Rodent Regatta

The automotive industry has a history of making penny-wise-and-pound-foolish decisions. Meg Hourihan has an entry and an open letter about car alarms at her site today.

The thought occurs to me that there must be some relationship between the cost of electronics that produce and amplify a whooping sound while flashing the lights and the cost of a ”kill switch with GPS signal” that (silently) shuts a car down after 50 yards of ”unauthorized” driving.

Could it be that this simple economic relationship has been left unexplored? Thieves will find a way to steal anything, but wouldn’t it be great to strand them, locked in the car with a GPS locator signal? (Oh, and for you lawyers out there, the kill switch could lower the windows slightly so that the criminals didn’t sit in a sealed car too long!)