I have never seen or heard of any active defense systems on a car.
When I say active defense, I mean pretty much anything that would intentionally cause physical harm to or trap someone trying to break into a car, preferably after they are actually inside of it. Perhaps something that fires tasers, ejector seats, electrifies the frame, fills the space with netting or foam, deploys spikes, hell it could use flamethrowers and fragmentation rounds for all I care. I can think of hundreds of ways to outfit a car and prevent it from being broken into, but the most you ever see is the typical questionable noisemakers that don’t really do anything at all.
Why doesn’t something like this exist outside of the occasional superhero vehicle in the movies? Is there a legal issue in play here (something beyond just liability I hope)? Or is it just silly to think of doing such a thing?
I believe it is illegal to booby-trap your car or other property anywhere in the U.S. and I am definitely certain it is illegal in Texas. However, in certain countries, it is legal, e.g. South Africa, IIRC. Perhaps some SA doper will be along to clarify.
A similar car device except not for theft was one I remember seeing on an old episode of CHiPs. A guy was sick of people tailgating him so he put a metal plate on hydraulics under his rear bumper that he could lower remotely that would scrape the pavement and send showers of sparks onto the tailgater.
The most common argument against booby-traps is that it won’t discriminate between a thief, someone who’s entering your house/car/whatever for a legitimate reason (say your wife or a police officer), and someone who doesn’t have a legitimate reason to be there, but no criminal intent, either (for instance, a neighbour tries to push away your vehicle blocking his driveway or his kid trespass in your backyard to pick up his ball).
Plus there’s the issue of proportionality between the crime being committed and the harm done by your trap (say, you put a grenade in the bubble-gum dispenser and the 7 y.o. thief get killed).
Statutes normally define very specifically the circumstances when an individual can use force, especially lethal force, to protect himself, others or his property, and a trap that will harm or kill god only knows whom, god only knows why and god only knows when isn’t going to pass muster, generally.
So, yes, a rather silly idea.
As mentioned, there are some countries like South Africa where in crime rate, including car jacking, is insane and rich people want to protect themselves while in their vehicle. I read a few articles years ago about a company that could put flamethrowers that blew out fire around the perimeter of the car to stop a car jacking attempt. I am pretty sure such a thing would be legal in some South American countries that have similar rates of crime.
Slight hijack: Years ago my husband bought a car that turned out to have the best theft-prevention device ever. It was a fixer-upper, and after it had been fixered-up, it had the darndest problem. It’d start, run for about a minute, then stall. He finally tracked down a seemingly harmless extra wire from the gas pump to someplace in the back of the glove compartment, where there was an on/off switch. If you didn’t flip that switch, the gas pump wouldn’t work. So the car would run for a short time on whatever gas was already in the line and then quit. Almost impossible to steal unless you towed it unless you already knew where the secret switch was.
I don’t think this falls under quite the same category, but the brother of a friend of mine had a problem where somebody kept breaking into his car and stealing his stereo. I think this happened to him like two or three times and he got fed up with it so before he installed his next stereo he carefully placed a number of razor blades behind the radio and tucked in with all the wiring.
After all that, a few days later he comes outside in the morning to find his car broken into once again, with his radio hanging partially out of its slot but not gone. There was also blood splattered around the interior of the car. As far as I know there haven’t been any more thefts.
And another big problem of such booby traps, how do you avoid triggering it yourself by accident? How is the booby trap triggered, and how can you be sure that the device won’t be triggered as you’re driving down the freeway at 60 mph?
I’m not from SA, but I did find this CNN story, describing an aftermarket car flamethrower. I would hope that it was made illegal sometime in the last decade.
Is this what you propose? Infernal machines are illegal-though, my idea would be to have a car that would lock all the doors, trapping the thief inside. the car would then send a radio signal to the local Police Dept.-and they could arrest the guy straightaway!
There used to be an auto-taser device made, but the web site I linked to has it discontinues. I know there was at least one other company that made something similar. Basically it was like the club for your steering wheel, but if someone messed with it it would send a jolt through the metal handle.