How Your Car Security Features Affect Your Insurance Rates

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Car theft is everywhere and continues to rise dramatically each year. Because of the need of the car owners to protect their investments, many car manufacturers have resorted to develop new ways to combat and help drivers protect their vehicles from thieves.

Products such as motion sensors, remote boot, and car alarm systems have been in the market for years.  Highly sophisticated systems such as the global positioning satellite receivers, black boxes, and other instruments that hook you up with web services are becoming more common.

I outlined below few of these hi-tech gadgets that you can install to increase the security features of your car. 

Black boxes. Part of the automatic system that resides inside the car and its main purpose is to monitor all its activities. It has a small recorder capable of storing data from the car’s control systems. The stored data in the black box can be analyzed using a special software in the PC and reports such as engine performance and the distance traveled can be generated. Most black boxes are able to store data up to 75 hours.

GPS. Also known as Global Position System (GPS), is probably one of the hottest gadgets in the century. GPS provides a real-time monitoring of your car wherever their location on Earth. Some instruments that take advantage of the GPS system can analyze the car’s speed and direction effectively. However, if GPS is to be used to track thieves, it is entirely effective at all times because of its susceptibility to interference. A radio beacon system such as LoJack could easily accomplish this task because its signals are sent using the cellular telephony system. As compared to GPS, LoJack is a not that expensive.

Web-enabled gadgets. If your car is stolen, you can activate these devices to keep track of the location of your car. You can even instruct the car to stop using the internet. A unique service that could serve as a very good anti-theft feature apart from having able to control the car remotely anywhere you are. For instance, if the car is started without ignition, a notification is sent to the server of the service provider that informs the owner through phone or page that the car was started. The owner could take the necessary action of disabling the car remotely.

Car alarm systems. This is the cheapest car security feature you can install in your car and has been in the service for many years already. The prices normally play between $50 to $500. There are also sophisticated alarm systems that you can use, which provides keyless entry and randomly arranged codes. 

Keyless ignition systems. As the name implies, you do not need ignition keys to start your car. What you see are the Start and Stop buttons that can be activated using an identification card. Fingerprint recognition and scanners that allow that car to validate who can use and start the vehicle.

Motion sensor system. This system relies on the movement around and inside the car and uses microwave frequencies to determine effectively the slightest disturbance.