Vehicle Anti-Theft Devices

In 2008 the number of vehicles that were stolen in the US has increased to 2.1 million. Over the years this has been on an increasing trend despite all the technology that car makers have incorporated in their new cars to secure them. In short there is no way you can stop a thief from stealing your car if he has the single minded objective to do so. The only thing you can do is to deter them and make their task much more difficult. Below we will list some items and methods that you can use to deter thieves so that they will lose interest in your car and move to easier targets.

Preventive Measures

These are the products that will help to discourage the thief from deciding to steal your car. The main idea here is to make these products visible to the thief so that the thief will instinctively know that they are going to be wasting valuable time with your car. Here is a list of common preventive devices:

- Steering Wheel Locks: These items are basically long bars with locks that will make steering your vehicle extremely difficult or even impossible of the lock isn’t removed. These bars are often made of high strength steel and are extremely difficult to remove without the key.

- Wheel Locks: These are not normally commercially available products but can sometimes be bought through law enforcement agents or parking companies. What it does is it locks one of the car’s wheels in place thus immobilizing it unless it is released with a key. As with the steering lock, these clamps are very tough and almost impossible to remove without the key.

- Alarm Systems: If a thief gets too close to the car or attempts to break-in the car will make loud noises that will scare the thieves away. The louder the sound and more irritating it is, the more the thief will be deterred.

- Electronic Key Cards: These can come in the form of an encoded magnetic car or a radio frequency card which needs to be inside the car in order for the car to function. These items are relatively new and have shown to work particularly well as rewiring the car to by-pass these security measures takes too much time for the thief.

Recovery Devices

These devices aren’t used to prevent a theft but used mostly to recover cars that have already been stolen. This method has been increasingly been used to with thefts lately and have shown that they are more effective over the long run as thieves will have to invest the time without knowing if their time will be wasted. These products can also be used in conjunction with preventive devices to secure your car even more. Below is a list of common recovery devices.

- GPS Tracking devices: These devices are installed in a secret location in your car. When the car is on it will send a signal to the GPS satellites which will pinpoint the exact location of your car. Once you find your car is stolen you can see where it is being taken too and also be reported directly to the police.

- Kill Switch: There are two types, the active one or the passive one. A passive switch is basically just a switch to the fuel pump of your car. If it isn’t on then the fuel pump won’t work. These switches are hidden somewhere in the car and only the owner knows where. An active switch is one that can be turned off by the user or by the car’s computer if it senses a theft in progress.

- VIN and Registration Number Etching: This is where you can etch or sandblast the registration number of your vehicle onto different parts of your car. This way it becomes easier for the police to determine where your car is even if the thieves used a fake registration plate.

If you are concerned that your car might be targeted by thieves then you can use any number of these measures to reduce their “attractiveness” to the car substantially. If however your car is still stolen then the only other measure are the recovery devices or a comprehensive car insurance coverage.