Expert tips to keep your car safe
“I like driving in my car, it’s not quite a Jaguar. I like driving in my car, I’m satisfied I’ve got this far.” If someone is singing that whilst approaching your house then beware, it could be the first sign of Madness. Oh, come on, that’s a legitimate joke and I stand by it, so shush. Anyway, you may have noticed I’m not Suggs and as such you may now be questioning why I’m suddenly quoting him. As you’ll soon see, there’s method to my madness (sorry).
You will be relieved, or perhaps disappointed, to hear that this won’t be a blog about the Ska music scene of the late 70s and early 80s. Rather I’m going to be talking about the subject of cars. This isn’t my pitch to be one of the new presenters on The Grand Tour – thankfully there’s no vacancy anyway, given Richard Hammond’s recovery from his latest escapade, but it is directly related to my day job of locksmith. “But how?” you cry, “for cars are not houses..” and I would give an enigmatic smile and direct you to the news story here. At which point you’d understand, nod, and ask me to continue. Well, I’ll assume that anyway as otherwise this blog would be ending considerably early.
The above article from the Doncaster Star is a little bit of a cause for concern. It details how there has recently been a whole string of burglaries in parts of Doncaster where the sole intention of the break-in is to steal the expensive cars parked on the driveway. What this means is the burglar has no need to hang about in your house, risking detection. They just need to be in and out in the time it takes them to find your car keys and then they’ll be off before you can utter the words “burglar in a reasonably priced car”. We’ve seen an increase in this type of criminal activity in recent months but the good news is that there are steps you can take to reduce the risk.
Keeping your car safe
In an ideal world, you wouldn’t need to have your car on display and instead it would be tucked away in a garage, out of sight from the prying eyes of thieves. However, as we are well aware, we are a long way from living in an ideal world, and this is not always a very likely suggestion. Not all of us have garages and those of us that do will often find that it is full of various items of old furniture, ladders, a dusty pool table and something in a bag which we’re a bit too scared to open in case the contents result in us having to notify the authorities. Hiding away your car is therefore not always achievable, so what else can be done?
We’ll take for granted that you’ve been reading these pages for the last couple of years, and have already had anti-snap locks installed and commissioned a locksmith to look over all your security arrangements. If you haven’t done that, I’d draw your attention to past blogs and suggest you give me a call to discuss both of these. I’ll give you a second to do that… okay, done it? On we go. The simple solution to preventing the car thefts detailed above is so obvious that barely any of us think about doing it. Hide your car keys away, people. That’s Hide. Your. Car. Keys. Away. People. Listen, people, hide your car keys away. I’m not sure how many different ways there are of me repeating that – this whole blog would consist of that one simple sentence repeated ad nauseam if I thought it would make a difference.
As mentioned in the article above, the police have not come across one instance in this region of an offender entering a bedroom to demand keys. A recurring theme of these blogs has been me reminding you that burglars are naturally lazy – they want an easy life. They want to be in, to see the keys on top of your hall table, to nab them, and to be out in a matter of seconds. They don’t want to be hanging about, searching your house for the keys, each additional second increasing the risk of detection. If they haven’t found the keys in the first 30 seconds and they know there are people upstairs the likelihood is that they’ll be out of your house and on to the next target with a nice car on its drive. You’ll be left dealing with the clear up of the break-in, of course, but you won’t have the added upset of losing your car – generally the second most financially valuable item any of us own.
Simple steps make a big difference
And that, really is that. I just wanted to pen a quick blog as a reminder to hide away your car keys when you go to bed. Take them with you or hide them properly… i.e not in the drawer of your hall table which will be the second place the burglars are likely to look. None of us like thinking about break-ins, so we tend to put these things well out of our mind. However, just 30 seconds of thinking about sensible steps we can take could well make the difference between an inconvenient break-in with nothing taken, and a devastating break-in leaving us without a car and having to deal with all the additional insurance claims that would entail.