Which Cars Are Stolen The Most Often?

We all know that it’s probably not a wise idea to leave your car unlocked on a dimly lit street overnight if you want to see it again in the morning. Most of us know enough to at least lock the doors and take other measures, including garaging the car if our house has a garage or at least shutting the gate if all we’ve got is a driveway or carport.  Nevertheless, there are some cars that are thief magnets, just like some cars are cop magnets.

Surprisingly enough, it’s not the flash new sports cars such as Porsche 911s  that are the thief magnets (cops are another story).  The ones that tend to get nicked are the ones that are common – which means that they are harder to trace and more likely to end up in a chop shop with parts being swapped around to make a “new” vehicle out of the old one.  In the list put out by the National Motor Vehicle Theft Reduction Council , you won’t find a number of the more glamorous marques on the list of vehicles stolen most often between April 2015 and March 2016.  Looks like the light-fingered rotters out there just aren’t interested (much) in BMW, Porsche, Audi or Mercedes-Benz. Either that or the people who own these can also afford good garaging and security systems.  The ones that go AWOL most often are marques like Holden (mostly Commodores), Ford (especially Falcons) and a handful of Nissans and Toyotas.

So which cars are on the top 20 list for vehicles stolen most often in Australia?  Do you need to run out and buy a noisy car alarm and a bull terrier to keep your favourite set of wheels safe?  (Actually, Staffordshire bull terriers are great family dogs that get on well with kids and don’t need much grooming as well as being good home security systems, so I’d always recommend getting one, but that’s another story).  Here’s the list for 04-2015 to 03-2016, complete with model series and model year (MY) range:

1. Nissan Pulsar  N15 MY95_00: 831 vehicles nicked
2. Holden Commodore  VE MY06_13: 827 vehicles nicked
3. Toyota Hilux  MY05_11: 795 vehicles nicked
4. Holden Commodore VT MY97_00: 683 vehicles nicked
5. Holden Commodore VX MY00_02: 602 vehicles nicked
6. Holden Commodore VY MY02_04: 571 vehicles nicked
7. Ford Falcon BA MY02_05: 570 vehicles nicked
8. Holden Commodore VZ MY04_06: 479 vehicles nicked
9. Ford Falcon  AU MY98_02: 432 vehicles nicked
10. Toyota Hilux MY98_04: 399 vehicles nicked
11. Hyundai Excel X3 MY94_00: 369 vehicles nicked
12. Nissan Patrol GU MY97+: 332 vehicles nicked
13. Toyota Hilux MY12_15: 323 vehicles nicked
14. Ford Falcon FG MY08_14: 311 vehicles nicked
15. Nissan Navara  D40 MY05_15: 307 vehicles nicked
16. Toyota Corolla  ZRE152R MY07_14: 291 vehicles nicked
17. Holden Astra  TS MY99_05: 284 vehicles nicked
18. Toyota Hiace  MY90_04: 277 vehicles nicked
19. Toyota Landcruiser 80 Series MY90_98: 275 vehicles nicked
20. Holden Commodore VF MY13+: 273 vehicles nicked

The trend, according to the National Motor Vehicle Theft Reduction Council website, is that cars from the 2000–2010 period tend to go walkies most often, with 42.8% (that’s nearly half) of stolen cars being from this era; cars from the decade before that (1990–2000) and the decade after that (2010–now) are about even at 22.9% of car stolen and 23.8% respectively.

Regarding the when and where cars get stolen, the most common time for a car to get stolen is between 4:00 p.m. and 7.59 p.m. on a Friday afternoon/evening, followed by 8:00 p.m. to 11:59 p.m. on Saturday night.  In other words, when you’re having the end of the working week drinkies or hitting the pub on Saturday, it’s best to put your car in a very safe place!

If you own a 2000s era Ford Falcon or Holden Commodore, you are probably starting to get a bit nervous about now.  What can you do to help protect your car?  What’s more, you also need to protect your car keys, because if a thief can get his or her hands on the car keys, the job of nicking your vehicle is much easier.

Here’s a few tips for keeping your car and your keys safe (there’s more on the website):

• Make sure that your front fences and hedges are kept to a good height so they don’t give a thief a good hiding place from the street (time to call Hedge-Trimming-R-Us?)
• Motion-sensing security lights help deter thieves.
• Don’t put your address on your car key tags. If you lose your keys and a rotter finds them, he or she will know exactly where to go.
• Don’t hide spare keys on or around your car.
• Store your car keys where they aren’t visible from the windows easily (so that convenient set of hooks by the front door is out).
• Install a gate – the more a rotter has to do to get into your place, the less likely he/she will be to try. Put a lock on the gate if you don’t have one on the garage or if you don’t have a garage.
• Get a garage.
• Get a dog – even a yappy little Chihuahua will let you know if someone is poking around where they shouldn’t.

