Modern Car Theft

Bubblin

72 possible combinations if you know the 4 numbers (due to the keys wearing off) or 9999 if you don’t.

(4x3x2x1)

garryboy

Oh yes too early for me lol

Still 72 possible. Hopefully enough time to hit them over the head with a spade whilst they were trying to figure it out.

Bubblin

Too early for me 4x3x2x1 is 24 not 72, doh!

nvingo

That pretty much happened to a neighbour last year.
They dropped their car at the car wash in the supermarket car park and left the keys with the wash attendant.
Returned with a load of perishable/frozen groceries to a clean car but their keys missing.
Another wash customer had been given the wrong keys, but because his car was keyless start, he was able to drive it home with his wife's keys in her handbag and hadn't used the key returned from the wash kiosk.
Luckily he returned later in the day to exchange the keys.
Neighbour billed the wash service for the cost of taxi to take groceries home and fetch second key and return trips to pick up car and first key.

imightbewrong

Mind boggling

mjn

It's 10000 not 24, or 72.

Unless this keypad had fewer digits than 10?

imightbewrong

If it has ten keys and the code is four digits:
- if we have no clues: 10K options (10^4)
- if we know which four digits they are, just not the order: 24 options (4! = 4*3*2)

mjn

Ah, i follow now. Teach me for skim reading.

Astaroth

The other problem of any "emergency stop" option on if the key isnt detected is that there are non-theft reasons why a key may "not be present" for the whole journey... take the key that runs out of battery, the key/receiver that goes faulty (as it did on our hire car the other day), the example of the train station but he drops her off leaving the engine running instead etc.

You could see argument for triggering any tracker device but any disablement of the vehicle could be dangerous.

imightbewrong

Any car can already be 'disabled' by a mechanical fault or running out of fuel - it doesn't have to be an 'emergency stop'.  There could even be a grace period countdown of however long you like.

A working key should never suddenly run out of battery - there will be warnings.  On low batter it should revert to button/insert mode if there is such a thing.