Great ....
.... but how long until the first malfunction?
The damages to pay out could massively exceed the financial benefits.
(Intentionally avoiding the otherwise inevitable side issues, btw)
Petrol stations deploy anti-theft stingers
A number of UK petrol station owners have installed a £10,000 anti "drive-away" stinger system designed to discourage ne'er-do-wells from making off with fuel without paying, the Telegraph reports. The Drivestop was designed by Jaginda Singh, whose family-owned fuel outlet was almost brought to financial ruin by such incidents …
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All those years ago
Hasselhoff saw this coming, KITT could easily leap over those spikes and indeed mock the garage owned whilst doing so.
Expect to see KITT on a forecourt near you soon, it's evolution in action!
Pre-Pay
On February 1st this year BC in Canada started requiring you to pre-pay for you petrol, of if you willing filling your tank, to leave your credit card with the cashier before you started filling up.
Story can be found here
http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/02/01/bc-pay-before-you-pump.html
'before abandoning the vehicle...'
Sounds like it wasn't his car, hence his reluctance to pay for the petrol...
And the failure case
Is the forecourt forking out a grand for a new set of tyres?
Good on them
as most drive aways are done by people without valid tax / insurance / MOT / Driving license, maybe it will get these off the roads and leave it for ones who have actually paid for these.
First time someone gets caught by this
Have the owner arrested for criminal damage, and get the evidence inadmissible as they commited a crime obtaining it.
You won't get off, but hopefully there won't be any more of these silly ideas.
The solution is to REDUCE THE COST OF PETROL.
Moved the problem 1/2 mile down the road
Well, it works to an extent, but they're just going to do a drive away at the petrol station half mile down the road.
Until theres mass adoption we won't really know how much it will change things (IE if the petrol thieves put bauld tyres and fill them with puncture agent before they do a runaway?)
So
It would be OK if I installed this in the drive at home?
Should stop anyone nicking my car.
Easy to prevent
Around here (to be fair, not in the UK), the majority of pumps require a credit or debit card to be inserted and the PIN to be typed before the pump becomes active. Of course, for those who steal cards (and matching PINs) or who avoid paying credit card bills, it's not so effective, but I'm sure it would cut down the majority of this stuff, since any 'normal' person trying such a thing would find themselves with a bill or with a credit company or bank tracking them down for recompense.
Re:All those years ago
That's possibly the funniest comment I've ever seen on The Register!
Admittedly I'm a bit biased cos I'm a huge Knight Rider fan but kudos regardless.
This will just mean .....
This will just mean that somebody will be working on a Stinger-proof tyre.
Why don't they just change the system so that you have to pay for your fuel *first*, you get a token which must be inserted into the pump (so you can't just park the opposite side of a pump from someone who is going to pay for fuel, then shove the nozzle in your tank while they are still walking back) and dispensing stops automatically when you reach the amount you paid for? Would eliminate the annoying "£20.01" situation, too.
Pre-pay
Why not just insist on pre-paying for the petrol like they do in the US. I seem to remember it became much more coomon there when gas hit the astronomical $1 / gallon, and is now almost universal there.
Nice
So now when you get your car back you not only have to pay £20 to redo the lock but another £100+ for new tyres. Thanks.
Prepay
If only there was a simpler solution to retrofitting a gas station with a robotic checkout clerk that can slash your tires and tag you with a homing beacon.
What this really means is that thieves will steal a couple pieces of robo-crippling plywood before they steal the gas.
America has a simple solution
Why not get people to pay for the petrol before dispensing? I'm surprised we didn't move to this years ago. Might encourage more petrol stations to move to Pay at Pump solutions as well.
tagged rubber
"And if he is able to hobble away on the rims, the system also embeds a tag bearing an ID number into the rubber, allowing cops to later identify the combustible-lifter."
Providing the perp transfers the tag to the new set of tyres that he/she will undoubtedly replace the shredded set with.
Later this year it will likely be cheaper to buy 4 run flat tyres than a tank of petrol, I guess this tech becomes redundant then.
In the US, they ask you to pay first
Pump shuts off when prepaid amount is exceeded. Sounds a lot cheaper (and more effective) than this.
Less dramatic, though.
/Paris knows all about sudden deflation
There is the obvious
There is the obvious thing ... if you're going to do a driveaway, there'll be nothing stopping you from turning around and going out the in. Doh!
@Ash
Yes, absolutely, I demand the right to steal from garages if I think the prices are too high. Because it's 100% the fault of the retailer when the supplier raises prices. And my convenience is worth more than the livelihood of others.
@ scott (Pre-Pay)
'.....leave your credit card with the cashier....'
Not a chance in hell. It'd have to be cash only for me.
@Ash
In what way is it criminal damage if you stupidly drive over a set of spikes raised up in front of you. The garage owner isn't forcing you to drive onto the spikes.
@In General
I'm puzzled about the garage owner who'd lost £5,000 though. He had one drive away a week. So call it £200 a month loss. That five grand is the loss over 2 years, he's just shelled out 4 years worth of losses to install that device.
Icon - can't decide on stop or go, the system must be fault.
