How many cars do you think are stolen every year? The number has been falling of late; but on average, there were two cars stolen every minute. That amounts to a million cars every year. You need to be happy about that number, because it used to be much, much higher. Before you jump to the conclusion that this makes for some very good news, you probably want to know about another figure that's taken a serious hit - the number of cars recovered from thieves. Today, it's only about one in two stolen cars that is recovered by the police after a complaint by some unhappy owner. It's just a never-ending catch-me-if-you-can game. The manufacturers design some sophisticated antitheft system and advertise that your automobile insurance rates are going to improve dramatically once you install the system; and they do for a short time; until the car thieves figure out a way to defeat said high-tech system.
There happens to be something you can do to help your automobile insurance rates other than to install a theft prevention system. You could install a car recovery system. You could either go with something like OnStar that uses a cell phone connection and GPS among other things to help you locate a car after it's stolen, or you could go with something like LoJack.
This is a system that dispenses with the expensive cell phone connection and GPS. Instead, it uses simple shortwave radio. Any police unit near the car can pick up the signal. Once a police officer receives the message and receives a full stolen car report for more information on what the car looks like, he can locate the car with a visual check in the neighborhood. LoJack signals can be read by any police car within a 5-mile radius. OnStar actually has a pretty cool feature: once it realizes that the car is being stolen, it begins to slow the car down, helping it stopped gently. Once the car stops OnStar turns the car off and makes it impossible to start again. So which one should you buy - the simple shortwave radio based LoJack or the high-tech OnStar?
OnStar will work as long as it gets a cellular signal and a GPS signal and as long as it's actually being driven and not towed. The thief who is tows the car he steals can simply disconnect the battery and completely disable OnStar. LoJack does not depend on the car's battery. It has its own. And the device can be hidden in any number of places in the car. Better still, a shortwave signal gets to a lot of places that a GPS signal or cellular signal never could. Perhaps the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
LoJack boasts a spectacular success rate with nine out of ten stolen cars always found. OnStar has a slightly less impressive success rate of eight out of ten cars. Going with one of these two recovery systems will certainly help your automobile insurance rates. If you're really interested in not having your car stolen in the first place, you should probably be more careful than the owners of lots of stolen cars. Never leave your car keys in your car. Make sure that you park your car in some place that's in plain sight of everyone. And make sure that you use simple means such as a Ravelco kit.
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