Soaring Theft of Personal Navigation Devices
As portable, in-vehicle GPS navigation devices grow in popularity among consumers, they are also growing in popularity among a less-than-desirable segment of the population – thieves. According to a recent article from the Associated Press (“As prices drop, theft of GPS devices soar,”) theft of these popular devices are “dramatically increasing” in many areas. Forget to remove your device from your dash because you are running a quick errand? Ask Austin Sweazy what happened to his. “In the few minutes the couple were inside the store, a thief smashed the window of Sweazy’s car, snatched his $600 TomTom portable navigation unit off the windshield and fled into the gathering dusk.”
“Even people who take their GPS gadgets off their dashboards when they leave their cars are returning to find windows smashed, as thieves gamble that an empty plastic cradle suction-cupped to the windshield means a GPS unit has been hidden somewhere in the car.”…”It gets worse: Taking the plastic cradle off the windshield might not be enough if the suction cup leaves a ring of film on the glass. That alone can signal a thief.”
To make the theft even more painful, the units are rarely covered by insurance, and if they are, their value is usually less than the deductible. So why has the level of thefts risen in this market? Easy. The value of the item makes the theft lucrative – “so lucrative, in fact, that victims often say GPS thieves ignored other items in their cars.”
Why can’t the drivers just locate the car when stolen? Because the GPS devices are receivers, not locators. It looks like what we really need is someone to come along and develop a GPS navigation device with the ability to locate itself (when missing).
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070918/ap_on_bi_ge/business_of_life
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