16
Feb
2017
By Calvin at 12:38 GMT, 7 years ago
Thanks to Michael Clare from Hertfordshire Police for bringing this story in the Mail Online to my attention.
This from the Mail Online article:
‘Thieves are using a new technique to steal tools and equipment from vans, shocking CCTV footage shows. Gangs use their knees to apply pressure to van [side] doors, before pulling them open from the top 'like tins of sardines'. Campaigners estimate that five so-called 'peel and steal' crimes are taking place every day in the UK, with Yorkshire, Wales and the West Midlands the worst affected areas.
If you go to the link below you can read the rest of the story and watch the videos.
So what have the manufacturers go to say about it?
Again from the Mail Online
A spokesman for Ford said: 'Ford takes vehicle security seriously and invests heavily in the security solutions that are built into our vehicles to deter theft. We are constantly learning about the latest techniques used to gain access, and whether there are additional enhancements we can make to Ford vehicles.'
A spokesman for Mercedes-Benz Vans UK said: 'As criminal activity evolves, vehicles can become vulnerable in ways we could not have anticipated. We work with the Police, Thatcham, our Dealer Network and our customers, as well as continually reviewing our products, services and processes, to ensure that we offer the latest levels of theft prevention on our vans.'
And what does Calvin have to say about it?
It is almost beyond belief that with all the vehicle crime knowledge that has been acquired and examined over the past few decades we still have manufacturers who seem incapable of designing vehicles that have secure doors that are resistant to what turns out to be a rather simple technique. The whole point of designing out crime opportunity is to anticipate and identify the weaknesses by testing and then putting them right. I bet the men and women in the factories putting these vehicles together would have spotted it.
A couple of years ago I wrote about the spare wheel thefts from cars like Vauxhall Zafiras and I found out that Vauxhall knew about it, knew about the solution that would solve it, but did nothing except advise the buyer to purchase a special wheel lock, which in my case didn’t help because the dealer didn’t know about the problem so didn’t tell me!
This goes on all the time and maybe we’ve reached a point when our government should again release ‘theft of’ and ‘theft from’ data to identify which vehicles are most vulnerable to crime. They did it before for ‘theft of cars’ and in effect forced the manufacturers to add more security, which made a massive difference to car theft – down sevenfold from the 1990s.
Read more and watch the video at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4172302/Van-drivers-warned-peel-seek-theft-craze.html#ixzz4YqjcADi3
