Leading The World In Preventing Vehicle Theft

Leading The World In Preventing Vehicle Theft

The world is starting to follow New Zealand's lead in adopting the use of tiny microdots to fight vehicle theft, this country's second largest crime.

Members of the European Parliament will convene a special conference at Brussels in July to consider a proposal from the Netherlands, supported by Austria and several other member states, to adopt whole of vehicle marking (WOVM).

Taiwan this week issued its rules for mandatory WOVM on motorcycles and scooters and will issue rules for cars on October 1. Poland has just included WOVM in official anti car crime promotion work.

Russia's National Anti Terrorism Committee is also directing trials using DataDots on imported vehicles, as well as chemical pesticides, pharmaceutical packaging and on technical passports required to be carried on all the country's vehicles.

A meeting of Australasian Police Ministers in November last year, attended by New Zealand Police Minister Annette King, also decided to recommend WOVM's introduction to all states, citing anti-terrorism and theft reduction benefits. Terrorist cells in Australia are alleged to have run car theft rackets to finance terrorist operations.

In New Zealand the Cabinet decided in December 2004 to make WOVM marking mandatory on all newly registered vehicles less than 15 years old.

Costing only $47 a vehicle to spray about 7000 microdots on each car, each dot containing a the vehicle's unique Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), the police estimate WOVM will cut organised car crime gang thefts in half over the next 10 years. Latest official figures show 24,089 vehicles were stolen in 2005-2006, up 15.5% on the previous year. The number stolen and never recovered is 7227. Of these it is estimated 6179 are stolen by professional thieves in a racket worth $80 million a year.

In early 2005 the Ministry of Transport was charged with producing the rules for WOVM and is expected to provide a report to Annette King, who is also Minister of Transport, later this month.

DataDot Technology Limited, which makes the microdots already being applied to some models here and who will join others to bid for any WOVM marking work arising from the Government's policy, says the latest moves in Taiwan and Europe indicate the world is moving to the microdot technology in order to deliver an economic body blow to organised crime, and also strengthen terrorism defences. Where DataDots have been applied to vehicles overseas, unrecovered vehicle theft rates have fallen between 60 and 90% compared with unmarked vehicles of the same models.

DataDot Technology (NZ) Limited's Managing Director, David Lumsden, says Cabinet here can take comfort from the global tide moving toward WOVM.

His firm has concerns that one anti WOVM organisation is feeding inaccurate assumptions to officials to use in their final analysis of WOVM costs and benefits.

"We don't want inaccurate or poorly based data forcing a rethink and further delays.

"We simply say look where the world is going, we can be among the first, and the costs are now down to $47 per car. The administration cost has to very marginal on top of the existing compliance costs. The Police Department, Ministry of Justice, Police Association and Insurance Council all back the policy as a great tool to at last help smash organised car crime," Mr Lumsden says.

"We hope officials will see through those with a vested interest in replacing the 6179 totally 'disappeared' cars every year, and stick with their policy and manifesto promise to bring in WOVM and do the right thing for the growing number of car theft victims."

"We are either for organised crime or against it"

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