Others will have more idea than me KB, but couple of things spring to mind,
Locking wheel nut..hide somewhere only you would be able to find it (taped under a seat for example), i would even suggest locking wheel nut on steel wheels.
Edit...make sure your tyre sizes are normal and fairly cheap, don't want £100 a corner low profiles to tempt them
Radio...choose a car with the radio built in, not a face off type as they will think the face will be in the car, and these are usually non coded.
I would fit a nasty noisy headlamp flashing alarm (you could possibly fit a slightly illegal one far too loud for normal use, just for when you are in the wilds, using extra horns for example, but with its own back up in case they snip the battery cable)
Ideal car for leaving i would have thought would be a multispace or similar, not an interior thats likely to be useful to the type, and you can see in the whole vehicle (except for all those lovely cubbies where you could keep other stuff), so maybe rule out backed out windows.
Maybe keep a tartan rug and other signs that a senior couple own the car, seniors don't usually have elecrical gizmo's attractive to magpie's.
Aside from that, what does it say about our penal system when a person has to buy a car that useless n'er do wells don't find too tempting?
Edited by gordonbennet on 13/09/2008 at 09:29
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I live in Cornwall, I lived on The Bodmin Moor for 7 years, I have visited Dartmoor and Exmoor, left my car for hours on end & never had any trouble.
I do read about theft from cars in car parks and isolated areas, and I have no doubt that crooks go out "on the hunt" especially at this time of the year.
What do I do? well, numero uno is never leave anything at all on show, even a pastic bag with your boots left down in the footwell.
I always have some sort of rear window sticker showing that I'm not a tourist but a local. It does help to have an old banger - then (as I used to) you can leave everything unlocked.
These crooks are really opportunists, driving around looking for the camcorders, laptops etc., oftentimes left on full view by some unsuspecting tourist.
Dog.
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A lady I work with treats her 'P' reg Punto like a big handbag, lots of stuff everywhere. including CD's, loose change by the gearstick etc. Even been known to leave her purse in the door compartment on occasion , any comments that this could attract thieves are met with 'oh it will be fine - you worry too much!'
I'm the opposite, the only thing I leave on display in my car is the tax disc.
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Clean car policy. Nothing on display never leave any cash (even change) in the car - leave ash trays open. Certain substance mis-users will break in even to steal a quid's worth of small change. Never leave any documentation in the car. Neither of our cars have even got their service books in them now. If you leave, even a manky old jacket on the back seat they will break in on the off-chance that there's a wallet in a pocket.People will steal anything. If there are warning signs in car-parks, you can guarantee that there have been problems there.
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One point I would add is don't arrive at these places and then start piling stuff in the boot - you should never do that anywhere, as thieves watch for people doing it.
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...People will steal anything...
Certainly will, a well-used pair of shoes was the only thing taken the last time my car was broken into.
Some years ago, but it was the only time I relaxed my "nothing left on display" policy.
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In 40 years of driving, including intermittent journeys to darkest Liverpool, our vehicles have never been broken into (knowingly). I don't know the secret, but it is clearly riskier to leave nickable things visible in a new-to-newish car. As my cars are now 9 and 19, I have even dispensed with locking nuts on the alloys, as those are no longer trendy. Maybe I am just lucky.
Re the locking nuts - their nuisance value (taking wheels off for servicing) began to exceed their benefits when the keys started to fall apart.
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I leave our car open on the drive in all too frequent absent-minded moments. It has been 'molested' once and a packet of Tictacs was missed soon after (they failed to spot the week-old iPod Touch in the glovebox). Actually the piles of rubbish and food fragments my daughter leaves behind in the car probably overwhelmed the would-be thief's immune system within seconds of opening the door. This summer our car was left by the road in a small carpark, miles from any habitation in a remote part of Scotland for an entire week. It had been used as a scratching post by cattle, but it was unharmed and now the dung has been removed it looks nice and shiny again.
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Baskerville, you were truly lucky. Twenty odd years ago my sister, aged 18, was driving home from the far North to Auchterarder, when she skidded on some ice and went off the side of a remote hill. She was okay but her Datsun Cherry was a write-off - only the passenger box left whole. She was, fortunately, taken home by some kind people who had seen the car lights rolling down the hill and had arrived expecting to see casualties, not a wee lass standing by the road. When Pa went to see the car the following morning, it had been stripped of both contents and anything else removable.
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Baskerville you were truly lucky.
I don't think so; certainly not as lucky as your sister. I think a properly smashed up car is probably considered fair game for anyone who might find an alternator handy at some point; an obviously in use one is really only a target for the habitual criminal. Whisky Galore and all that. My current car and its predecessors have been abandoned in remote places on a regular basis for years and have been fine.
