Modern Car Theft

wongataa

Personally I can't see any problems with that as long as they don't deafen the occupants.  In reality it depends on the regulations so a good read of them would be required.

Bl4ckGryph0n

There is nothing wrong with a controlled stop. It can happen slowly. That said I’m sure that if thieves want to find a way around it they can.

I think the emergency services being blocked is not really a valid argument. I mean firstly they should go around you anyway. How often do you come across them. If the thieves we driving do you really think they care?

IronGiant

The simplest option would be to just set off the car alarm. But progressively shutting down the ECU should be doable.

wongataa

I work in engineering.  Even if you think someone wouldn't be stupid enough to do something that would endanger themselves with our product you have to take precautions to prevent people doing just that.  It may seem daft but you have to think of all possible failure modes that cause harm and try and mitigate against them.  End users will always find creative ways to break your product and hurt themselves with your product.

A car that stopped itself (for any reason) could block a road in such a way that it would prevent emergency service access and therefore I could see that those possible (even if not very likely but potentially serious) situations would have to be risk assessed and I could see that such events would be against the regulations car manufacturers have to follow.

imightbewrong

It's funny to think that pushing conked-out cars off the road used to be not that rare at all.  In fact I once his to push mine off lane 2 of the M25!

Bl4ckGryph0n

Agreed, not sure what that has to do with this though or perhaps better put why this shouldn't happen.

Rubbish - you can't risk assess all possible combinations. That is why drivers of emergency vehicles are human beings, they deal day in day out with the unexpected and deal with it. A stop doesn't have to be slam your brakes on and that it is...

In many ways is no different than any other abandonment of the vehicle by those who stole it. It happens right now, likely in the time between our posts.


And yes, I've had two injectors go on one of my cars. In limp mode, I managed to get to the services. On another car I've had a stone make a hole in the radiator, instant loss of coolant, the temperature shot up, I switched the engine off, therefore loss of all hydraulics as well and still managed to get to the side of the motorway out of harm's way...But that v12 was spared

Yet amazingly when it is a security feature it will block all roads to all emergency vehicles all of a sudden.

Dony

Anyone remember the old Peugeot 306? A friend had one, and to deactivate the immobiliser he had to key in a pin number (after using a standard key).
With things like pin numbers and fingerprint recognition now an everyday feature on phones etc, this easy theft option really should not be an issue.

aVdub

Great idea until I read on the news that a man/woman had their finger/eye cut off/out to enable the thieves to make off in the Bentley

IMO The whole coding system needs to be dropped and a new system brought in.

Bubblin

Yes, get the pin wrong 3 times and it’s disabled for 10 mins, cue annoying uni mates messing in the carpark and having to sit there until it unlocks again.

Plus after 2 years of use the keypad keys wearing off so you can narrow down the potential 4 digit pin to 4 numbers.

garryboy

Even with 4 numbers there would still be 9999 possible combinations