I don’t have any experience as a car thief, but I would think that if a thief was trying to steal a car and it didn’t start, the first thing that they would think off is that the car must have a kill switch some where.
Are most kill switches within reach of someone at the wheel of the vehicle? So wouldn’t this fact make the switch relatively easy to find? What am I missing?
I’ve had a couple of vehicles with switches using those weird round keys used in soda machines. What car thief has one of those?
What you’re missing is the fact that the average criminal is really rather stupid.
A career criminal that specializes in stealing cars might well think about a kill switch. But probably very few others would.
I’ve never tried to steal a car, but I think it might be partly because acting extremely quickly is one of the main goals for car thieves.
I would probably just move on to the next car. I worked as a mechanic in a new car dealership for three years and never encountered a car with a kill switch?
According to whatever late night pseudo-news program I saw this on: “good” car thieves measure their time in seconds. If it takes a minute to get a car open and started they leave the area.
They had a couple of reformed car thieves out on parole to help them with the demonstration. They went out to the parking lot and these guys were into the car and pulling out of the parking spot faster than I do with my keys.
Knowing that a kill switch is within reach of the drivers seat really doesn’t make it much easier to find or figure out how to work. I have given up in frustration trying to find the right button/s to push and sequence to do so on vehicles I’m unfamiliar with to shut the low tire indicator message on the console display off, when I’m under no stress or time constraints… and these switches were designed to be easy to use.
Finding a switch designed to be elusive top a thief should be much harder for all but long-term professionals, which there aren’t very many of. I’d say most such thefts are committed by young people who’ve learned just enough about their craft to make a bit of money but don’t really have the long-term planning ability and dedication to further their knowledge… if they did they’d choose a different way to make money.
I have a 1977 diesel tractor which requires 3 levers to be in certain positions, one pedal depressed, one knob pushed in, and an unmarked button pushed (beyond turning the key) to start. The staff at the auction I bought it from - who sell this type of equipment every day - couldn’t figure it out and had to hot wire the tractor to get it started during the sale.
I’m curious if kill switches are still “a thing”. Seems like there is a lot of electronic handshaking between the various systems in modern vehicles, and it would be difficult (at least for amateurs) to install one. Don’t modern rfid keys make drive-away car theft almost impossible anyway? I’d assume it would involve a tow truck nowadays.
If I’m leaving my truck for any length of time (hunting, hiking, fishing) I just pull the fuel-pump relay* and put it in my pack.
*Disclaimer: Haven’t done this on my newest ride, but on previous ones it was very simple.
In older cars, I have taken the short HT lead between the coil and distributor when I left it somewhere a bit dodgy. As you say, a modern car with all the electronics would need something more sophisticated.
The OBD socket is a vulnerable point these days, so I have a fake one that looks like it’ would work, but doesn’t. A skilled thief would suss it out in moments but not your average scumbag who just broke the window to get in.
As flyer said, most criminals aren’t that smart. I’ve caught (or pressed charges on) lots of criminals, and the stuff they say/do…the mind boggles.
As for a kill switch, I’d think if I was attempting to start a car that I was stealing and nothing was happening, I’d be getting out and moving a few blocks down before someone sees me. Even if I knew there was a kill switch (and no one expects [del]the spa*, think about how hard it would be to find something like that. Is it buried way under the dash? Is it one of the buttons on the dash that looks like a regular feature of the car?* Is it in the glove compartment? Under the seat, in the counsel? A bluetooth switch that requires the owners phone to be nearby?
There’s just so many different ways, I just can’t imagine sticking around wondering why a stolen car isn’t starting. You have to remember, they’re car thieves, not mechanics getting paid by the hour to get a car running.
Personally, if I was attempting to hot wire a a car and it wasn’t working, I’d assuming it was something I was doing wrong, not that the owner wired in a kill switch.
I’m 42, and I haven’t even heard of kill switches in cars. So I guess I’d be one of those dumb criminals, if I were into stealing cars, and just move on to the next vehicle.
What cars have kill switches? Is this aftermarket? Who has them?