Re: First time someone gets caught by this
I would love to see this in court. It is about time idiocies in the system are sorted out.
The system is on the land belonging to the petrol station You are entitled not to drive over it. If you do it, you do it on your own volition. It has been clearly marked with all relevant warning signs. So if you drive over it, it should be your problem. If you do not like it there is always the option of calling the police and complaining that the petrol station assistant is illegally restraining you. Let's see how will this one work right after you have shoplifted.
Enough is enough, time to stop the madness where innocent people get charged because someone gets hurt breaking into their property and slips on the stairs.
Pay @ Pump
Another solution, make sure you drive out beside someone who has paid, will they still press the button. Anyone know what the clearance is on these things as well, us sports car drivers might loose a lot more than tyres.
I regularly use a couple of petrol stations with Pre-pay, but it's virtually always switched off. A petrol station you can be sure of, of, of.
Pay First = Less Business
Most garages want you to browse and buy grocery type stuff as they all seem to have shops attached - this is why pay first is not popular in this country.
Also, the system seems to be automated to detect people driving away without paying, and have lots of warning signs and an audible alarm, which say "don't drive over the spikes when the red traffic lights are flashing. You have been warned.". So its a bit like a EULA, i.e. "By inserting this nozzle, you are agreeing to having spikes stuck up your rear tyres if you drive off". The police seem to be OK with it.
@Michelle
... and then the stupid thief discovers that there are spikes there as well. Duh!
Easier solution...
In some of the seedier parts of town, especially after dark when the attendants lock themselves away behind the bullet proof glass, and the interchange of money is done though a metal draw, insisting on pre-pay is pretty much the norm. Especially if you happen to ride a motorbike and can't be arsed to take your crash helmet off.
However I have to wonder about forecourt layout, I know plenty of garages that are just surrounded by a curb with a bit of grass... so avoiding the spikes is just a simple matter of driving slowly up the curb, over the grass, and then away to freedom. If you happen to be in a 4x4, you wouldn't even need to do it slowly.
Maybe I should set up a business just making "Warning! Anti-thief spike strips in operation" signs.
@A J Stiles
~30m cars on the road in the UK (source: SMMT). Assume each fills up once every 2 weeks on average, even a 1p overage adds up to £150,000 a /week/ or £7.8m a year in extra revenue for the petrol companies.
Over here in the US (204m cars on the road) the pre-pay pumps let you run over by a couple of cents every time if you're paying by card - at 1c overage that's $1.2m/wk or $53m/yr in extra revenue.
Based on those figures I doubt we'll be seeing auto-rounding pumps any time soon...
Demo
Lol @ the cashier alert demo where the perp is long gone before the cashier notices anything amiss, doesn't even look like the system did anything!
@Steve
"I'm puzzled about the garage owner who'd lost £5,000 though. He had one drive away a week."
Ah, but that one drive away a week was a petrol tanker.
Prepay
A potential problem with this is if one overestimates, or worse still, underestimates the amount of fuel needed, they'll going to the koisk twice to pay/receive the difference - especially if, like me, they like to 'brim it'.
However, if that was somehow overcome (and it probably can be), the queues could well vanish because drivers can pre-pay while waiting in the queue for the pump, hence they only occupy the pump station only when getting the fuel - instead of continuing to occupy the pump station when waiting in the payment queue so forcing everyone behind to needlessly wait longer. Now I think about it I remember seeing just that in some forecorts in Germany. It sounds too much like common sense so it's sure not to be adopted!
Pre-pay
Some of the advocates of prepay have previously commented that governments shouldn't be allowed to incarcerate someone on suspicion of them being a terrorist, mentally instable or an otherwise potential criminal. Yet they don't see a problem with a petrol station treating you as an already convicted criminal by getting you to pay before you fill up. Would you feel the same if Tescos asked you to leave your credit card at the door before you went in. If I inadvertently stop at a prepay station I drive to another more civilized establishment, I'm a customer not a thief and expect to be treated as such.
These things are a good idea, they target real thieves. I'd also like to see them linked to traffic lights on pedestrian crossings in such a way that any idiot attempting to run down a pedestrian against a red light gets stopped. Then I'd put said idiot blindfolded in a car on rails heading towards a zebra crossing across which walk members of their family and have them forced to hit the accelerator. Should bring home nicely the consequences of their actions.
@Ash
I assume you operate this principle accross all purchases, if you consider them too expensive you steal the item?
Bed of nails
Whilst I appreciate that we motorcyclists are the spawn of Santa and deserve anything nothing short of hanging, but I dread to think of the consequences of a motorcycle being impaled on the spikes and unseating the rider. Falling on to them is going to hurt - and where is that ID tag going to end up being inserted?
Of course we two-wheeled villans with 15 to 20 litre fuel tanks are far more of a problem than cars with 60 litre tanks - so much so that one station has admitted to not wanting to serve fuel to bikes.
Or what about:
Whoops, sorry! Pressed the wrong button there...
Or
Oh dear - wrong car... Sorry about that. That'll be 50p to use the air pump please.