Car Safe – Entrapment from NB content on Vimeo.

A wee warning about car alarms: we all know that they can go mental and decide to go off at odd moments.  I remember very well the time that the Mazda Bongo van we once owned had an alarm go mental like this in the carport.  My husband rushed outside to investigate and switch the ruddy thing off… without putting any clothes on first.  Unfortunately, a passing policewoman also came to investigate…  At least she was smart enough to realise that the guy in the nude fooling around with a car with an alarm going berserk was probably the owner!

  http://credit-n.ru/vklady.html

Private Fleet Car Review: 2016 Suzuki Vitara RT-X AllGrip 4×4 diesel

A Wheel Thing once sold cars. One brand was Suzuki so it is a genuine pleasure to have the 2016 Suzuki Vitara RT-S diesel AllGrip in the garage. For the second car of five from Suzuki that A Wheel Thing will review, the Vitara with the torquey 1.6 litre diesel was the one supplied, coinciding with a weekend away that included a visit to the Australian alps and to the home of one of Australia’s most recognised cheese brands, Bega.First up, the RT-X looks exactly the same outside as the RT-S tested previously bar different painted alloys and the discreet AllGrip badge on the rear door. Well, unless you’re a train-spotter and notice the LED/xenon headlights, electric folding mirrors with LED flashers for the indicators, the different shade of plastic inserts for the front and rear bumpers, and are tall enough to see the panoramic sunroof. There’s also Parking sensors fitted to the RT-X.Inside you’ll see suede cushioning on the leather seats, effectively making heating elements redundant, a light metallic grey plastic trim on the dash console with AllGrip badging, Auto headlights and rain sensing wipers, a push button for the Start/Stop which is out of the driver’s eyeline and sometimes not easily found intuitively, with the Parking sensor button (located in a strip just above the driver’s knee) being pressed instead. What the Vitara (and most cars) needs are the extensions to the interior sunshades when pulled over to the driver and passenger windows. In between the front seats, you’ll find the selector for the six speed auto and a simple yet effective dial for the drive mode selector, being Auto, Sport, and Snow, with a tab saying Lock as well. These show up on the (still monochrome, why not colour?) centre screen in the binnacle facing the driver. There’s also an extra stalk for the tripmeter, compared to the single in the RT-S.Closing the doors sometimes needed an extra push, as a “normal” closing move had the last door to be closed not fully sealing, indicating an extra bit of venting to equalise pressure is needed. There was also unexpected interior fogging, as in too much too often, especially when the exterior temperature was showing double digits.Normal driving is left in Auto, Sport holds the upward gear changes longer (along with the paddle shifts on the steering column being called more into usage) and Snow looks after Mud and Gravel as well.
Even the Bluetooth streaming capable sound system gets an extra tickle, with a pair of tweeters fitted to the A pillars, improving the presence and soundstage. It’s not a vast improvement over the RT-S overall, but substantial enough to be a more comfortable listening environment for the office.Up front is Suzuki’s chattery and throttle sensitive 1.6 litre diesel. Power is rated at 88 kilowatts (@ 3750 revs) but it’s the 320 torques at only 1750 rpm that make it the cracker it is. It’s also superbly efficient, with a final consumption figure, after 1450 kilometres of driving in just over two days, of just 5.0 litres per one hundred kilometres covered. It’s a smallish 47 litre tank on board yet it was after a sensational 773 kilometres from full when the tank was topped up.If there’s a niggle for the driveline, it’s the dual clutch transmission that is the only gearbox option for the diesel. It’s prone to the same “lemme think” pause when going to Reverse from Park, with the roll forward or back and at a stop in Drive, the brake pedal needs a firmer push otherwise there’s the lurch as first gear is in then out, kinda like the hokey-pokey. To counter balance this, Suzuki fit Hill Hold Control, which isn’t always effective. Underway, it’s slick, smooth and mostly imperceptible in its shifts. Push harder and there’s an increase of chatter from the front and a longer, more linear surge of torque as the speedo numbers climb.Otherwise, what you drive is a responsive, frugal, sounds bigger than it is, engine. That economy is helped along by a body weight that tips the scales at around 1200 kilograms, so it’s a fantastic torque to kilogram equation. It’ll surge forward from a standstill at the lightest touch of the pedal and will kick down readily enough for overtaking on the long open highways south of Canberra and on the Hume and Federal highways between Sydney and Canberra. Naturally it’ll run out of puff at revs where a petrol engine is just hitting its stride but only rarely did it feel that a 2.0L may have been a better option.Ridewise, it feels tauter all round but has the same short/hard and long/soft suspension combo of the RT-S, even down to the underside of the chin belting the road coming off a road calming bump. Being a constant four wheel drive, you’ll notice more weight in the steering as the centre diff works with the rear to apportion drive and handling is affected as a result.It’s less prone to being knocked around by cross winds, unlike the RT-S and feels more sure footed. In the wet and greasy conditions found near Thredbo and Mt Selwyn, some judicious driving was called for, more to ensure the capabilities of the drive system were met rather than exceeded. A light dab of the throttle to get underway, traction to the ground and you’re away.It’s more easily settled by throttle application as well; the transmission will kick down a gear or two on a down hill run on a long turn, using the engine to assist braking and the front can then be pushed back onto the ground with a flex of the right foot. The power comes back in and the car recomposes itself. On the straight runs, there were times when the steering seemed lighter, as if the drive system was pushing more torque to the rear. In tight cornering, the 2500 mm wheelbase again proves handy, endowing the Vitara with a nimbleness many will enjoy, including a sub six metre turning centre.There’s little doubt that the niche the Vitara aims for is soft roading; the Vitara gets an approach angle of just 18 degrees, departure angle is a decent 28 degrees but the rollover point is also just 18 degrees. That’s good enough for most people and there’s Hill Descent Control built in to give an extra bit of courage and confidence for those in need. The Continental tyres fitted to the polished and painted 17 inch alloys are the same 215/55 profile type you’ll find on the RT-S, more attuned to tarmac than serious off roading.Pricewise, it’s up there, with $35990 plus ORCs, but you do get that wonderfully efficient diesel, plenty of room and driveability, the sunroof (normally a 2K plus option elsewhere), satnav, the techy dual clutch gearbox and paddles and the Continental rubber as standard. But you don’t get a full sized spare tyre.At The End Of The Drive.
What makes the Suzuki Vitara diesel RT-X a winner is the engine. Flexible, unbelievably economical (that figure was achieved with four aboard and luggage as well), it pulls like a train and gets the dual clutch auto singing. The cloth inserts on the seats negate a need for heating, which was a HUGE benefit given the morning temperatures. Yes, there’s a couple of niggles but they’re livable. It certainly is an almost ideal chariot for a weekend away for a family and has a good feature set for the price.
Head to 2016 Suzuki Vitara range for extra details. http://credit-n.ru/ipoteka.html

