The media focuses on automobile thefts several times a year. It’s been a growing concern for the last several years. We’ll examine the statistics and then explain how a simple upgrade can help keep your vehicle safe. You might be surprised by how thieves are stealing vehicles and how simple it is to stop them in their tracks.
Automobile Thefts – A Growing Concern
If you think back a decade, it was very rare to know someone who had a vehicle stolen from their driveway. Now, it’s more likely that someone in your social group has fallen victim to automobile theft. You might be surprised to learn that auto thefts in the U.S. are still only a fraction of what they were in the 1990s and 2000s. While they are increasing, data from 2022 saw 282.7 thefts per 100,000 vehicles. By comparison, 2002 saw 432.9 thefts, and 1992 saw 631.5 thefts for the same population.
What caused the dip in thefts? The answer is simple: adding anti-theft systems to new cars and trucks. From simple resistors built into keys to complex transponder keys with 80-bit encryption algorithms, all these technologies hampered thieves’ abilities and efficiencies.
Why are we seeing an upturn again? Well, thieves have gotten smarter. They’ve learned to use keyless entry systems to unlock and start vehicles without physical damage. Once they get the car or truck to their shop, they can program new keys and ship the vehicle to another continent for sale. The theft process takes a matter of minutes, and a vehicle can be in a container at a port in hours, depending on where you live.
Top Stolen Vehicles in the United States
When shopping for a new car or truck, it’s essential to do your research. One of our staff members was recently in the new car market and consciously avoided one of the vehicles on the list below. The insurance rates for that vehicle were much higher than those of some competing products.
This list shows the most stolen vehicles in 2022, as the National Insurance Crime Bureau reported.
Let’s take a moment and analyze some of the trends. First, the sheer popularity of General Motors and Ford pickup trucks makes these vehicles a prime target. The same goes for the Honda Civic, Accord and CR-V, and the Toyota Camry. The TikTok video showing how to break into Hyundai and Kia vehicles is responsible for positions five through seven. As such, nothing on the list is a surprise.
Top Stolen Vehicles in Canada
Let’s look at stolen vehicles in Canada for a moment. Our brethren to the North aren’t just hockey, igloos and snowmobiles. In Ontario, a car was stolen once every 14 minutes in 2023, a 48% increase over the previous year. Stealing cars is a big business in Canada.
Here are Canada’s top 10 most stolen vehicles, according to data from the Équité Association.
As you can see, the victim list is quite different from that of the United States. High-value vehicles like the Lexus RX, Toyota Highlander, Range Rover Land Rover and Jeep Grand Cherokee show up based on their profitability. You can also see that the vehicles are, on average, much newer compared with the U.S. stolen vehicle list. This tells us something important.
New Vehicle Theft Techniques
The stolen vehicle data from Canada tells us that factory-installed security systems no longer deter automotive thefts. Why? Thieves have figured out a simple way to use keyless entry systems to their advantage. The process, called a relay attack, involves using your vehicle key to unlock your car or truck. We wrote a detailed article explaining how a relay attack works. Ultimately, you need to know that thieves will use a simple radio transceiver to send the low-power signal from your keys to a secondary transceiver by the car. The thief can unlock the doors, hop in, start the vehicle, and drive away in seconds.
You can take a few simple steps to protect yourself from relay attacks. First, don’t keep your keys by the front door. If you do, put them in an RF-shielded box, often called a Faraday box. If the thieves can’t get close enough to your keys, they can’t pick up the signal and transmit it to the vehicle. You may also want a shielded pouch to keep your keys safe while walking around a mall or at the movies.
Protect Your Vehicle with Technology
A better solution than remembering to put your keys in a box or pouch is to upgrade your vehicle with a well-designed security system. We aren’t as concerned about features like shock and motion sensors in this context, though those are important. What matters is that the system is integrated into the vehicle to prevent a relay attack from being effective.
Here’s how you can test a security system. Get into your vehicle and lock it with the aftermarket key fob. Put your foot on the brake pedal and try to start the vehicle. If it starts, it’s not protected against relay attacks. You should not be able to start the vehicle when the aftermarket security system is armed, even with the original key fob present.
Firstech, the manufacturer of Compustar, has introduced a simple component that, when combined with some intelligent logic in their control modules, eliminates the possibility of relay attacks. The Secure Push-to-Start (SPTS-U) is a multi-position relay that wires into the data wiring in a vehicle to interrupt signals that could allow a relay theft to work.
Here’s a video Compustar produced to explain some of the security features of their T12 remote and CM-Series control modules.
Should You Have to Invest in Anti-Theft Security?
We’ve seen comments stating that vehicle owners shouldn’t have to spend additional money to protect their cars and trucks from theft and that it’s the responsibility of automobile manufacturers to keep their cars and trucks safe. This makes sense in principle. However, thieves spend massive amounts of time and resources developing workarounds for any system an automobile manufacturer can implement. So, a new technology might protect a vehicle for a few months or years, but eventually, the bad guys will get what they want.
Look at it this way: If thieves don’t have a way to bypass a security system, they could drag your car or truck onto a flatbed and drive it away. They could also carjack you at work or in a parking lot.
You can make stealing your vehicle much more difficult, but nothing is guaranteed short of locking it in a fortified bunker and never driving it. We recommend a vehicle tracking system like Drone as a second line of defense. If thieves want to take your vehicle, let them. You can call the police and pull up the exact vehicle location on your smartphone in a matter of seconds.
If you own a vehicle on either of the Top 10 lists or are concerned about automobile theft in general, visit an authorized Compustar dealer today and discuss installing a security and vehicle tracking system. You may also want to add remote-start functionality to make getting into your vehicle on hot or cold days more comfortable. You can find an authorized dealer near you using the locator tool on their website.
