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South African firms are using the latest in technological wizardry to halt vehicle thefts, writes GREG GORDON --> Big brothers keep their eyes on missing cars
THERE is an urban legend that tells of a man who gets a telephone call from a vehicle tracking company. He is asked if he owns a luxury silver car. When he says he does, the security person says it is travelling east at a speed of 680km/h - the inference being that the stolen vehicle is inside an aircraft and is being tracked on its way to a chop shop.
It may sound like science fiction but it is actually possible to trace a car in this way using modern tracking technology. South Africa's vehicle tracking industry has recently shot to prominence following a steady growth in vehicle theft. According to local research house BMI TechKnowledge, car theft in South Africa is a R5-billion a year business. There are 5.2 million registered cars in the country but only 31 000 have some sort of tracking device fitted. Police have identified 151 crime syndicates that steal about a third of the 360 000 cars registered each year. Satellite, cellular and radio technology have been harnessed by the tracking industry to trace and recover stolen vehicles. Some tracking companies use global positioning system satellites to monitor a vehicle's whereabouts. A device fitted to the car picks up the signal from several satellites orbiting the earth. The vehicle needs to "see" at least three of the satellites for its position to be pinpointed. This information is then relayed to a security company's base station. This form of tracking is fairly cheap because the satellites have been put in place by the US military and public access to their signals is free. South Africa's cellular phone networks can be used for more than just telephone calls. Several tracking companies use them to follow stolen cars. Says Steve Joubert, managing director of CelTron: "The surge in South Africa of vehicle thefts, hijacking and crimes has created a huge demand for an effective remote tracking and monitoring system with national coverage.
"Our vehicle management system is essentially a fixed mobile car cellular telephone integrated with a global positioning system, as well as management software with onboard intelligence to accept coordinates, parameters and self-alarm capabilities." The owner tells the company where he will be driving his car - for example just in Gauteng, or in Cape Town and Bloemfontein and on the freeway in between - and this information will be downloaded to the on-board unit. Through co-ordinating its position from information gathered through the global positioning system, the unit installed in the vehicle will be able to tell whether the car has left the area laid down by the driver. "Should the parameters be violated in any form, the unit will instantly download the relevant information to a proprietary computer system maintained by us," says Joubert. An alarm is raised on the computer system while a map indicating the exact position of the vehicle is displayed on the computer screen. The communication line between the vehicle and the control centre is kept open and the tracker will update its position at three- to five-second intervals. If the violation indicates an emergency (hijacking or theft) a reaction force is mobilised to assist the driver of the vehicle. "The system could be applied to a specific vehicle, a selected group of vehicles or the entire fleet," says Joubert. A company spokesman says a mixture of technology is used to find stolen vehicles. "When we are informed that a vehicle has been stolen, we activate the unit in a vehicle by triggering it from a satellite orbiting the earth. The unit in the stolen vehicle then sends out a signal which can be traced by our terrestrial national network of radio high sites, some of which are linked by microwave."
Those people who are employed as system fitters are given thorough security checks and are often given lie-detector tests. Vehicle tracking systems cost around R2 000 to fit and there is a monthly fee. Some companies charge extra for recovering vehicles. The recovery rate of most tracking systems is about 90%.
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