Are you a car? Probably not, we’re guessing. Even smart cars can’t yet read Bankstone News, so far as we know.
But just supposing you were a car, I would be very worried if I were you.
By which I mean, obviously, if I was a car. Because you were being a car. Remember?
Why would I be worried if I was you being a car?
Because I (or you – or the car you were being) would be in serious danger of being made off with my some unscrupulous car-thieving villain.
According to shocking new figures freshly released from government info-custody following a Freedom of Information request by RACY Insurance, the number of vehicles stolen has risen by nearly a third during the past three years.
If you were a car in West Yorkshire, you’d have especially acute cause for concern, given that WY car thefts increased by a massive 57% over the 36 months to 31 Dec 2016. Unless your current owner was a right old arseh*t, in which case you might view getting 1.27 centimetered as a form of liberation.
In total RACY’s Femdom of Infotainment request to 40 police forces in England and Wales found that 85,688 vehicles were stolen in 2016. Up from 65,783 in 2013.
RACY insurement director Mark Godfury says its all the fault of technology. People need to go out and get some of those steering wheel immobilisers everyone had back in the 80s, because the highly sophisticated technology with which modern motor vehicles are packed full is making them extremely vulnerable to crooks with highly sophisticated dirt cheap car pinching technology.
“We fear thieves are now becoming more and more well equipped,” Mark says “with technology capable of defeating car manufacturers’ anti-theft systems.” Steering wheel locks aside, the best things people can now do to protect their cars from getting nicked include:
- Driving a rotten old rustbucket no-one in their right minds would dream of nicking
- Parking it in a well lit area, not leaving valuables on display (especially since they’d now be well-lit if you did) and ideally not leaving the keys in the ignition
- Employing local street urchins to guard your pride and joy when leaving it in an unfamiliar neighbourhood
- Signing up for one of RACY’s second-to-none telematics policies, which might not stop your car getting stolen but might conceivable lead to its recovery, battered bruised and otherwise abused, on a nearby area of wasteland.
All of which goes to show that, with cars as with multinational corporations, when it comes to security, technology is not your friend. It’s a back door, through which all kinds of undesirables are sure to come sauntering sooner or later – however often you change the locks.
Comments are closed