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Winnipeg Demands Immobilizers on High-Risk Cars
mytrip writes with a Reuters article about a new, unusual insurance requirement for drivers in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Apparently Winnipeg is one of the worst cities in Canada for auto thefts. New and 'high-risk' cars will now be required to install an electronic immobilizers in order to qualify for car insurance. "Chomiak said cars are stolen twice as often in Winnipeg as in other Manitoba cities, while a 2005 report from Statistics Canada said the city had a higher per-capita car theft rate than larger cities like Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. The province, where cars are insured through Manitoba Public Insurance, will fork over C$15 million ($14 million) so that owners without immobilizers can have them installed."
How can this not be a requirement? In Australia it's been that way for ages, and all new cars have to have immobilizers fitted.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Yes, you might be able to hack around the immobilizer. However, you'd need some hardware and knowledge to do that. It raises the barrier of entry, so less cars will get stolen (that's all the insurer cares about).
the vast majority of theifts are punks stealing a car for a joy ride, they aren't bright enough or organised enough to have a laptop on hand to hack the cars electrical systems.
the only cars that might be targeted by professional gangs would be expensive or hard to get cars they can resell, and if you have one of those then you've most likely got state of the art alarms anyway.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
How difficult would it be to bypass the immobilizer
presumablely harder than smashing the window and hot-wiring it.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Put immobilizers on the kids. It's called "jail".
Most of the stuff on
All old (non-diesel) cars had engine immobilizers. You popped the top off the distributor cap and took the rotor arm out. How many joy riders carried a selection of spare parts with them? Ah, the joy of analogue tech.
Immobilisers have been a legal requirement for all cars in the UK for nearly 10 years now. Generally, they're the "microchip in the ignition key" type you describe.
And no, they're not impossible to work around - otherwise anytime someone lost their keys they'd have to write off their car - but they involve more work than your average teenage joyrider is prepared to put in.
This has led to a number of alternate attack vectors being used for car theft:
1. Steal the keys first then the car from the owners driveway. Easy enough if they leave the keys in a bowl by the front door.
2. Carjacking. (Oh wonderful, we've replaced the essentially non-violent crime of car theft with the rather more violent crime of carjacking)
3. Steal an older car.
You occasionally hear of more sophisticated things going on - like showing up in an official-looking tow truck and lifting the vehicle, with a view to sorting out "how to start the damn thing" at leisure - but that's pretty rare.