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What Car Thieves Think of the Club (2010)
- carapace 8y agoThis touches on a pet peeve of mine: almost every person who uses the Club puts it on wrong. The long part of the bar is meant to go down and to the left between the door and the floor, to make the steering wheel harder to turn. Everybody attaches it with the long part sticking up in the air.
- proCarThief 8y agoWhy does that matter when chopping the steering wheel defeats it with minimal effort?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Nasrudith 8y agoWell it might reduce the set of car thieves to ones who are sufficiently skilled to be capable of it. Most front doors may be bashed down due to fire safety but locking it still deters some thieves. I suppose one thing that benefits security the most is a functional society - if people can get better and more stable employment working as a locksmith than a burglar most will apply their skills for good - there will still be some types attracted to the thrill of larceny or unable to hold a 9-5 job for whatever reason.
- trentlott 8y agoYeah, I think I can cut through my steering wheel with a razor blade and a lot of time, or a pair of bolt cutters and a second or two. Then just slide the Club off
- iambateman 8y agoWhen almost every person does it wrong, the problem isn’t the person.
- andrewflnr 8y agoThere's a limit to this principle. There's not always something you can fix to prevent people from abusing your product or system. Are the instructions for the Club bad, or what? I'm usually the first person to say "you don't need to propose an alternative for your criticism to be valid". I think in this case, however, where the validity of the criticism is predicated in the existence of alternatives, you really need to give one.
- xsmasher 8y agoSounds like the club needs more "affordances" to help the user. Maybe a sticker with ↑up↑ and ↓down↓ printed on it, in such a way that the text is upside down if the club is locked incorrectly.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- CamperBob2 8y agoWhen common sense fails, it's time for the manufacturer to take some responsibility. A good example of this phenomenon might be the tendency of people to record videos with their phones held upright. Given that it's apparently impractical for the smartphone OS vendor to pop up a warning or advisory notice when eomeone does this, how hard would it be to embed some small contacts in the bezel to administer a mild electrical shock? In the Club's case, it might have helped to include a simple "This end up" label in the appropriate spot.
- reificator 8y agoI thought you were going to suggest rotating the sensor or cropping from a square in software. Not that I'm opposed to your approach either...
- fipple 8y agoThat’s not true of “The Road Not Taken.” It’s not the poem’s fault, but 90% of people read the completely wrong meaning from it.
- tribby 8y agoit's been a long time since I've seen one, so maybe the lock has changed (used to be a simple doubled sided wafer lock), but in the past it was a lot faster to pick the club open than to saw through a steering wheel. see also the club buster[1]. 1. http://www.clubbuster.com/ http://www.clubbuster.com/
- TeMPOraL 8y agoFunny how the About page markets this tool to: LOCKSMITHS TOW TRUCK OPERATORS AUTOMOBILE REPOSSESSION PROFESSIONALS FIREMEN & PUBLIC SAFETY SERVICES .... Yeah, right :).
- newman8r 8y agoEasy & FUN to use!
- Zak 8y agoIt's my impression (though I don't have a survey from the burlar's guild to back it up) that criminals very rarely pick locks, or even know how to do so. Instead, they're likely to bypass the lock (e.g. slim jim a car door) or attack it destructively (hacksaw, hammer, bolt cutters, etc...).
- tribby 8y agoyou are correct about criminals favoring bypass/destructive entry vs. picking in general (I think this is mentioned in marc tobias' book RE: the uncommon nature of lock forensics) -- I pointed out the other methods because the anecdote references "pro" car thieves. when dealing with high value targets, minimizing damage (to, e.g., a rare/irreplaceable or expensive steering wheel) is more important than the average car theft where someone's just trying to get from point A to point B.
- CPLX 8y agoThis is a just-so story. Sounds good, totally bereft of actual data or analysis. Par for the course for freakonomics.
- kbenson 8y agoIt's a blog entry with an anecdote that came from a write in in response to a story. You were expecting something else from a short blog post?
- dizzystar 8y agoI think the parent is throwing shade on the book as well. Can't say I disagree with the opinion.
- quickthrower2 8y agoOn a site that ends in onomics? Data!
- stevespang 8y agoYeah, we all knew this back in 1980's . . . successful thieves would actually leave the club in the front lawn next to the curb as a laughing momento
- Spooky23 8y agoIMO the club is absolute junk, but is probably enough to deter mosy entry level kids who were taking cars to joyride in the 80s.
