How safe is your car?

I know all the troskie people are probably saying in their heads, “waa look, e get car sef wey e dey wan’t complain”. It’s true, I mean, you hardly get caught by armed robbers when you have a car, you can get to places on time, use AC (if you are lucky), its far easier to catch a woman (if you are a guy) as well as intimidate walking men (ladies). I mean, having a car is good. Unless you remember Fifi’s 30% which is causing some of us to spend over GHS 400 a month on fuel … did you know that troskie people?

Just the other day I did a great service to myself, as well as the world at large, and locked my key in my car. In fact I felt very stupid since I had done this same thing less than a month prior to this momentous event. I stood by the roadside for a few minutes looking for people with similar cars to no avail. Fortunately I know an excellent metal worker whose office was just a 10 minute walk away. So I walked.

I met my friend and we both walked back to my car holding in total 3 items, a large screwdriver, a crowbar and a long, flat, curved piece of metal. Wanna know how many minutes it took to open my car? Not a moment over 2, yes not even 2 minutes. I stood there in horrific awe of my friend’s skills and vowed never to leave anything in my car again. EVER. At least not in a public place.

Now my car is not the newest of cars, nor does it have central locking, or an alarm system but people with cars that fit the “el-cheapo” segment are not the only ones in danger. If you have a “fresh” car, you may notice that the door automatically unlock when opened from the inside. Well tough luck, your screwed too. “But my alarm system works!” well I hear there are parts under the car that you can cut to disconnect the battery, no battery, no alarm, go fish.

So what do you do now? Is nothing secure enough? Well for all intents and purposes a cars security measures are designed to slow the thief down as much as possible but they are not fool proof. So we the human beings who own the cars have to wise up, and here are a few tricks.

The first one is not a trick. If you dont want someone to steal something from your car, don't leave it there. PERIOD.

1)      Make sure nothing is visible in the car: Don’t allow a thief to use your car for window shopping. If you have a boot use it, if there is a package then put it under your seat. One of the first things that attract thieves to a car is seeing an object in plain sight. So don’t forget to remove the face-plate from your stereo. Oh and please hide the things BEFORE stopping, if all the thieves are watching you stuff a million cedi’s into your boot when you park there’s not much use in that.

2)      Carefully choose where to park your car, for example if you are parking at the mall, go the extra distance and trouble and park in front of the banks, there are always a security guard there.

3)      Inscribe your VIN/chassis number everywhere on your car. You can use the VIN number to track down a car, it’s difficult in Ghana, but often times if you have hidden an inscription of your VIN number somewhere people don’t check (like the interior of the wheel arch) you might just be lucky and find your car (if the whole things was stolen and repainted)

4)      Make your car look secure, even if you don’t have an alarm, feel free to put a sticker in the window saying that it does, chale everything counts. Getting a steering lock is good. It makes your car virtually un-drivable without a heavy duty metal cutter, which most average Ghanaian thieves don’t have.

These are just a few things I was thinking about when I had to break into my own car. Let’s keep our pride and joy safe!