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I think it's all luck. I've left the car in very isolated places without harm. The only time I've had a car broken into was in the street to get at a removable radio/cassette. Bust the door lock open.
But I don't leave anything at all on view inside.
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A night working security guard lives quite near me. He parks his van version Astra Estate in the street with the back hatch type door ajar. There are "Beware of the guard dog" stickers on the vehicle and inside is a real guard dog. I've learnt that his landlady doesn't like dogs, so the animal contentedly (apparently) sleeps in the van all day. You won't be surprised to hear the security chap is quite happy to leave his van unlocked in this way.
Is there a new market out there, or a thing already available, for a device that gives a good loud impression of a dog? I've often thought that for the home you could connect a realistic dog bark sound to follow a door bell ring - that ought to put them off.
Edited by Dulwich Estate on 13/09/2008 at 13:08
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Shame to say it but they will nick anything theses days and there is no deterrent.
Plod not interested and even if caught and they plead guilty they get sent scuba diving in Egypt as a punishment.
It is the same scum time and again working the same patch.
Only solution a complete junker. Empty. No radio. Concealed engine cut out switch. Even then they'll probably have a go but after a few attempts they'll get to recognise it and leave it alone.
Also good for muddy boots and clothes,
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Plod not interested and even if caught and they plead guilty they get sent scuba diving in Egypt as a punishment.
Uhoh. Somebody has been smoking the Daily Mail again.
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I am extremely grateful for the advice offered here. Couple of points I certainly wouldn't have thought of and firm reminder to empty the car as described. Thank you.
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A distinction has to be made between the pondlife who hope to pinch things from your car, and those intending to drive the whole thing away for resale or export. Their targets and strategy will be different, and your response will depend on which group you are more worried about. As for alarms, I suspect most people ignore them, probably believing the car has been knocked or overheated. Probably better than nothing though.
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...Uhoh. Somebody has been smoking the Daily Mail again...
Dunno about that, but for low-level offences there is little fear of detection - the clear-up rate is tiny - and little fear of punishment for the tiny few who are caught - the jails are full.
I would introduce the death penalty for every offence from stealing an apple upwards.
I wouldn't have to execute very many because the message would soon get about, then all fruit - and everything and everybody else - would be left alone.
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I would introduce the death penalty for every offence from stealing an apple upwards. I wouldn't have to execute very many because the message would soon get about then all fruit - and everything and everybody else - would be left alone.
You are Robert Mugabe and I claim my £5.
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I would introduce the death penalty for every offence from stealing an apple upwards.
What about dangerous driving or parking on double-yellow lines? I hope your new dictatorship won't go soft on those things because it's too busy concentrating on apple thieves.
Give the parking wardens an AK47 and shoot-to-kill orders, and then I'll believe you mean business.
;)
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As you probably realise, I'm using an extreme example to make a serious point.
At present, the law-abiding citizen is scared to leave his property anywhere, lest it be stolen, vandalised etc.
I want the non-law-abiding person to be scared to touch it, lest he be punished.
To instil that fear, punishment must be severe, which it most certainly is not under the present sentencing regime.
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Class A dependants won't and don't care about punishment regimes - all they care about is the here and now of getting a fix and will do almost anything to get that next fix - the only fear of being caught is not getting that fix. You can threaten them with death sentences but that won't feature in getting what they want.
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At present the law-abiding citizen is scared to leave his property anywhere lest it be stolen vandalised etc
Mostly because he believes the hype, rather than the evidence that most categories of crime have been falling since the 1990s.
I want the non-law-abiding person to be scared to touch it lest he be punished.
A high proportion of theft is drug-related, and scary stuff won't make much difference to the average junkie desperate to steal anything to pay for a quick fix.
If you really want to cut crime, legalise drugs and allow junkies to get their fix without handing a fortune to criminal rackets. Without that simple measure to reduce which drives thefts, all tough-on-crime rhetoric is useless posturing.
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See I can agree with you three times in 24 hours. Richard Brunstrom has a rather primitive take on it, but fundamentally he's right.
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....class A dependents don't care about punishment regimes...
PU,
Agreed, but when they are locked up they are not carrying out acquisitive crime.
I recall a judge locking up a prolific burglar and telling him: "The public deserve a break from your behaviour."
One of the many problems with legalising drugs is that addicts who are off their faces behave in unpredictable ways.
They are a danger to themselves, which you will not be surprised to learn doesn't bother me, but they are also a danger to others, which does.
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One of the many problems with legalising drugs is that addicts who are off their faces behave in unpredictable ways. They are a danger to themselves which you will not be surprised to learn doesn't bother me but they are also a danger to others which does.
Then lock 'em away in junkiejail, if you want to. Build big camps full of free smack behind the razor wire, if you don't want junkies on the loose. Brutal, but it might work.
