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Frequently Stolen Cars
Car alarms might drive you nuts when they go off when someone isn’t trying to hijack your wheels thanks to the cat jumping on top of them hoping for a quiet nap (actually, that one could be quite funny to watch when the cat leaps up like… a startled cat), a heavy truck or an earthquake (if you’re in New Zealand) shakes the car a bit, or something going wrong with the wiring. I’m not making the wiring one up – a male friend of mine who will remain unnamed once had his Mazda Bongo van’s alarm go off in the middle of the night. He went out practically in the nuddy to switch it off only to have a female police officer come down the drive to make sure everything was all right – she had the sense to realise that a scantily-clad person poking around a noisy car is likely to be the owner. Anyway, back to car alarms. They might be annoying but they are a deterrent if someone does want to steal your car.
According to Top Gear magazine, the cars most frequently stolen in Australia are:
1) Holden Commodore Executive four-door sedan, 1999 model
2) Holden Commodore Berlina four-door sedan, 1998 model
3) Ford Falcon Forte four-door sedan, 1999 model
4) Holden Commodore Executive four-door sedan, 1998 model
5) Hyundai Excel Sprint hatchback, 1996 model
6) Holden Commodore Executive four-door sedan, 1996 model
7) Holden Commodore Executive four-door sedan, 1990 model
8) Holden Commodore Executive stationwagon, 1996 model
9) Toyota RAV Cruiser 4×4/SUV, 2002 model
10) Hyundai Excel Sprint hatchback, 1999 model.
Not sure what Top Gear based their research on, but similar research was done across the Tasman by an insurance company, who looked at all the insurance claims for stolen vehicles over five or so years to compile their list. The list of cars most stolen in New Zealand reads a little differently, which could prove food for thought for social scientists trying to analyse the cultural differences between here and there, although the trans-Tasman list is less specific. The cars stolen most often in New Zealand are:
1) Honda Torneo
2) Nissan Elgrande
3) Subaru Impreza
4) Subaru Forester
5) Subaru Legacy
6) Nissan Skyline
7) Nissan Presea
8) Mitsubishi Libero
9) Nissan Cefiro
10) Nissan Sunny.
The New Zealand research also found that most of the cars were stolen from public car parks, and that almost half the drivers/insurance claimants interviewed for the research didn’t lock their cars around their home, and about 10% didn’t lock their cars up AT ALL no matter where it was parked.
So how do you prevent your car from being stolen, especially if you’ve got one of those oh-so-popular Holden Commodore Executives? You should be able to foil the average car-jacker by taking a few simple steps.
- Don’t leave your engine running while you just nip out to buy a paper and some milk. This wastes petrol and also is very tempting to an opportunist thief.
- Always lock your car when you’re out of it, even at home. Otherwise, you could end up doing what another friend of mine did recently: left the keys in the car and the garage open because he was going to go out again later, but then changed his mind and forgot about it. One call from the cops in the middle of the night saying they’d found it on a country road with the hazard lights on (??!!) and signs of someone having tried to start a fire in it. At least he got the car back.
- Keep all your valuables out of sight. This includes the car keys. If you have to leave them in the car, hide them under a sweatshirt, a book or an old chip packet, or shove them in the glove box or some other storage area.
- Park in a well-lit street or in a public car-park that allows for good visibility. Yes, most cars are taken from car-parks, but don’t make things too easy for a thief by parking in a dark alley or behind bushes.
- Install a car alarm and/or have some visible security device in place.
And the most annoying car alarm I’ve ever heard? It would have to be one that produced a deep, growly voice warning “Don’t touch my car!” when anyone walked within three metres of it. I saw this at a camping ground, and it was a magnet for kids, who went up to it and poked it just to see what would happen next.
Just How Safe Is Your New Car?
Most modern cars have safety features that weren’t even thought of when this writer was a child. Back then, most cars had safety belts front and back – although a few didn’t have any in the back seat – and most of those seatbelts had adjustment features similar to bra straps, although the posh new ones had those automatically adjustable ones that seized up if you tried to pull them on in a hurry or if you tried to put them on while going around a corner. You couldn’t find an airbag anywhere in any of the cars that I rode in as a child, or even in the ones that I learned to drive in, and I don’t think any of them had ABS brakes,
either.
