Self Defence for Women - Live an Empowered Life

Can Luxury Car Theft Be Prevented - How to Protect Your Car, Confidence & Life

• Julie Waite • Season 1 • Episode 15

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A car is stolen every 4 minutes in the UK—many of them high-end, keyless, and stolen silently off driveways. In this quick tip episode, Julie Waite from Streetwise Defence breaks down exactly how luxury car theft happens, how to protect your vehicle using layered defences, and the crucial mindset shift that could save your life.

Learn about keyless relay theft, ghost tagging, and what to do (and not do) if you ever face it. Plus: a powerful story of someone who chased down their stolen car—and why we urge you to pause and protect yourself instead.

Don’t miss this one—it could save you more than just your car.

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Julie Waite (00:00)

Hi and welcome to Self Defence for Women, Live an Empowered Life, the podcast that helps you stay safe, feel strong and take control of your personal security both physically and emotionally. I'm Julie Waite, women's safety advocate and co-founder of Streetwise Defence and today we're doing one of our 10 minute tip episodes, perfect for a quick listen while you're driving, out for a walk or grabbing a coffee.

 

Today we're looking into a question we get asked more and more, can luxury car theft be prevented? In the UK, a car is stolen every four minutes and three seconds. That's nearly 130,000 cars in 2024 alone.

 

In the next 10 minutes, we'll break it down into three parts. One, awareness, how these thefts actually happen. Two, prevention, what you can do to make your car a harder target. And three, a mindset, the tough reality of what you're willing to risk if it happens to you. So let's get into it.

 

So part one awareness, luxury car theft is fast, quiet and professional. It's not just some random person trying to smash a window and steal a car. These are highly organised, well funded criminal gangs who know exactly what they're looking for and they work in a very efficient way to steal cars. The most common way that these thefts happen is through

 

keyless relay theft where they use a signal amplifier to get the signal of your car key from inside your home. also I've heard of this happening in a restaurant where one of the gang actually comes in and sits near you in the restaurant they get the signal and the guy outside is able to use their tech to unlock the car. They are away with your car so quickly

 

I'll give an example of this. This happened to my next door neighbour a few months ago and it's kind of, it's been on my mind ever since. They had their Range Rover stolen off their drive. It was a Sunday evening at eight o'clock, which some people might find surprising. It was dark at this point, but only just and a car drove up. There was four guys all in balaclavas.

 

They were in the car within about 30 seconds. They even had someone put fuel in the car on the drive and they were gone. And that's how quickly it can happen. So that's one way it happens. They can also heard of ghost tagging where they put a tag on your car. someone was telling Dene about this a few weeks ago when he did some training.

 

someone that was into these kind of like a fast and furious type cars it happens a lot with those cars apparently and they're putting tags on like an air tag on your car without you knowing and then they're monitoring you following to see where you're going to then pick the best time to steal the car. There are also actual attacks so where someone breaks into your home

 

to threaten you to get the keys. I have a friend who told me about this happening where a friend of theirs woke up in the middle of the night to three men with an axe standing over them in their bed demanding their keys. That can also happen while you're actually getting in and out of your car, because that's a very vulnerable point when you're about to get in your car or you're getting out of your car about to get in the house.

 

There's also carjacking which thankfully in the UK is quite rare, it's only around 1 % of car thefts

 

Brands that are being targeted are cars like Range Rovers, Mercedes, BMWs, but really it's any car that is going to have a high value and in particular keyless cars.

 

So let's look at part two, prevention. And the truth is here that you can't make your car 100 % theft proof, but you can make it such a pain to steal that they choose someone else. And that's the goal here. So if it's a keyless car, then you need to think about how you're protecting your key from any signals that they might be using. So you can get these little kind of Faraday bags.

 

tins and things like that that you can put the key in and you need to think about using those not just in the home but when you're out and about as well.

 

There's all different types of immobilizers that some will come built into the car. There's others where the car won't start unless you put in a specific sequence or you have a little extra key to do that. But some of these cars are being stolen on the back of flatbed trucks, so not necessarily gonna work in every case.

 

People are putting air tags on their cars and I've seen quite a few cases in the news of people stealing back their cars where cars been stolen, they got in touch with the police and they're getting no help there So...

 

people are seeing where their cars are and they go in and taking it back. If that is something that you do, just be very, very careful how you do that because you don't know what situation you're going to find it in and you certainly would need to proceed carefully and check the area and just check it's completely safe before you decide to go and do that. You then come to

 

physical methods of preventing car theft you can get a steering wheel lock which like these have just been around for years and they can still get them off they can get them off in about five minutes but it's an extra barrier you know do they get your car in 30 seconds or do they get it in 30 seconds and five minutes so that's something to consider

 

I know there's a huge trend at the moment in these pop-up bollards. There's like whole companies that are starting up just to install these bollards around people's homes. So it's the ones where they dig into the ground and so you can put it down and then you can raise it up when the car is in. So that's an option if you haven't got a gate or you're not in a property where you can kind of park it in a garage or anything like that.