But the current policy leaving them free to be as antisocial as their drugs make them, but by criminalising their drugs it requires them to feed their expensive habits only by endless thieving.
If we set out to design a system guaranteed to create high levels of theft (to feed the habits) and violence (by drug dealers maintaining their business), we could hardly have a more efficient setup than the status quo in which we howl at our politicians to tackle the symptoms.
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...Brutal, but it might work...
NW,
Agree entirely - both with "brutal" and "might".
Perhaps we could try a mixture of my lock 'em up stick and your legalise it carrot.
At least the drug users I throw in jail would have fewer excuses.
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Perhaps we could try a mixture of my lock 'em up stick and your legalise it carrot.
I regard legalisation as less of a carrot than a booby trap. The advantage is not for the junkies, but for the rest of who can avoid the robberies.
But the mixture might work
At least the drug users I throw in jail would have fewer excuses.
The downside is that I don't see that putting them in jail is going to leave them any better-behaved when they come out; they may get a lot worse. Is this a throw-away-the-key jail?
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Is this a throw-away-the-key jail?>>
Put it this way, it wouldn't have a revolving front door. :)
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Quite so, Andrew. Very valid point. I did experience the loss of a year old car at the hands of a car jacker who made off in it under my very nose. An extremely unpleasant experience. That was very predetermined and organized. I'm now equally concerned about the other aquatic mulm you refer to. As we speak I'm clearing the car out and finding a place for everything - out of sight! Thank you.
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Now we have sorted out the drug problem back to the topic. The 'clean car policy' is the best with cubbyholes left open. A teal leaf will think nothing of doing untold damage for a few pence gain. Their mindset is to take a cursory glance and anything that seems like an opportunity they will go for. I don't think an alarm is a deterrent, after all the damage is done before it is activated. If you are planning to park it somewhere remote then remove everything you are not going to take with you. Strange as it my seem you would be better putting all your nic nacs in a bag and secreting it somewhere nearby.
As for the vehicle itself, somewhere remote will give the car thief as much time as they wish. Wheels can be fitted with locks other than that if its not your day, well its not your day!
Biggest shame is that we have to take these precautions at all.
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There are 2 things I would like to add ... Not all "class A Dependants" are toe rags, only those that can't afford to pay for their fix.
A drug addict, or any kind of addict, is still a human being when you strip away their addiction = It is society itself that needs to be healed, as in "Give me the child for seven years - and I will give you the man".
Dog.
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You're right Dog a sweeping generalization from me. Trouble is after nearly 30 years exposure to the worst cases in society you get a bit jaded.
Top tip:-
Remove any sat nav bracketry and suction marks, and avoid the temptation to set "home" as your house on the actual device. I've set someone else's in another village - call it my own brand of retribution for a career in crime.
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PU, setting someone's address as "home", as a target for tea-leaves, is a wonderfully contemporary form of revenge. Very clever! (so long as there's nowt in your car with the real address of PU Towers written on it)
I guess I'd better reprogram my own satnav, although that "home" button is very handy.
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I guess I'd better reprogram my own satnav although that "home" button is very handy.>>
Don't have one of these but...
Would it not be possible to program 'home' as a few streets away so it would still be useful but not give anything meaningful away?
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That's what I've done, but with a ne'er-do-well's postcode.
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'Mostly because he believes the hype, rather than the evidence that most categories of crime have been falling since the 1990s.'
Standard NuLab lie. We now have the British Crime Survey rather than the numbers of actual crimes so that NuLab can pretend crime is falling rather than rising at an expotential rate.
I could list all of the obvious frauds built in to the BCS but a quick Google search will give you what you need to know.
Plus frankly all you need to do is look out the window.
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Just going back to OP's question - I would add - never pull over the load compartment tonneau cover if you are leaving an estate car. The scrotes will assume that you have pulled it over to hide something, whether there is something in there or not, and will smash a rear side window to get in and have a look. I know, I've had it happen on my first Mondeo estate.
In fact, estate cars are completely useless from a security point of view. My current work takes me out into the countryside and I have to leave my estate car, sometimes for several hours - but I never leave anything valuable in it. I have no alternative, so I just leave any spare old clothes, boots etc on full view. It can be seen that the car is not just 'abandoned' as I have a sign on the dash concerning my work which indicates that I will be back at any time.
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Or even better, program it with the address of the nearest police station!
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Car thieves are the most transparent badge snobs of all in my limited experience of them. The only cars of mine which were interfered with, broken into or stolen were two Golf GTis and a couple of BMWs. All my other cars have thus far remained unscathed but have come equipped with less emotive badging. Of course my wife had, as usual, to prove me wrong on this theory by pointing out that she had her Astra nicked a few years ago. I contend that you can always find an exception to prove a rule.....
;-)
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