- msluyter 8y agoBack in the 90s I had a club (a girlfriend bought it for me for Valentine’s Day, because it was red.) After a while I stopped locking it when I put it on, reasoning that if someone was determined enough to see it and still break into the car thinking they could get past it then there was no real point in actually locking it.
- gerry_shaw 8y agoI used to do that as well. One day I came back to my jeep and the club was stolen but not the jeep. Wasn't sure what to make of that but laugh. Never bothered getting another one.
- jasonboyd 8y agoI saw a car with the club the other day - this first I have seen in I can't even remember how long. The car was in rough shape. Real rough. I mused to my wife that perhaps the car was there to protect the club.
- bigiain 8y agoProbably someone who _really_ needs their car, because there's no way they can afford to replace it, and will possibly will lose their job/house without it. It's expensive being poor...
- DoreenMichele 8y agoAlso: Poor people tend to live in rough neighborhoods and other people around them may have even less and would steal it in a heartbeat.
- EB66 8y agoGenerally speaking, older vehicles are much easier to steal than newer vehicles. I have a friend with an 1980s Toyota truck who clubs it wherever he goes, not because it's a nice truck, not because he can't afford to lose it, but rather because it will definitely get stolen if he doesn't club it. Without a club, his truck can be stolen in under a minute by any layman using a little more than a flathead. Before he got the club, it was stolen multiple times -- usually turning up a week later, abandoned somewhere, and/or used as a shelter by a homeless person.
- brownbat 8y agoYeah, there are some writeups on that phenomenon: https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/honda-still-wins-when-it-comes-to-car-thieves-top-choice-071417.html https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/honda-still-wins-when-i... There are lists of the most stolen cars by year. Late 90s Hondas dominate. I'd love to see a list controlled for popularity, or some sort of estimate of how many of each model is likely parked out on curbs at any given time. Maybe the SUVs aren't being taken as often because they are in garages in the suburbs.
- austincheney 8y agoI have the world's most effective anti-theft device, there is research on this, in my car and this device saved me thousands on the retail price of the vehicle. The mystery device is a manual transmission.
- quickthrower2 8y agoThat doesn't work in the UK! Automatic is for wimps or luxury cars. At least when I lived there a fe years ago.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoIn the UK you need to buy a pink car, they are the least likely to be stolen.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoMy car was in for servicing a few weeks ago, and the garage gave me a hot purple metallic car with tinted dark windows, because that was now their official dealership courtesy car, as supplied by Car Company Head Office. When I parked it around town, people were literally laughing at it. (And me for driving it, I guess.) According to the dealer, the car company were pitching at a young market. They might have been better off marketing it as an anti-theft system.
- brian_cunnie 8y agoI have a pink laptop cover for the same reason.
- EForEndeavour 8y agoThat's actually pretty smart. Even though it's much easier to remove a laptop cover than to repaint a car, a laptop thief is less likely to target the most brightly coloured, attention-grabbing laptop in the room.
- gbaygon 8y ago
- khendron 8y agoI had a coworker who secured his car with a Club, and this is exactly what happened. The thieves even left the club behind in his parking space. The next night they came back and stole his rental.
- enraged_camel 8y agoDamn. So what did he do to piss those guys off?
- rmason 8y agoKnew a guy who used the club with his late model Corvette back in the nineties. He went in a store and when he came out his Corvette was gone and smack dab center of the parking spot he had was the club. Almost like the thief was mocking him.
- mrob 8y agoIf improving your own security produces a negative externality then education also produces a negative externality. You're "harming" other people by becoming more employable than them. Personal hygiene produces a negative externality because you might become more attractive than somebody. Physical fitness produces a negative externality because you might get chased by a bear and not be the slowest. Doing anything that improves your chances in competition counts, and there are very few areas of life with no competition. IMO such a loose definition is meaningless, and the word should be reserved for cases where you are actually doing harm. In the case of improved car security it's the car thieves who are doing harm.
- tlb 8y agoIt's better to define "externality" as including all impacts on everyone but yourself, and accept that some amount of negative externality is inevitable. That allows you to differentiate cases like (in the article) Lojack, which produces a positive externality, from the Club which theoretically produces a negative externality.
- mrob 8y agoYou can already distinguish between positive and zero. If you lump zero in with negative then you're losing information, and you're violating common sense in a way that makes people lose respect for the field in general.
