Car Thieves could Be Stopped Remotely
    Speeding off ina stolen car, the thief thinks he has got a great catch. But he is in a nasty surprise. The car is fitted with a remote immobilizer and a radio signal from a control center miles away will ensure that once the thief switches the engine off, he will not be able to start it again.
    For now, such devices are only available for fleets of trucks and specialist vehicles used on construction sites. But remote immobilization technology could soon start to trickle down to ordinary cars, and are be available to ordinary cars in the UK in two months.
    The idea goes like this. A control box fitted to the car incorporates a miniature cellphone, a microprocessor and memory, and a GPS satellitepositioning receiver. If the car is stolen, a coded cellphone signal will tell the unit to block the vehicle's engine management system and prevent the engine being restarted.
    There are even plans for immobilizers that shut down vehicles on the move, though there are fears over the safety implications of such a system.
    In the UK. An array of technical fixes is already making life harder for car thieves. "The pattern of vehicles crime has changed," says Martyn Randall of Thatcham, a security research organization based in Berkshire that is funded in part by the motor insurance industry.
    He says it would only take him a few minutes to teach a novice how to steal a car, using a bare minimum of tools. But only if the car is more than 10 years old.
    Modern cars are a far tougher proposition, as their engine management computer will not allow them to start unless they receive a unique ID code beamed out by the ignition key. In the UK, technologies like this have helped achieve a 31 per cent drop in vehicle-related crime since 1997.
    But determined criminals are still managing to find other ways to steal cars. Often by getting hold of the owner's keys in a burglary. In 2000, 12 per cent of vehicles stolen in the UK were taken using the owner's keys double the previous year's figure.
    Remote-controlled immobilization system would put a major new obstacle in the criminal's way by making such thefts pointless. A group that includes That cham, the police, insurance companies and security technology firms have developed standards for a system that could go on the market sooner than the customer
    遠程制止偷車賊
    超速駕駛在偷來的汽車里，偷車賊以為自己大獲全勝。但是他馬上就會又驚又惱。車上已經(jīng)被裝了遠程制動裝置，一個幾英里以外的控制中心發(fā)來的無線信號將確保盜賊一旦啟動引擎，他就不能再次發(fā)動汽車了。
    目前，這種裝置只用于卡車隊或者用于建筑工地的特殊車輛上。但是遠程制動技術(shù)很快就會逐步應(yīng)用到普通汽車上。并且應(yīng)該在兩個月之內(nèi)用在英國的普通汽車上。
    計劃是這樣的。把一個集合有微型無繩電話，微量處理器，存儲器以及全球定位系統(tǒng)的衛(wèi)星接收器的控制盒子安裝在汽車上。如果汽車被盜，一個被編碼的無繩電話信號就會告訴這個裝置停止車輛引擎控制系統(tǒng)來阻止引擎再次被啟動。
    甚至還有一些人主張計劃將制動裝置裝在運行著的車輛上，可是這一來人們就會擔(dān)心這個系統(tǒng)的安全性。
    在英國，一系列的技術(shù)裝置已經(jīng)讓盜車賊步履維艱了?，敹√m多來自位于貝克郡的一個由汽車保險工業(yè)投資成立的名為撒策姆的安全研究機構(gòu)。他說：“車輛盜竊的手法已經(jīng)有所改變?！?BR>    他還聲稱只要是10年以上的汽車，他就能用幾樣簡單的工具在幾分鐘之內(nèi)教會一個新手怎樣偷車。
    現(xiàn)代車卻遠沒有這么簡單，因為它們的引擎管理計算機裝置只有接收到一個獨一無二的由點火鑰匙發(fā)送過來的身份密碼才可以啟動汽車。自1997年以來，在英國，技術(shù)人員已經(jīng)利用此項技術(shù)幫助減少了31%的涉及車輛犯罪案。
    但是不死心的盜賊們卻還在一直想方設(shè)法偷車。例如很多時候，他們在夜里盜走主人的汽車鑰匙進而偷車。在2000年，英國12%的車輛被盜案是由于主人的鑰匙被盜，這個數(shù)字比前一年增長了1倍。
    遠程控制的制動系統(tǒng)給盜賊設(shè)置了一個全新的障礙。包括撒策姆，公安部門，保險公司以及安全技術(shù)公司的這樣一個群體已經(jīng)為體系開發(fā)出了一個標(biāo)準，將比顧客所預(yù)期的更早地被很快推廣到市場上。