- By John R. Quain
Top 5 High-Tech Car Thefts
With all the advanced technology in today’s vehicles, from GPS to cellular connections, one would think it’s just about impossible to steal a car. But criminals have managed to keep up.
Auto “theft is going up,” says Kay Wakeman, director of insurance outreach for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI). “We found overall losses from theft were up 70 percent during a four-year period from 2017 to 2021, and that was surprising because it was only up 7 percent between 2013 and 2017,” Wakeman says.
New forms of high-tech break-ins have come to the forefront. Now catalytic converter thefts are a criminal mainstay while TikTok and YouTube videos offer instructions on how to hijack certain cars for a joyride.
Different kinds of car crimes “go in ebbs and flows,” Wakeman says, but there’s no question that whole vehicle thefts are going up. Here are the top high-tech ways cars and trucks are being stolen today — and how to protect yourself.