Shell, home of the cloner
Having had 2 cards cloned at my local Shell petrol station (along with 3 or 4 friends), can I fit spikes to my card that impale the hand of the skimmer when they do their under-the-counter maneuver?
wood you credit it
a clever ploy that is of no doubt
foiled by a sheet of ply wood or similar
ok so that takes pre planning and fore thought
but its certainly a fallible system
Good idea
Instead of spikes, why not just have a pneumatic lifting device positioned under the middle of where the car would park, which would lift the vechile about 1 inch off the ground, enough so that the tyres don't touch?
Could be used every time the pumps are, wouldn't cause any damage should the system fail, would mean that people who "accidentally" forget to pay don't come seeking compensation for burst tyres etc, and would mean that cars aren't released until their petrol is paid for?
solution looking for a problem
Like so many have suggested, pre-pay would prevent the need for such costly devices.
And would you really want the option of keeping an angered petrol thief on your forecourt in full I'm-going-to-cut-you-like-you-cut-my-tyres mode?
@ Nick Drew
Thanks for pointing out the obvious... Since the article states "car thief" it's pretty much safe to conclude it wasn't their car!
Economics?
If the device does incapacitate stolen vehicles, shouldn't there be some reward from insurance companies to the garage owner for stopping the car relatively intact before some worthless toe-rag gets bored and torches or wrecks it?
@Steve, @Gareth
Steve,
A 4 year payback on an investment is quite good in business terms. And realistically that's a worst case scenario. Given that a tank of fuel can cost well over £100 (even a medium size h/back will take at least £60 to fill today), and the quote said "at least one per week", the losses are probably running at closer to £500/mo than £200/mo.
Gareth,
The petrol companies aren't gaining anything extra from the overage - you get the 1-2p worth of fuel.
Pre-pay
It will become pre-pay, but instead of doing the same stupid thing and punishing the law abiding citizen why not start acutally punishing the criminal. Left without paying the car is taken. Alot of the issues with congestion and traffic crimes are done by people driving illegally.
15 year old gets busted for stealing a car, speeding, evading police. What does the British Justice System do, 18 month suspended license. The kid is not even old enough to drive.
alternatively you could just put snipers on the forecourt and shoot the damn driver when he tries to do a runner. That will take on driver off the road and one car, the enviro-freaks would love this, less CO2 released.
easy solution ......
People would probably syphon it from their neighbours car first rather than face stingers at the forecourt, mind you at the price it is now and what it's going to be soon we will all be drinking meths from brown paper bags under the railway embankment soon telling stories about the time we had a really nice house and job... and does anybody remember how petrol smelled .......
@ Chris W
You're not a thief, granted.
But by the same token Tescos isn't going to let you put their goods in your car until you've paid for them.
This needs to go one step further ...
And detonate the car in question, after all we dont want criminals in the gene pool.
Paris because she enjoys the gene pool
Leave your card with the cashier...?
And have it skimmed and used for purchases abroad like all those thousands who were ripped off at garages last year...??
How can garages legally do this
but I can't shoot an intruder in my house when he is commiting an illegal act ? Will it be OK from now on if I just ram metal spikes into his feet to stop him running away ?
Paris, because I hear she likes being rammed with something long and hard.
Pre pay ftw
So Chris W presumably never books a holiday, uses the train, goes to the cinema, etc? We prepay for many things, I don't have a problem with doing it for petrol. In fact I *welcome* it. Why?...
Like anything, when a business prices an item for sale they work out how much it will cost them to provide that item to you including resources, transport costs, taxes etc. Then they add their profit margin. Then that;s the final cost right? No, then they add a "theft buffer" - they know ppl are going to steal some of their stuff, so they add that cost to what all the honest ppl pay. Yes - you and I are paying for the goods that the thieves steal. Companies adopting prepay can therefore offer a cost saving to their customers, hopefully attracting them inspite of the perceived "hassle" that some people see with it.
I personally would rather pay 108p per litre up front rather than 113p per litre it is at most places. It's still around $10 a gallon but any savings are welcomed.
@ Chris W
So I presume you don't have a mobe, then? After all, by your reckoning, the phone companies are "treating you as an already convicted criminal" by getting you to pay before you dial a number.
There's also rather a difference between the state depriving someone of their liberty, potentially indefinitely; and a private company depriving someone of some money they were already going to spend anyway, for as long as it takes them actually to take possession of the goods.
In **any** purchase transaction, **either** the buyer must hand over the payment to the seller before receiving the goods **or** the seller must hand over the goods to the buyer before receiving the payment. It's a problem as old as commerce itself.
In a supermarket, you don't need to leave your credit card at the door before you go in, but they've still got you -- you are effectively trapped within the store until you have paid for the contents of your trolley.
Prepay
Wouldn't requiring customers to prepay (as someone else mentioned) be a heck of a lot cheaper than installing some crazy system to stop drive-offs? I suppose the "spike system" would work, but all it would take is one malfunction for the station owner to be liable for over $1000 worth or tires, or a pending lawsuit. In the US, most stations have been prepay for years. I can't remember the last time I bothered to go in to a station to pay, preferring to use a debit card at the pump.
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