Well, times have certainly changed and cars have more and more safety features: ABS brakes, pretensioned seatbelts, anti-submarining seat design, crumple zones, brake assistance, stability control and all the rest of it. A few marques have even turned the level of safety into a marketing edge: while some tout their superior speed and power over the competition, other manufacturers – most notably Saab and Volvo, with others like Renault, Citroën and Toyota catching on – push the safety of their vehicles as their most notable feature.
But how safe, exactly, is your new car or the car you’re thinking about buying? One way to find out is to visit http://www.howsafeisyourcar.com.au/, which is a website set up by the Transport Accident Commission of the Victorian state
government. This site draws on ANCAP statistics to rate new cars hitting the Australian market and also USCR (Used Car Safety Ratings) figures. This saves you the hassle of trawling through oodles of crash testing videos and figures, allowing you to find the make and model of vehicle you’re interested in and see how it scores. You’ll get the overall star rating (five is the best, for those who aren’t familiar with the ANCAP system or its European equivalent, Euro NCAP) plus a more detailed breakdown detailing how the car performed in the frontal offset test (where the car is rammed into a pillar that hits the driver’s side at 64 km/h, simulating the typical front-on accident), the side impact crash test (where a heavy trolley is smacked into the side of a car at 50 km/h to simulate a T-bone collision) and the pole test (which is optional but simulates side-swiping a tree by ramming a concrete pole into the side of the test vehicle at 29 km/H). You are also given a breakdown on how well the driver and front passenger are protected, using a colour-coded diagram. Last, but definitely not least, you also get a checklist of all the safety features that are present (or should be) on the vehicle. And, because safety isn’t just about drivers but about pedestrians and air quality, you also can see the rating for pedestrian safety and the “green vehicle guide” (fuel consumption, carbon emissions, etc.). Those who really want to see the full details also have the option of downloading a pdf with the full report.
The maximum number of points that can be scored on each of the main tests (frontal offset and side impact) is 16, and a car has to score 12.5 or more in both of them to get a five-star rating. More points can be picked up via the pole test and by having seatbelt warnings. A score of 32.5 gets a five-star rating, as long as one of those points came from the pole test. A modern ehicle (i.e. one made after 2008) has to have electronic stability control as well in order to get the full five stars.
To give an example of how the system works, let’s have a look at how a couple of recent models that earned five stars at this site performed: the 2011 Holden Barina, the 2011 BMW X3 and the 2011 Audi A6.
The Holden Barina scored 35.43 out of 37 points as follows:
- Side impact test: 16/16
- Frontal offset test: 15.43 out of 16
- Pole test: 2/2
- Other points: 2/3
The BMW X3 scored 34.58 out of 37 points as follows:
- Side impact test: 16/16
- Frontal offset test: 14.58/16
- Pole test: 2/2
- Other points: 2/3
The Audi A6 scored 34.91 out of 37 as follows:
- Side impact test: 15/16
- Frontal offset test: 14.91/16
- Pole test: 2/2
- Other points: 3/3
Every new car that we have listed here at Private Fleet can be checked out for safety, as well as a few that we don’t list (not that there’s many of those!). The site also lists a large range of older cars that are likely to be bought in the second-hand market
(going back to 1990). Have a go yourself at the website to find out just how safe the car you learnt to drive on scored
safety-wise and wonder how you managed to survive. The Ford Falcon and the VW Beetle I had my first lessons weren’t in the list – the ones I got to drive were older than the 1990 model, but I won’t say more than that so I don’t give away my age too
much.
Plugging Into Electric Cars
One thing that often gets raised as a problem when the issue of all-electric cars is discussed is the matter of “refuelling”. It’s easy enough with hybrid cars such as the Toyota Prius and the hybrid Ford Focus – the battery that provides the force needed to get the wheels turning is recharged by the engine when it’s running on petrol. But what about all-electric cars? The battery is always doing its thing and the motion of the car won’t charge it up again (if only it did!).
We all know how petrol-powered cars get refuelled. We all know where our local gas stations are and many of them double as corner stores and takeaway food outlets. In small towns, the petrol station often serves not just as the mechanic’s headquarters but also the post office and the general store. But do these shops cater for electric cars? Your local petrol station probably doesn’t have a place to plug in one of these.
