High-Tech Auto Security Gadgets Make a Lot of Noise With Consumers

Both of Jim Crittenden’s pickup trucks were stolen three times from in front of his business in a heavily traveled suburb of Sacramento, an area notorious for its auto-theft rings.

He had thought about installing alarms in his company trucks before they were stolen, says the 40-year-old landscaper, but he procrastinated.

“Sometimes you have to learn the hard way,” he says.

After he got his trucks back, Crittenden did what millions nationwide are doing. He shelled out $600 for two high-tech security systems to protect his property.

Authorities say automotive-security markets have ballooned since the 1970s, when motor-vehicle theft soared, especially in big cities.

Motorists nationwide spent $675 million in 1995 on electronic gadgets to protect cars and trucks from theft, and experts predict the market will grow to $1.3 billion by 2000.

For Crittenden’s money, he got an ear-piercing alarm activated by a motion detector. If thieves figure out a series of randomized encryption codes and rev up the engine, electrical impulses will immobilize the trucks’ ignitions. The systems also automatically lock and unlock the trucks’ windows, doors and trunks.

Car theft cost $8 billion nationally in 1995, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, an agency that combats vehicle theft and insurance fraud. In 1995, 1.5 million vehicles were stolen nationwide.

A $15,000 car can net thieves $45,000 in parts, and 60% of stolen cars are either stripped or used to commit another crime, the National Insurance Crime Bureau says.

Because people are paying more for their vehicles today, many spare no expense to protect their investments.

Lisa Fasold of the Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Assn. says the most sophisticated anti-theft devices on the market “not only do the bells and whistles when you try to steal the car, but they’ll also have a vehicle-location system integrated into the main device that will also call the police station and/or the driver, and they do that through the cellular phone that’s in the car.”

One high-tech tracking system helped police track robbers who stole actor Harry Dean Stanton’s Lexus after he was pistol-whipped in his Hollywood home last year.

“People who deal with responding to emergencies have told us repeatedly that finding the vehicle in an emergency situation is a challenge,” says Paul Dowell, business development manager for Motorola.

With that in mind, Motorola, Ford Motor Co. and Westinghouse recently introduced Lincoln RESCU.

With the Remote Emergency Satellite Cellular Unit, a motorist can get help by pressing a button in the car’s overhead console.

The car’s location is then relayed by cellular phone to a Westinghouse response center in Texas. An operator listening in on conversation in the car via speakerphone can call police or other emergency help.

Wendi Parson, a spokeswoman at Ford, says that of the 1,000 motorists driving cars equipped with RESCU, none have encountered a dire emergency.

Paired with other Ford incentives, the system costs about $2,000. Other car dealers have bombarded Motorola with requests for the unit, and General Motors Corp. is planning to install similar systems in its vehicles.

By 2000, sales of vehicle-recovery systems are expected to rise to more than $100 million, according to a study commissioned by the Freedonia Group Inc., an independent industrial market research firm in Cleveland.

Fueling those gains will be fears of vehicle theft, vandalism and carjackings.

Carjackings accounted for 2% of the 1.9 million vehicle thefts per year from 1987 to 1992 in the United States, according to the most recent statistics available.

Many stolen vehicles wind up in other countries. Officials said that although car theft has decreased 6% nationwide, it is more prevalent in cities where car thieves can easily ship stolen vehicles abroad.

“It’s very difficult [to stop international theft rings] because the movement of product from this area to all over the world is so vast,” says Det. Fernando Fernandez of the Miami Police Department’s Auto Theft Unit.

According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, 20 of the top 30 cities with the highest theft rates are near large bodies of water or border other countries.

Cities with the highest vehicle-theft rates are Miami; New York; Jersey City, N.J.; Memphis, Tenn.; Phoenix; Jackson, Miss.; and five California areas--Stockton-Lodi, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Sacramento and Fresno.

“It would require a complete police department the size of ours [1,200] to check all the containers that are entering the ships with South American, European and Asian destinations,” Fernandez says.

Stopping thieves at the source can be just as difficult.

“If he’s a professional, he will find a way to obtain your vehicle,” Fernandez says.

For less than $100, professional thieves can learn the location of a factory-installed security system just by purchasing the car’s service manual, says Gary Goodman of Gary Goodman Radio in Bryn Mawr, Pa.

Still, experts say, to do nothing is as good as handing over your car keys.

“My car was tampered with in broad daylight, in front of my office with patients going in and out,” says Dr. Michael Baio, waiting for his $500 security system to be installed at Goodman Radio.

The thieves caused $5,000 worth of damage when they tried unsuccessfully to steal Baio’s minivan, he says.

Baio’s new system has a remote-control alarm and an anti-carjacking device. Minutes after a carjacker drives off, the expensive system shuts off the engine, an alarm sounds and the lights flash off and on.

For those unable to afford fancy equipment, there’s always the $40 “Club.”

Tom McCartney, a spokesman for the manufacturer, Winner International, says the company has received reports of thieves breaking only 0.2% of 17 million Clubs sold worldwide in the last decade.

Perhaps the best protection from theft, police say, is common sense.

“Park on a street that’s not out of the way. Park under a light at night, windows up, doors locked and place some kind of device on the steering wheel,” says Lt. William Schmid of the Philadelphia Police Department. “And don’t forget to take the keys.”

Don’t leave purses, packages and cellular phones in plain sight.

“They break a window to remove the cellular phone and they say, ‘Why not let me take the whole vehicle?’ ” says Fernandez, the Miami detective.