 

and then as well a wheel clamp is something that you can consider. Again, they can get them off, but you've got to think, right, you know, there's two Range Rovers on a street. One of them hasn't got anything. One of them has got the bollards, the wheel clamp, and the steering wheel lock, and you've got, you know, your key in a Faraday box or a pouch or whatever it is. You can see which one they're going to pick.

 

they'd have to really, really want your specific car for a very specific reason to kind of go through all those levels.

 

There's things like CCTV but to be honest, that doesn't seem to cause any deterrent whatsoever. My neighbours had CCTV and it didn't make any difference. Because there's no follow-up, you can give the CCTV coverage to the police and they don't do anything about it.

 

The other thing that you can do is think very carefully before posting on social media pictures of your car. know, everyone wants to kind of be proud of what they've bought and what they've earned, but people do look online and they are watching.

 

So like I said, the goal with prevention is to try and layer up as many elements as you can to make your car a harder target and to make them go and pick something easier. So just going through all those different elements, looking at your home and thinking, if I was trying to steal this car, how easy would it be?

 

So part three, want to look at mindset and this is really the hardest part because this is the moment when you need to think about what you are prepared to do to protect your car. And it's a very personal choice and it's very difficult because you have worked hard to get your car, you're proud of it and...

 

It's your property and no one has the right to come and take it from you. However, you have to...

 

have put some good thought to this and drop your ego for a moment and be logical and reasonable about how much are you willing to risk to protect your car. So I'll give you the example of my neighbour. I mentioned the Range Rover was stolen. They actually saw it being stolen off the drive because they were in the living room and they saw the lights go on and they saw it being taken. One of them acting under pure adrenaline.

 

ran out, got in their other car and started to follow them. They said to me they didn't know what they were going to do, they were just acting under pure adrenaline because it was such a shock, like the car's going, what am going to do? I'm just running out, I'm just chasing it. So they called the police while they were driving, gave them the details and there was actually a police car in the area and they came.

 

and there was a bit of a chase with the vehicle and then the guys got out and ran off so they did get the car back it was a bit damaged but my neighbor was so badly shaken up by this experience and they were you know they've got young kids they were so traumatized by the whole thing like imagine on a Sunday night being in your living room with your family and seeing four guys on your drive

 

with balaclavas sealing your car. They were so shaken up by it. They've done all sorts of things since then. They've looked at the home security, they've had everything upgraded. They already had good home security. But they made the decision, and this was their, purely their choice, it may not be for everyone, they actually sold both of their cars within about four days of this happening. They had a Range Rover, they had a Mercedes. They now have two Ford Focus on the drive, older models.

 

and they just did not want to live in fear of those cars being taken.

 

Another example which is something that when Dene was training a self-defence, ⁓ a banking group in the UK, one of the men in the session shared this story of what happened to his younger brother and it's something that we talk about now in our training when we're talking about different types of violence and just

 

thinking through the consequences of kind of blindly following your adrenaline and your ego and not thinking through what could happen. So this guy, the younger brother, the parents had gone on holiday and they'd got, not long before they'd gone, they'd got a really nice new car and the younger brother went and stayed at the house to just keep an eye on the house and the car. One day, it was just broad daylight, he saw one guy

 

on the drive trying to break into the car. So he thought, I'm going to go out and stop this guy. You know, you might think, well, there's only one of them. It's broad daylight. I'm going to go out and stop them. He went out and the thief pulled a screwdriver out of his pocket and stabbed him in the side of the head. And he very sadly died from that injury.

 

and the guy got seven years and he's actually back out now. This happened about 10 years ago. He's out now. And that family lost, it's making me a bit upset actually, they lost, you know, the parents lost their son, the guy lost his brother. And it's very hard because you don't want people to take your belongings, but you don't know the mindset of that person in front of you.

 

you don't know if they're armed or not, you don't know what their view is on the value of human life so it's really about

 

Thinking about this before it happens so that if something happens you don't just react on adrenaline and ego. It's about thinking, okay, if someone comes to steal the car off the drive, what am I going to do?

 

if someone breaks into my house to get the key, what am I going to do? Our advice, if you wanted our advice, it's just to let it go. It's just not worth it. Losing your life and your family having to go through the trauma of losing a parent, a brother, a sister, whoever, is just not worth it for a car.

 

So it's really about knowing how this happens, reducing the risk as much as you can, and then deciding what you would and wouldn't do. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with someone who's got a keyless car, someone who think could benefit from this information. And if you found this episode helpful, please subscribe, give us a like or review if you'd like, that would help more people find us. And until next time, stay safe.