Car Thieves could Be Stopped Remotely
Speeding off ina stolen car, the thief thinks he has got a great catch. But he is in a nasty surprise. The car is fitted with a remote immobilizer and a radio signal from a control center miles away will ensure that once the thief switches the engine off, he will not be able to start it again.
For now, such devices are only available for fleets of trucks and specialist vehicles used on construction sites. But remote immobilization technology could soon start to trickle down to ordinary cars, and are be available to ordinary cars in the UK in two months.
The idea goes like this. A control box fitted to the car incorporates a miniature cellphone, a microprocessor and memory, and a GPS satellitepositioning receiver. If the car is stolen, a coded cellphone signal will tell the unit to block the vehicle's engine management system and prevent the engine being restarted.
There are even plans for immobilizers that shut down vehicles on the move, though there are fears over the safety implications of such a system.
In the UK. An array of technical fixes is already making life harder for car thieves. "The pattern of vehicles crime has changed," says Martyn Randall of Thatcham, a security research organization based in Berkshire that is funded in part by the motor insurance industry.
He says it would only take him a few minutes to teach a novice how to steal a car, using a bare minimum of tools. But only if the car is more than 10 years old.
Modern cars are a far tougher proposition, as their engine management computer will not allow them to start unless they receive a unique ID code beamed out by the ignition key. In the UK, technologies like this have helped achieve a 31 per cent drop in vehicle-related crime since 1997.
But determined criminals are still managing to find other ways to steal cars. Often by getting hold of the owner's keys in a burglary. In 2000, 12 per cent of vehicles stolen in the UK were taken using the owner's keys double the previous year's figure.
Remote-controlled immobilization system would put a major new obstacle in the criminal's way by making such thefts pointless. A group that includes That cham, the police, insurance companies and security technology firms have developed standards for a system that could go on the market sooner than the customer [理工类C]
远程制止偷车贼
超速驾驶在偷来的汽车里，偷车贼以为自己大获全胜。但是他马上就会又惊又恼。车上已经被装了远程制动装置，一个几英里以外的控制中心发来的无线信号将确保盗贼一旦启动引擎，他就不能再次发动汽车了。
目前，这种装置只用于卡车队或者用于建筑工地的特殊车辆上。但是远程制动技术很快就会逐步应用到普通汽车上。并且应该在两个月之内用在英国的普通汽车上。
计划是这样的。把一个集合有微型无绳电话，微量处理器，存储器以及全球定位系统的卫星接收器的控制盒子安装在汽车上。如果汽车被盗，一个被编码的无绳电话信号就会告诉这个装置停止车辆引擎控制系统来阻止引擎再次被启动。
甚至还有一些人主张计划将制动装置装在运行着的车辆上，可是这一来人们就会担心这个系统的安全性。
在英国，一系列的技术装置已经让盗车贼步履维艰了。玛丁兰多来自位于贝克郡的一个由汽车保险工业投资成立的名为撒策姆的安全研究机构。他说：“车辆盗窃的手法已经有所改变。”
他还声称只要是10年以上的汽车，他就能用几样简单的工具在几分钟之内教会一个新手怎样偷车。
现代车却远没有这么简单，因为它们的引擎管理计算机装置只有接收到一个独一无二的由点火钥匙发送过来的身份密码才可以启动汽车。自1997年以来，在英国，技术人员已经利用此项技术帮助减少了31%的涉及车辆犯罪案。
但是不死心的盗贼们却还在一直想方设法偷车。例如很多时候，他们在夜里盗走主人的汽车钥匙进而偷车。在2000年，英国12%的车辆被盗案是由于主人的钥匙被盗，这个数字比前一年增长了1倍。
远程控制的制动系统给盗贼设置了一个全新的障碍。包括撒策姆，公安部门，保险公司以及安全技术公司的这样一个群体已经为体系开发出了一个标准，将比顾客所预期的更早地被很快推广到市场上。[理工类C]