ESP Does Not Mean Your Car Is Psychic… At Least Not Yet

In the last 10 or so years, ESP has become almost as standard in new cars as seatbelts.  OK, the manufacturers may not call this feature ESP, which stands for Electronic Stability Program(me) (the preferred term for Audi and a few others).  It could also be called Electronic Stability Control (ESC – the original term used by Mercedes Benz and BMW) or some fancy marque-exclusive name like “Advance Trak” (Ford) or Porsche Stability Management (guess which marque uses that one!).  ESC is the most common abbreviation but ESP has a tendency to stick in the mind a bit more, what with the mental images of psychic cars.  Or maybe this only sticks in my mind because I’m weird.

Right, no matter what you call it, ESP or ESC is designed to prevent those hairy situations that happen during understeering or oversteering.  For those of you who aren’t sure what this means, understeering happens when you don’t get enough turn when going out of the corner and fly off the side of the road, like a stone flying out of David’s sling while the sling itself (the road) keeps curving around.  Oversteer is the reverse, when you end up turning more sharply than you ought to and end up on the road on the other side.  This happens through driver error while we’re going through the learning process but it can happen to experienced drivers as well when the road is slippery.

This is where ESC or ESP kicks in.  During understeer that isn’t caused by driver inexperience, the front wheels start sliding rather than rolling.  During oversteer, the rear wheels are the ones doing the sliding.  ESP detects that a wheel isn’t spinning all of a sudden when it ought to be but is sliding and skidding.  This is done with yaw control.  Yaw is a lovely old nautical term that’s been used for several centuries to describe how things swing and sway around a centre point, along with its siblings pitch and roll.  You can visualise these easily by holding out your hand flat with the palm down and your thumb and pinkie pointing out so it looks like a plane.  If you wiggle you hand from side to side so the tips of your fingers stay level with your wrist and your thumb and pinkie stay level, that’s yaw.  Flip your hand over so it goes palm up, then back again and you’ve got roll.  Tip your hand up and down like you’re doing a snake-arms wave dance move, and you’ve got pitch.  With me so far?  Well, the yaw detector feels how the car is yawing and matches this to what the steering system is doing.  If there’s a mismatch, the rest of the system kicks in.  It works alongside the traction control, which compares how fast the wheels are turning with how fast the engine is going (a mismatch means slipping (spinning too fast) or skidding (not spinning fast enough)).

