More than 1,200 vehicles have been stolen in Ottawa this year, a 16 per cent jump from the year before, with new model SUVs and light trucks the most popular targets. New model Toyota Rav4 , Honda CRV, Jeep Grand Cherokee and Ford F-Series trucks are especially popular, along with any vehicle with a push-button starter.
Police have recovered 315 stolen vehicles and made 80 arrests, Stubbs said.
“It used to be five or 10 years ago that older cars were the target because they didn’t have the advanced alarm security that the new cars have. But the technology that they (thieves) are securing is defeating a lot of those alarms.”
There needs to be some political and legal pressure on manufactures to STOP BUILDING DOGSHIT CARS. Specifically to build inherently safe internal networks and user facing systems. It is easier to steal a new car because it takes no skill, just $100 in easy to buy hardware and some software you download from the internet.
For example, right now to program a new fob to a Honda you need to have all other fobs in the car as well, except you can use some cheap radio gear to just relay the signal from fobs that are near by and the car can not tell the difference. This could be easily prevented by requiring digital signing (like every https enabled web server) to enroll fobs. It would cost you $100 at the dealer but it saves you from losing a $30k-60K car. And now that every car has a SIM and cell modem it would be trivial to revoke a FOB and disable a car should it ever actually be stolen.
Manufactures could also stop treating CAN Bus like their bitch. Some new cars will be totally bricked by getting water in the headlight because the same CAN network that does your engine and body control also goes through the obnoxious LED headlights. This also means that thieves can get direct access to the CAN network by popping out a headlight and connecting to it with a $5 dongle. Having multiple isolated networks would prevent this, or just not using a fucking network to control lighting, it makes the light modules cost >$1000 and just adds to the insane amount of plastic and electronics waste in a car.
There are dozens of other examples of brain dead design choices making new cars easier to steal or just brick and no one seems to care because having a non-replaceable Android device in your car, which is instantly abandoned by the manufacture, is “cool.”
TL;DR Old man yells at cloud
Embedded systems in general are absolute shit – the laziest, most half-assed implementations one can imagine – whether it’s in cars or appliances or whatever else. I’m not sure what the solution is, short of forcing them to adhere to a set of best practices.
I’m in my 20s and I really dont get the craze about push button starts and keyless entry. It really just seems like extra tech that adds an extra security risk and extra cost to the vehicles.
I worry what cars will be available to me in the next 10 years. I’m not a big fan of big digital displays, touch screen controls , self driving/driving assitance features, and automatic everything. My current car has a manual transmission, manual locks and manual windows. No expensive motors to replace, no dead battery fob preventing entry, no swerving on the road cause the car can’t read the lines correctly.
We’re in the market for our first car and I feel this. First manufacturer to make a car without all this touchscreen bullshit and actual button based controls will make bank.
I just want a car, not an HP printer on fucking wheels.
The touch screens should be illegal if we are going to enforce laws about not using a phone while driving.
Haptic feedback like a physical knob is significantly easier to use without looking at the controls.
A 25% recovery rate. Cut the pay to the cops by 75% - their failure rate- and watch the miracle happen.
I’m getting really tired of thieves, and the lack of any consequence put on them.
These scumbags cost Canada billions, and the untold amount of suffering to their victims.
Of these 80 arrests, what’s the conviction rate and average jail sentence? If it’s below 100% and less than 10 years then we aren’t doing good enough!
The thefts most likely highlight an underlying problem, where people are willing to do unscrupulous things to put food on the table.
It’s a sign of an economy with weak wages where people can’t afford to put food on the table, likely due to the growing inequality.
They should definitely be punished as this directly harms other low income Canadians, but the underlying issue needs to be addressed or there will be more people willing to take risks to put food on the table.
tl;dr blame the rich. That’s my shit take anyway, I’m not an economist.
The Montreal mob are not exactly struggling to put food on the table, but yes, you’re not wrong in net terms, except for one thing: it’s not food, it’s drugs.
Front-line people steal in order to get drugs. You’d see front-line property crime almost vanish overnight if drugs were free and legal, with the proviso that you had to use them at an approved facility. Bonus if we can get some sort of housing security and/or comprehensive mental health service in play.
Either way, once you get the whole “money for drugs” thing out of the system, there’s almost no need for people to steal, and the aforementioned Montreal mob will have a world of trouble getting foot-soldiers when there’s no pool of desperate junkie labour to exploit.
It sounds expensive, but really isn’t when you look at the costs of policing and property crime.
