Gadgetory

auto theft is way down over the last 20 years and you can thank technology for making your car that hardened target I'm Brian Cooley with a look at the top five technologies that are keeping your car yours number five is stolen vehicle slow down an amazing OnStar technology a showstopper but I rank it kind of low because time is of the essence when your car's ripped off and this kind of cuts the other way you see by the time you figure out your car is gone you then have to file a police report and then use that as authorization to get the police to talk to OnStar to then go look for your car and see if they can stop it while the crooks driving it by the time this happens your car could well be in a shipping container on its way to a warm sunny place even OnStar claims I'm near two hundred and fifty cars have been slowed down with a thief at the wheel in five years but if it's yours the smug satisfaction is gonna be huge number four is GPS tracking knowing that your car isn't where it should be and knowing that quickly is the essence of dealing with vehicle theft in the last few years all kinds of products have cropped up that let you use GPS to know on your phone if your car is on the move when you don't want it to be and where it's moving and of course this same tech has the daily benefit of monitoring a friendlier class of car thief your kids number three is theft sensors here I'm talking about glass break sensors and vehicle tilt sensors they work right at the moment of theft either triggering an alarm on the car a horn or a bell a shutdown of its ignition and/or an alert on your phone these are much more nuanced sensors than those dumb vibration things that power the standard vehicle alarm horn that just keeps you awake number two remote locking even today roughly half of all motorists leave their car unlocked and those cars make up a huge 40% of stolen cars drives insurers and cops nuts so the presence of nearly ubiquitous remote locking in cars was the first step the key fob increasingly higher-end cars now auto lock and unlock via the proximity of your key fob just leaving it in your pocket and now growing fast is the use of apps that can check and change the lock status of your car right from your phone anywhere in the world but people just like to leave their cars unlocked before I get you to number one you might ask where's the car alarm in hell I hope it had its day as a deterrent a long time ago but now it is generally accepted that people are desensitized to traditional alarms as cars continue to become connected I look to a day when a car alarm moves from blowing a horn to the hood to giving you a notification on an app now that's meaningful the number one technology that is keeping cars from getting ripped our smart ignitions most thieves want to drive your car away and it wasn't long ago you could do that easily by twisting two wires under the dash then came ignition locks you could still Hotwire the car but only drive it in a straight line not real useful more recently we're enjoying the fruit of smart keys which do this little unique digital handshake between the car's ignition and the key before anything is going to start it has made a huge difference in theft rates the downside is that you've now got a $300 key you have to replace it used to be a $2.00 blank high tech cars and modern driving that's what we do at CNET on cars.com i'm brian coulis thanks for watching you