bit of trial and error and you can stop the key transmitting for nothing (scrap or waste product). It’s quiet simple really - “can you be quiet I can’t hear.....”

I don’t think anybody will entirely eliminate car / thelfs, my personal view is you just have to make your assets less desirable - some thieves are professional, like many they’ll take the low hanging fruit.

:-)

[karlak]

Just purchased a couple of faraday pouches from Amazon. We have 2 cars in the household with keyless entry. They work a treat. Found ones that were a little larger to put the spares in as well.

Was worrying me, as in out area a fair few keyless cars have been stolen recently.

[gaby]

Keyless entry, what a wonderful feature

[SimNugget]

Originally Posted by gaby

Keyless entry, what a wonderful feature

I know, I never spec it but sometimes it is standard which is a PITA.

[gaby]

Originally Posted by SimNugget

I know, I never spec it but sometimes it is standard which is a PITA.

That's true, although in the SPA cars it can be disabled (or rather de-fused )