ESP always works in tandem with ABS (anti-braking skid) brakes.  This is because the main way to stop a skid is to reduce the speed, which your ESP system may do by overriding what your right foot is doing and controlling the throttle to take the power down, and by braking.  However, as most of us experienced when we were learning to drive, if you slam the brakes on when you’re travelling at speed, you skid.  What we had to do when learning old-school style without any driver aids was to pump the brakes so they didn’t lock up and skid.  ABS brakes, however, spare us all the tap-dancing, as they’re able to pump the brakes much faster than we can, even if we’re part of a Riverdance line.  A really good ESP system will apply the ABS brakes to as many wheels as it needs to (one, two, three or four) to get the speed down and get the “what ought to happen” and the “what is happening” in the yaw and traction departments happening.

ESC has been proven to reduce accidents on wet, slippery or icy roads.  However, like any other driver aid or active safety feature, it’s not a substitute for common sense and driving to the conditions.  No matter how good the ESP package is, it can’t suspend the laws of angular momentum.  It also won’t do anything about understeer or oversteer caused by driver error when an inexperienced driver turns the steering wheel too little, too much, too soon or too late, as these won’t cause the mismatch that triggers the system.  Although it’s called ESP, it can’t actually read your mind as to where you want to go.

At least cars can’t read your mind and work out where you want to go quite yet.  Inventors and other clever-clogs are working on it, however.  In China at the end of last year (2015), some researchers at Nankai University, came up with a brainwave – or, more accurately, a brainwave detector.  This consists of a headset that contains EEG sensors that read the electrical pulses given off by different thoughts, which are then transferred to the steering and braking systems.  According to a press release and a video, the team has managed to rig this up to what looks like a standard Haval H9, and the “driver” can make the car go forward, reverse, stop, lock and unlock.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-brainpower-car-idUSKBN0TQ23620151207#FyqvAPiGuj8bgRDV.97

The mind boggles at how this could be combined with Google’s Driverless Car concepts.  But hopefully, the mind won’t boggle too much or goodness knows what might happen. http://credit-n.ru/trips.html

Fatalities Are Up. Why?

No apologies for the bluntness of the title. However, I’ll clarify that the following is specific to New South Wales, with information provided courtesy of the NSW Government’s Transport for safety site.

Why this, though? It’s simple. In NSW, the most populous state in Australia, there’s been an unexpected and unwelcome spike in road deaths for 2016 compared to 2015 and what’s called the three year average. Naturally, the road safety organisations, police and government are left scratching their heads as to why. Although it’s been a downward trend, the rise that’s concerning the relevant bodies started in mid 2015.

Here’s something that stands out: in NSW, men are twice as likely to die on the roads compared to women with last year’s toll almost exactly the same as the three-year average for men (121 in 2015, 121 on average) and women (56 in 2015, 53 on average). But in 2016 (at the time of writing), it’s 167 men to 54 women. The age breakdown raises eyebrows too. It’s the 40-59 year old age bracket that heads the list. So far in 2016 there’s 65 compared to 49 last year. That’s also 23 and 19 more that the 17-25 year old males for the same time periods. In the 26-39 slot, there’s almost identical numbers, with 37 this year compared to 35 in 2015.

Unsurprisingly, it’s on country roads where more people have lost their lives. 2015 saw 113 in total, 2016 has already exceeded that, with 142. The three year average before was 118. On suburban roads, the difference is marked: 79 for 2016 versus just 65 for all of 2015. In a look at who, it was the car driver that lead the tragic figures, with 109 this year, against 78 for 2015. Motorcyclists are on an upwards trend, with 31 in 2015 but already 34 in 2016. Frighteningly, there’s already 46 pedestrians listed for 2016. That’s a jump of 14 compared to all of 2015.

What isn’t listed is a breakdown of the causal factors, however senior police said: speed, intoxication, fatigue and distraction are consistently key factors of recent fatal accidents: all elements that are a driver’s responsibility. “Out of the five fatalities, four were males; in all five cases, the actions of the driver involved will be the subject of each investigation; in three of these crashes, a vehicle left the road and hit a tree or power pole.”

“Those speeding, drink or drug driving, not wearing a seat belt or proper helmet, fatigued or distracted, are the ones that continue to put themselves, their passengers, and other innocent road users all at great risk, which continues to cost lives on our roads.”

The bottom line is this: don’t drive like an idiot and use some common sense and courtesy. http://credit-n.ru/calc.html