The obvious thing to do is to plug the car in at home and recharge it in the same way that you would recharge your cellphone or camera. So far, so good. You’ll certainly notice the difference in your electricity bill, but this is only to be expected and you won’t be forking out at the petrol station. But what about when you go on holiday or out of town on business? Now where are you going to plug in to recharge? Installing solar panels on the roof of your car so it can charge up as you go could be one option, especially in the more tropical and desert bits of Australia. However, people do need to and want to drive at night and in bad weather, for one thing, and nobody’s taken a car covered with solar panels past the concept stage, at least so far.
This issue is one that does get considered by those in places of power who want to encourage electric cars as a way of decreasing dependence on fossil fuels (However, it must be remembered that the electricity plant has to be run on something, and if the plant is run on petrol, oil or gas, electric cars aren’t going to solve the problem of greenhouse gases and a non-renewable resource. Electric plants powered by wind, water, the sun or nuclear energy (which has its own issues) don’t have this problem.) In the United States, grants have been awarded to at least one organisation to develop the equivalent of a petrol station for electric cars: a plug-in station.
Richmond, in Virginia, USA, is one recipient of one of these grants. The money will go towards working out how to build a charging station, as they are calling these facilities, and ultimately building them. It will also go towards educating mechanics, most of whom got their training on your good old standard internal combustion engine and aren’t familiar with what’s under the hood of a purely electric car. Things to be considered when designing a charging station will include how to make it straightforward to use for drivers, getting the station onto the grid, how not to cause brownouts if heaps of people charge up their cars, how to charge (in the payment sense) for the electricity and so forth.
This isn’t the first initiative taken regarding electric cars in Virginia. One power company, in an effort to get more people adopting electric and hybrid vehicles, introduced a special charging rate for electricity for owners of electric cars, who paid less for their electricity if they wanted to charge up their cars overnight.
Who’s the Oldest Driver Now?
It probably hasn’t caused much of a stir in the motoring world at large, but one of the world’s notable drivers has just died: Ellen Noy. Ellen Noy wasn’t a racing driver or anything of that sort, but she was the holder of a very significant world record: she was the oldest living driver in the world, still pottering around the place without a blemish on her driving record and still fully licensed at the age of 105.
Ellen Noy was a New Zealander who learnt to drive in the little town of Kaiapoi just out of Christchurch where she was living (and driving) up until her death last week. She learnt to drive back in the 1950s, taking her husband’s vehicle out at odd moments and in the weekends, although she didn’t get a proper license until 1965. Obviously, they did things a little differently back then, or else she knew how do dodge the boys in blue (and it was just boys back then, for the most part) when she was learning. She taught herself to drive, too – she just got in and had a go, rather like Bertha Benz, wife of the automotive pioneer.
Ellen Noy was notable for another reason: her driving record was completely spotless. In all her years of driving, she never had a speeding ticket and never got done for driving over the limit, and she never had an accident, either. She’d have seen a few changes over the years regarding regulations and safety – seatbelts weren’t compulsory when she began driving, and things like ABS brakes, crumple zones and ESP weren’t invented. She was no speedster, but she liked to claim that she didn’t go about at a nervous crawl. She went as fast as the speed limit let her and she had plenty of confidence when she drove.
It would be nice to say that Ellen was still driving the same car that she learned in back in the 1950s, but this wasn’t the case. Ellen Noy outlasted that car and her wheels of choice were attached to a 1993 model Toyota Starlet – one of the classic hatchbacks preferred by older drivers and single people with an eye to their wallets. Starlets, like other small hatchbacks, are perfect for the sort of driving that Ellen Noy did: runs to the supermarket, weekly trips to church, social runs to play cards and croquet with friends, so her choice of vehicle isn’t really surprising. Not that she would have been averse to a new car: when she got the news that she was the world’s oldest living driver, she wondered if she’d be able to get a new set of wheels out of it.
Ellen Noy didn’t hold her title of world’s oldest living driver for long, as she achieved that honour last July when the previous title holder died. The previous holder was even older: Sheila Thomson of Scotland, who was aged 108. It’s yet to be revealed who the new holder of the title is and how old they are.
RIP, Ellen Noy: drive on through those pearly gates and enjoy a spin on streets paved with gold.
Level 2, 9 Help Street