I would WAG that a thief would assume they damaged the car in their attempt to hotwire it, did it incorrectly, or otherwise the car is not functioning. Shorting a wire (which is what they do) can kill the car’s computer. Kill switches seem to be mostly a thing in the past, and chances are low that a thief would run into one IMHO.
Also even if they suspected it, the question of finding it or bypassing it remains, that takes time. One has to guess what location the driver can reach and that would have a wire run to it, it could also be a normal switch, such as the rear defroster must be on to start the car. Or pop the hood and look for non-standard wires.
[QUOTE=Joey P;20937528 most criminals aren’t that smart. I’ve caught (or pressed charges on) lots of criminals, and the stuff they say/do…the mind boggles. .[/QUOTE]
Please start a thread on this, and tell us some stories! it sounds fascinating.
Ba-da-bing! Sometimes we watch too many movies, like “Gone in Sixty Seconds”, for example, and we think that it is impossible to prevent auto theft because these “pros” are unstoppable. The reality is that for every “master criminal”, there is a host of pretty stupid, uneducated ones.
If you follow the news in Chicago, virtually all the car thefts you hear about are carjackings at gunpoint and cars that are stolen while people leave them running while running into a store or filling up at a gas station.
They’re not OEM, but they’re not exactly aftermarket either, the latter implying that some vendor is making kits with parts and instructions for the express purpose of disabling a car. If you want a kill switch on your car, you just go to an electronics vendor and buy a suitable switch, some wire, and some connectors, and you figure out how to wire it into your car.
The people who have them are people who are worried about their car being stolen. That means it’s either a really nice car, or it’s a car that’s otherwise very important to the owner (i.e. their only transportation) and is being regularly parked in a vulnerable place.
A few decades ago my dad had a Corvette, and he put a kill switch on it that interrupted power to the distributor. The starter would crank, but without a spark, the engine wasn’t going to run. It was just a big rocker switch, out of sight down below the dashboard, to the right of the steering column. it was easy to find by feel, if you knew what you were searching for. But a thief wouldn’t know whether the car is deliberately disabled, or just a broken-down piece of shit, and he’s not going to waste time trying to figure it out; the longer he lingers, the more likely he is to get busted.
On late-model cars the ECU requires the key to be present before it will deign to start the engine for you. This means you don’t need a kill switch, unless you’re worried about your key being stolen from you (which would then facilitate a drive-away theft of your car).
If you want a car that you know will run, you jack a car that’s being driven. If necessary, taking the driver hostage so that the RF proximity key fob doesn’t leave the sensor space of the cabin (or demanding they leave the key in the car before you forcibly eject them.)
If you want a car and you don’t care to risk it not starting, you “borrow” a towing company flatbed and haul the car way intact and inert. Bonus points if you can get a uniform and make it look like a legitimate tow-away.
Back in the day, someone tried to steal my brother’s car out of his complex’s parking lot and had the ignition successfully drilled out before discovering that the battery was dead. The thief did not ask anyone for a jump, but rather just fled.
We had to roll the (stick-shift) car down a hill to get it running, and for the next few weeks until he could get it fixed, he started the car by jamming a big flathead screwdriver down where the key used to go in, and turning it. We joked about taking it to valet parking somewhere in that condition and handing the screwdriver to the attendant.
Same here, but I’m 56. It does seem logical, now that someone mentioned it, that a car could have such a switch. It never occurred to me before that it’s a thing.
I’ve had one car that had a kill switch in it, an Acura sedan we bought used in the early 90s. The previous owner had installed it — it was a very small button on the underside of the steering column that had to be depressed while you turned the key.
What always amazed me was that no mechanic or valet parking attendant ever asked us how to start the car, they all figured it out easily enough.
Question: so how “unstealable” is my BMW? It’s button-start, but the key must be in the vicinity. I also activated a start code that has to be input before it will start. It also has an alarm system.
I’ve read that BMWs can be electronically hacked, but I assume the common dingleberry thief wouldn’t know how to do it?