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Four foolproof ways to avoid car theft

11 Apr
* Contributed content

There’s nothing worse than having your car stolen. You’ll spend hours on the phone with the police, describing the details of the car and where it was taken from, only to have them tell you that they probably won’t get it back anyway.

Even if they do find it, it’s likely to be totaled or burned out. You can claim it on the insurance and get a new one if you’ve got a decent policy but it’s not the same as the car you lost. You can never completely protect yourself from theft but there are plenty of things you can do to make it less likely.

Get A Car Alarm

This is an obvious one and pretty much all cars come with an alarm fitted as standard. But if you’ve got an older model or yours didn’t come with one, you should have one fitted. It won’t cost that much and just having it there is a great deterrent. However, you should know that car alarms themselves aren’t actually that great. The first problem is that they go off by accident, which means people tend to ignore them. If you hear a car alarm going off do you go running to see what’s happened or call the police? I’m betting you probably don’t and most people wouldn’t either.

Even if it does alert somebody’s attention, they aren’t going to tackle a criminal and risk getting hurt for somebody else’s car. The other thing to consider is that professional thieves can easily get around most car alarms today so it won’t be much of a deterrent for them. It might sound like car alarms are completely pointless and a lot of people say that they are, but they’ll still scare off amateur thieves and for the cost of installing one, it’s still worth doing.

Personalised Number Plates

Personalised number plates used to be reserved for monied show offs but they’re actually pretty cheap these days so anybody can get them. It’s cool to have your own personalised plate and it makes the car unique, but it also helps to deter thieves as well. When the police are looking for your car, any distinguishing features will help them to find it so having a personalised number plate will make people think twice about taking the car. This is the best company to buy your personal registration from – the process is simple and it won’t cost you that much. The other major benefit of having a personalised number plate is that it’s way easier to find it in busy car parks.

Keep It Clean

You wouldn’t think that a bit of dirt on the car would make much difference to thieves but it can. The cleanliness of a car tells you a lot about the owner. A dirty car tells the thief a few things…first, it seems like it doesn’t get used that much so the owner is less likely to notice that it’s missing right away. It also suggests that they don’t care about the car as much so they won’t be as bothered about getting it back. However, if it’s well maintained, they’ll think that you use the car all the time and it means a lot to you so you’ll be relentless in your search for the car. By keeping it clean and well maintained, you’ll deter thieves who are more likely to go after neglected cars that nobody will miss as much.

Steering Lock

When somebody steals your car, they need to get in and get out of the area as quickly as possible, especially if you’ve got an alarm going off. If you put a steering wheel lock on the car, that’s a real pain for thieves to get off. Professional criminals can get around them pretty easily these days but it’ll still add time to the job which they want to get done as quickly as possible. When there are plenty of other cars to steal, they’ll take one look at that lock and move on. However, if your car is in a secluded area where nobody is likely to see them, the steering wheel lock isn’t much of a deterrent.

As well as doing all of that, you need to use a bit of common sense. That means locking the doors, making sure that you aren’t leaving it in a dodgy area and putting it in a garage when possible. That way you can enjoy driving without having to worry about the car getting stolen.

 
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Posted by on April 11, 2018 in Contributed content

 
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