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Wireless, GPS-Loaded 'Bait Car' Traps Thieves
captainClassLoader writes: "The Washington Post is reporting that a late-model car, loaded with wireless surveillance gear, a remote kill switch and GPS, is being left (unlocked, presumably) on the streets of the Washington, D.C. metro area as 'bait' for car thieves. This article reports that they've just made their first bust with the vehicle."
Minneapolis and a few other cities have had a similar program running very sucessfully here over the last 5 years. I believe a couple of the people who were busted even tried to use the entrapment defense, which was summarily shot down in the courts since no one made them steal the car, or even gave them the idea to.
All Mercedes models with the Tele Aid system (Similar to On*Star) installed have GPS hardware. You have to subscribe to have it activated, though. Once subscribed, you can call Mercedes and ask them to locate your car for you at any time for any reason (where's my wife?). As long as the car is on and visible to GPS, they can give you an approximate location. Location requests remain active for up to 14 days if they don't locate the car immediately. Location isn't really what Tele Aid is for, though.
Instead, Mercedes also promotes the LoJack Locator system. LoJack apparently has a better signal strength and doesn't rely on GPS, but rather on cellular triangulation. Many police departments have cars equipped with LoJack tracking systems as well. There's no subscription fee, just the purchase of the unit itself (around $600) which is covered for the life of the car. The only drawback is that you have to be in a covered area for it to work, so if the thief is smart and can get to the desert before you call the cops, you might be out of luck.
According to LoJack's website, approximately 25% of their recoveries result in an arrest. You also typically get a pretty good break on insurance, so the costs are somewhat offset.
The Mercedes Tele Aid system is designed primarily for driver convenience (Where am I? Where's my car? Can you tell me how to get to the nearest dealer/restaurant/gas station) while LoJack's sole purpose is post-theft vehicle recovery.
I suspect that the DC bait car is using something similar to LoJack - I believe there's an FCC band dedicated to law enforcement recovery type things.
Wow... I sounded like a commercial there, didn't I? I will say that LoJack does provide peace of mind and I was much more willing to spend $600 on it than $240/year for Tele Aid. It takes a darn good product for me to provide a recommendation - but if you've got a high-end or high-theft-risk car, LoJack is definitely worth the money.
Slashdot comments... splitting hairs since 1997.
Also a great feature of new Mercedes is the axle locking. I had an SLK320 (Read my journal to find out what happened, if you feel so inclined) that had this feature. It basically made it have to get lifted up to be towed or moved, which was just a cool feature for the sheer "Yeah try to tow my car" value.
LoJack is a decent system, but you get no added benefit over the standard GPS locator except it's hidden in one of 27 I think) spots. Tele-Aid is awesome though, and you should have gotten the first year free. If not, go bitch at your dealer.
The funny thing about it, nobody steals Mercedes. Those that do, LoJack isn't going to do shit or they stole it just to trash it and it doesn't matter.
There are very very very good reasons as to why civics and camry's are so widely stolen. They are easy to chop, high resale on parts because everyone has one of the cars just about. Mercedes/Ferrari/BMW/etc are not high-theft-risk cars. They say you should get LoJack so they get money, go read the reports.. you'll never see Mercedes on the top 10.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.