Reader question:

How else can I keep someone from stealing my high performance car so that I don’t have to get a rise in comprehensive car insurance rates?

Sally

That’s a great question, Sally.

The National Insurance Crime Bureau has this great, detailed database that contains all kinds of information on vehicles, such as license plate numbers, vehicle identification numbers, and so on and so on. Car insurance companies have access to these databases and are able to perform searches based on car information that they are given. The fantastic thing about it is that these searched work even when the information given is not complete. For example, in 1993 there was a bomb that went off in the World Trade Center garage by Al Qaeda, and the vehicle that carried the bomb was found through the National Insurance Crime Bureau by the reconstruction of part of its vehicle identification number.

A couple of decades ago, groups in states started to take matters concerning car insurance theft into their own hands. They did this by forming groups that would lobby with the states and raise money so that legislation would be passed to help stop auto thefts in their state. As of today, there are several states where these efforts have worked, and they are

• Arizona
• California
• Colorado
• Florida
• Illinois
• Maryland
• Michigan
• Minnesota
• New York
• Texas
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• Virginia

These states now have ATPAs, which stands for Automobile Theft Prevention Authorities. These groups get their funding from small jumps up in the fees required when you get a driver’s license or when you pay your car insurance premium. For example, in Florida the cost is about a dollar per car insurance premium to fund the Autommobile Theft Prevention Authorities of that state. These groups have seen a lot of success, and since they started more than three thousand thieves and people who were involved with illegal stolen automobiles have been arrested and convicted, more than forty million dollars has been gotten back in stolen property, and the states have rewarded people who call their theft prevention hotlines to report chop shops and car theft with over two million dollars.

Another way that these groups try to help diminish the incident of car insurance theft other than by having the hot lines is that they provide stickers that people can put on their high performance vehicles that send an alert out to police stating that if they are out with that car after a certain time, then the officer would be able to pull them over to check. So, if you never leave the house after ten at night, then you could get a sticker saying so, and if a police officer saw your car wandering around at midnight, they would be suspicious and pull you over. This might sound silly as the thief could simply take the sticker off, but the advantage comes from the fact that most people do not know about these. Of course, there is also a downside to that.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.