- closeparen 8y agoCar thieves are people too. One could argue that increasing a marginalized population’s chances of life-destroying interaction with the criminal justice system is a negative externality, one far outweighed by the inconvenience of private property appropriation. (That may sound crazy, but it is the governing logic in places like SF that choose not to enforce property crime).
- NPMaxwell 8y agoGood point about being more careful with definitions. Personal hygiene products, high heels, and makeup are examples of the tragedy of the commons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
- zepolen 8y agoHidden sleeping gas canister that deploys when engine starts without a secret switch deactivating (bluetooth or regular) - alerts you when it does. Worst case you forget to turn it off and fall asleep a couple hours.
- ada1981 8y agoSleeping gas?
- hashfunktion 8y agoInterestingly, the article later admitted the club made it easier for the autio thieves so it was a positive externality after all.
- ndnxhs 8y agoHow do companies find criminals to request help from?
- tempestn 8y agoConvictions are public record, so it presumably wouldn't be too hard to reach out to people when they're released from prison.
- anon2775 8y agoAt one time in America, keys from one car would unlock, if not start, many thousands of similar cars because of similar or same key bitting. It's interesting that German cars of the same era were harder to break into because of worse economics for lower classes, more car thefts and therefore more secure vehicles... meanwhile American cars weren't really locked that much because post-WW2 boom times were so good, and so, less theft, especially in small towns where everyone knew each other and theft would risk becoming a shunned criminal outlaw.
- V-2 8y agoFor what it's worth, it reminded me of a passage in a novel (I can't remember which one) by an Ukrainian writer Serhiy Zhadan. In the story he contained an observation on how in blockhouses people on the first floor secure their balconies with bars to protect their flats against burglars. These bars, however, make for a perfect ladder right onto the balcony on the second floor :) So then people on the second floor are forced towards doing the same thing, and so on all the way up.
- V-2 8y ago> And do not pass too quickly over the fact that a car company hires car thieves for consultation. If you are a businessperson, do you regularly engage those who wish to do you harm? It hardly shocks people when it's about cybersecurity. I'd also nitpick about car thieves wishing to harm the car companies. They're actually harming car owners, or possibly insurance companies. They do not "wish" to harm car companies. It's arguably not even an unintended side effect of what they do. Car companies might actually benefit from you having to buy another car once yours is suddenly gone. Sure, the stolen one will be sold to someone else, but on average the victim of the theft is wealthier than the person who'll buy their stolen car - which essentially means more rather than less extra money is likely to get pumped into the pockets of car companies at the end. (You presumably had a good car, you can afford buying a new one - the person who bought yours would have been unlikely to buy a new one anyway).
- Noumenon72 8y agoThe risk of theft lowers the expected value of having the car. I'll never buy one of those $1000 bikes because of the risk of theft, nice as they might be. I'll go to Wal-Mart.
- tomohawk 8y agoMost cars are stolen by non pro car thieves. They're stolen based on opportunity and whether or not its in an area where under 25s might need transpo. They're going to steal the easiest thing, because they're often just looking for transpo. We lived on a street frequented by under 25s at night and used clubs on our cars. They were never stolen, but the neighbors who had easier to steal vehicles such as Dodge Caravan were taken quite often. You're not going to stop a pro.
- anon4242 8y ago> You're not going to stop a pro. The only thing stopping a pro is to have an uninteresting car. My idea is to have a car good enough not to be easily stolen for a joyride but uninteresting enough for a pro.
- njharman 8y agoPeople regularly confuse "security through obscurity" with "obscuring your security". The first is bad, the second is powerful. Even before I read about the hacksaw (long ago) I knew clubs by themselves were bad cause they were visible. They reveal intel to the attacker. Intel the attacker can take and, in safe environment, at their leisure, devise way to defeat it. If the attacker doesn't know what countermeasures there are, (or are common) they can't defeat them. GPS trackers can be hidden, but car thieves know about them so they can counter (say by getting car into faraday cage ASAP, or using radio wave detector to track it down and disable. So, you have to be more creative, unusual. Where the club could be useful is a honey pot. Put it on the worthless (to you) car you want stolen so the more valuable (to you) car is skipped over. Maybe bait car has secondary devices for tracking that thieves will be less likely to look for since it had the club and and multiple defenses are unexpected.