Crazy car theft story | Page 2 | GTAMotorcycle.com

Crazy car theft story

IBC released the list of the ten most stolen vehicles in Canada. Highlander/RX take up five of the top ten spots. CR-V has three of the spots. Remaining two are half-tons. I would hope that Toyota/Lexus/Honda would start taking theft seriously when they obviously have a weak point in their security.

 
IBC released the list of the ten most stolen vehicles in Canada. Highlander/RX take up five of the top ten spots. CR-V has three of the spots. Remaining two are half-tons. I would hope that Toyota/Lexus/Honda would start taking theft seriously when they obviously have a weak point in their security.

I don't think it's as much about the security system as it is about vehicles with demand, either for parts or export. I bet the CR-V, RX and Highlander are in big demand overseas, while the Ford and Dodge trucks have a strong market for parts.

I can't speak for the Lexus and Toyota models, but the CR-V has identical anti-theft to the rest of the Honda lineup, but you don't see Civics, Accords, HR-V's, Odysseys, etc. on the list. They do have keyless remotes, which may make them targets for the signal boosters, but lots of cars have that issue...
 
ALL vehicles with push button start that use FOBs are open to this attack. Toyota products just seem to be more sensitive to it. They stand between the vehicle and the house with a wireless amplifier. Makes the car think they have the FOB. Car opens and starts. They drive away. The car will continue to run until shut-off, this is a required safety feature (in case your FOB connection somehow dies while driving), car will usually just beep at them. Putting the FOBs in a metal can or fridge helps but it all depends on the gain of the amp.... It is interesting they came back with the car, means they left it running or maybe swapped some hardware to bypass the system back at their shop. I have also seen people keep the FOB they use everyday in a can at night but the spare is in a drawer, lol.

These vehicles are easily stolen, therefore stolen often. You pay extra (sometimes a lot extra) for theft insurance. Our new VW was dirt cheap insurance wise, not having this is one of the reasons (not the only).

The entire idea of a garage man door into the house is also a bad idea security wise. Garage doors are easily opened, many ways. Once in the garage, the door to the house is also easily opened even if locked. The opener just speeds up the process. A common scenario, they wait until you are gone (say at work for the day). Get into the garage, load the good house contents into the garage. Pull up in a cube van and transfer those contents to the van in a few minutes, drive off. Again insurance knows about this... if you have an attached garage and no door to the house make sure they know this.... Alarm helps in this case but does nothing for quick in and outs like the OP posted, they are gone before response.

You can pin the garage door release, this helps. Disable the opener or get a more modern system, this helps. You can also clamp a vice grip to the track if you don't need to open the door form the outside. Super heavy-duty steel door to the house (not the builder grade one) with steel frame super secured will also help.

Some new homes now have the garage man door outside, beside the house front door to prevent this.
 
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Super heavy-duty steel door to the house (not the builder grade one) with steel frame super secured will also have this.

The door doesn’t matter. Most open out into the garage and the seal is on the inside, exposing the deadbolt. You can thread a diamond cable saw behind it and cut through it in 30 seconds.




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The door doesn’t matter. Most open out into the garage and the seal is on the inside, exposing the deadbolt. You can thread a diamond cable saw behind it and cut through it in 30 seconds.
You can mount a steel plate over this location and also have a couple of locks, both will slow them down. But then again in a modern home they can also potentially just go through the drywall.... Or through a basement window and unlock it from the inside... Weakest link.

In my older home the wall between the house and garage is concrete block...no door.

If it slows them down too much they move on to easier prey.
 
You can mount a steel plate over this location and also have a couple of locks, both will slow them down. But then again in a modern home they can also potentially just go through the drywall.... Or through a basement window and unlock it from the inside... Weakest link.

In my older home the wall between the house and garage is concrete block...no door.

If it slows them down too much they move on to easier prey.
Windows are always the easiest way in (assuming the owners bothered to lock the door).
 
A hydroponics store owner told me a story
he had motion detectors as part of his security
thieves went in through a concrete block wall from the outside - they had cased the place presumably, and somehow measured and knocked out the concrete blocks right where the expensive HID lighting was located- and then reached carefully inside w/o setting off the motion detector alarm. they pulled 8 lights out...

as someone who has broken concrete block walls with a sledge - once you have the first block pulversized, the rest of the blocks come out easy w 1-3 hits...
if they want it, they will get it
 
if they want it, they will get it
True enough. The best I have come up with is a proper safe (>750 lbs empty) in the basement and a monitored alarm. Even if they know where the safe is, they don't have time to open it and probably can't get enough bodies to move it out before the cops arrive. The second half of the equation is your stuff needs to be in the safe.

I know some grocery stores that run security by obscurity and have many safes in the cash room (10+). They can rotate daily or split the money up. If a thief gets in the room, they have a >80% chance they steal an empty safe. That is a costly scenario for a homeowner to implement though (and uses a ton of space).
 

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