Many years ago I told my wife that when half the houses in the road had intruder alarms, that was when we should invest in one.
Now it looks as if we have reached a similar stage with steering wheel locks.
I have done some research but nothing beats personal experience.
Anyone?
TIA
Alan
Not really a lot of point anymore given decent battery powered angle grinders
There aren't many silly enough to risk getting stabbed when trying to stop a scrote using one on a car and there is f*ck all chance that the cops will will show up in time if you call them. Makes more sense to get a much more secure caar and put a tracker in it. But even then, its far from clear that the cops will bother to run it to ground if it gets stolen.
Time to move house. ;-)
Tim
Most are about as useful as a chocolate teapot. You just have to hacksaw through the steering wheel or use a battery angle grinder.
Hasn't your car got an immobiliser?
Watch
If half the street has them, you may be late to the party.
"After gaining access, the villains climb in, start the engine and activate a briefcase-sized jammer which suppresses the signals from the vehicles own GPS and any third party anti-theft software and drive the car to a warehouse. Once there, the thieves activate an even bigger jamming device with about 30 aerials while they find and remove the SIM cards and GPS signal devices, which can be hidden all over the car, often in the roof or the floor."
It's not just about Land and Range Rovers (I hope that's not what you've got) and the conclusion is:
“If they want it, whatever it is, they will take it. But if you make yours harder to steal, they might just move on to the next one,” says our ex-policeman. “I’d recommend a big yellow steering lock.”If half the street already has them...
Or swap to a less attractive (to thieves) car than your neighbours have.
Joe quoted:
Guardian journalist must have listened to Stephen Fry describing how GPS transmits to the satellites ...
Maybe turn the vehicle into a man trap then call the cops. Brian
Indeed.
10 years ago, I accidently left key in boot lock of my 18 year old crappy Proton in street outside son's house in a non-salubrious area of South Leeds for a weekend and nobody touched it!!
We quite often don't lock our tatty old (2009) Citroen C5. It's still a lovely, reliable, comfortable car though.
Its another reason to own low mileage but older cars. Thieves can read the age, but not the mileage.
And they are better value for money
Who wants low mileage? Cars wear out much more slowly nowadays, engines go on for ever[ish].
They don't have to. The tracker operator will tell the owner were the vehicle is. (Going on for 25 years ago a van owned by the company I then worked for was stolen, the driver didn't think he need bother locking it and removing the keys while he made a delivery. But it had a tracker and a few days later the company was told where the van was and I went to fetch it, carefully hidden away where it wouldn't be found casually, while the thieves waited to see if it had a tracker, about 25 miles from where it had been stolen. I've always wondered why it took several days to be informed of the location.)
Peter Johnson snipped-for-privacy@parksidewood.nospam wrote
But are you actually stupid enough to risk getting stabbed to death when you show up at your car with the scrotes still in it ?
Some scrotes apparently do just leave it parked for a while to see if the owner or the cops work out where it is and recover it, but its a bit risky doing that yourself.
Yeah, haven't noticed any of the delivery monkeys actually taking the keys with them.
Or the cops either for that matter.
Around my way they definitely lock their vehicles every time.
Yeah ? Bizarre
Delivery drivers may have 100+ parcels to deliver in a day and tracking my packages I can see the route they take - and through some of the more dodgy areas of my town.
Doesnt explain why ours don't lock theirs in the same situation,
round here, they even leave the engine running!
It'd probably kill the battery and wear out the starter/flywheel gear, starting and stopping that many timer a day.
They really should be fitted with something that allows it to run, but not be moved and that is easy and quick to "lock" and "unlock".
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