Park Smarter Guide by Jeffrey Scott

I would like to offer my advice to you regarding vehicle crime, in particular with the recent amount of vans being broken into and tradesmens tools being stolen. As a local tradesman I can really feel for them as I know that in the current economic climate that we are living in, the last thing I would need would be my van being broken into and my tools being stolen. The expense of the repair to the vehicle alone would be bad enough and then to have to buy new expensive tools worse! Of course then the kick in the teeth is being unable to go to work to recover the costs as we need our tools to go to work!

My Personal and Professional advice on some do's and don'ts would be:-
1) Don't leave anything of value on show in your vehicle (no loose change, no handbags, no jackets, no detachable stereo fronts, strictly no Sat Navs and wipe the ring from your windscreen as that is an advert that you have one and it's in the glove box!)

2) Don't park in a dark place where your vehicle is out of sight of any house windows, roads etc.

3) Don't leave tools and expensive machinery, office equipment, brief cases etc in your vehicle especially overnight or in supermarket / train station car parks.

4) Don't leave you car keys with in view of your letterbox. This probably hasn't even crossed the minds of most people, but there is an increasing trend to steal your keys and then help themselves to your vehicle and / or contents! One technique is to put an empty toilet / kitchen roll in your letterbox to keep it open, then insert a long rod possibly even a fishing rod with a hook on the end and simply hook your keys away while you sleep. Simply moving the place you leave keys solves this problem straight away.

1) Do make sure all doors in your vehicle are locked and windows are closed, MORE IMPORTANTLY do you know that with lots of newer vehicles like vauxhall, ford etc with remote locking actually have a DEADLOCK facility from your remote control? often with these vehicles the first press of you remote control will lock your car doors (but they can still be opened from the inside) IF YOU PRESS IT A SECOND time then that will activate your deadlocks (this means that if someone breaks your vehicle window then they still can't open the doors making you boot in particular quite inaccessible if you have you parcel shelf in place or have a saloon car or van.

2A) Do park in a well lit area and I would advise parking in a place that is visible from as many houses / busy roads as possible (think if you were a thief breaking into your vehicle then would you really want to do it here? When there are 4 houses within close proximity to your vehicle with bedroom windows pointing towards it. The would be thief would consider it very high risk knowing that any little noise might wake a very angry vehicle owner!!

2B) Do turn your parking area into a low risk spot. If you have your own parking spot or one outside your house where you can normally park, why not make it into a lower risk spot by putting in a flood light activated by PIR movement detector, CCTV or maybe just a dummy CCTV camera, putting something in an overlooking window of your house like a dummy person, video camera, perhaps leave your curtains pulled around an object so it looks like someone could be pulling them back to look out at your vehicle, even a baseball cap on football might just be enough for a thief to feel uncomfortable enough not to break into your vehicle!

3) Do put anything that is absolutely necessary to leave in your vehicle out of sight like in your boot with your parcel shelf in place. Your glove box is not a safe place to put things and in fact someone might just smash your window to open your glove box to see if there is a Sat Nav or anything of value in it. So if your glove box is empty then leave it open so the thief can see that there is no point in smashing your window.

Tools are something that should be taken out of your van overnight but I realise that it is not always possible or practical to do so. If you are leaving tools in your vehicle then I suggest using your vehicles deadlocking facility if it has one, having additional deadlocks fitted to at least the side load door and the rear doors of your vehicle should also be a minimum precaution. The load area deadlock combined with a vehicle with out any glass windows in the rear and a full metal bulkhead isolating the load area from the cab will make your vehicle a lot more secure than the one parked next to it and therefore the thief will more than likely move on to easier pickings. The problem is that a lot of new vans are vulnerable to break in and once the thieves have found out the way to get into say the ford transit, the thief will know he can get into any ford transit the same shape!! Also take all the new Vauxhall, Peugeot, Renault, Citreon vans etc that have the big plastic handles, although they may have remote deadlocking it may actually just be a case that a thief will break the big plastic handle off and the then they are in your van! Also it is always worth having an alarm fitted to your van in the event that if they do break in, at least they will hopefully be scared away by the noise and if not then they sure won't hang around long.

Please browse the website to find any information you want about security for your vehicle and please do contact us for more advice.

Jeffrey Scott, Director, Sussex Installation Team LTD, (Copyright this text may not be copied or reproduced without prior concent from Sussex Installation Team LTD).