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Satellites Used to Stop Car Thieves in Pakistan
zymurgy_cat writes "Yahoo has an interesting story about a
company in Pakistan that uses satellites and mobile phone networks to monitor and disable stolen cars. Looks like they can also monitor people's driving habits and whether or not they're using the air conditioner. The article comments about how much easier it is for them to do things like disabling cars remotely than in Western countries. (Remind me to never rent a car in Pakistan.)"
You've been reminded.
Give me a break slashguys...
Stopping stolen car = good thing
Disabling stolen car = good thing
Monitoring driving habits = good/bad thing
Good if you are an employer and want to make sure your employees are not abusing the company time. Bad if this information is used to harm your personal rights...
Just because this is in a different nation that many of you consider "backwards" doesn't mean that this is a stupid idea... or an upcoming technology here in America.
Davak
Driving along drinking your morning coffee, when your car goes from 40-0 and your face goes from normal to peeling in 2 seconds.
I have a Cig, but do you have a light?
Onstar has had these capabilities in most GM equipped cars for quite some time now. They use the tracking abilities for catching car thieves, they use Onstar to unlock car doors if you lock your keys in the car, they also have the ability to monitor or change any of the guages in the car as well. Whether they use all of the technology or not is another question, but the technology is in the US already.
Try reading the article next time, people. There is no rights violation going on here. This is something people CHOOSE to have installed in their car and actually PAY for the service. It's not like it's automatically placed in every car so that they can watch you wherever you go.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Yeah, nobody tell General Motors about this or they might invent OnStar.
-h-
Dude, where's my car?
- Qatar
Allah! That's too far!
With the exception of what is legally allowed in the USA, I see no difference in this and Lowjack or other tracking systems.
To my understanding, many large commercial fleets already have tracking systems in place, which was originally designed for the trucking industry.
Also, most new cars have extensive logging. I was unaware of this until the shop manager at my VW dealership complimented my easy driving. I asked how he knew, and told me some details and funny stories about how it's already saved them money.
For instance, Joe Abusive buys a new VW. He doesn't like the deal he got, so he breaks stuff on his car because he's one of those types. Say, he sits on his porch and clicks the locks on and off with his remote until they are burned out. Upon taking it back to the dealer, they can see he accessed his car locks remotely 9500 times in the last 24 hours. A clear sign of abuse and would not be covered by warranty. That's a true story, by the way. I think the car in question was a new Passat.
The tracking systems for truckers has been around for 10-15 years. It seems about that long ago that my uncle (a truck driver) was complaining about not being able to speed or take senic routes anymore due to some heavy new electronics on board.
If I were a company owner and had a fleet of cars for employees to use for business use, I'd definitely investigate getting a service like this. Everyone I've known who uses a company car on a regular basis always drives them like there's no tomorrow. A terrible waste for the folks paying for that luxury.
Anyhoo, most insurance companies either flat-out weren't interested in covering the car, or asked for incredibly high premiums. One *did* offer a premium in-line with other similar cars *but* with the condition that I have satellite tracking fitted by one of a couple of companies nominated by them. IIRC, at the time, the cost of installing the kit would have been circa AUD$1000-$1500. There was an annual monitoring fee too, don't remember what it was, but it was at least a couple-o hundred bucks.
This whole business of locating a car, waiting for the police to catch up, then disabling the vehicle at a point when the orificer on the scene advises that it is safe to do so is something that has been advertised in car/bike 'enthusiast' circles here for quite some time.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
has been in use in california for about 10 years now, GPS locator, engine kill switch, road-side assistance, etc...
BTW wether you pay for it or not EVERY CADDILAC has an active monitoring system running. Some friends had a new caddy but opted not to pay for the northstar system, while trying to find parking at a resturant in Vegas they went around the block like 8 times, the northstar operator came on and asked if they needed asistance, she was very helpful and polite but needless to say they were disturbed to find that their location data was being tracked anyways, and further it is being stored as aggregate data, but their unique vehicle id number is associated with this data, and the fact that they are not paying for the service means they have no ability to opt out, and Caddilac stated that the system was tied into the airbags, and anti theft system, so removal or alteration would void warranty, and likely disable airbags and such....
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?