Who'd steal a Honda?
Well, I suppose a public spirited Honda owner could pass on the warnings to drivers of other more atttractive brands.
Honda's latest innovation lets Japanese drivers know if they should be rolling up the windows and locking their doors, or if they've found the ideal spot to abandon their vehicle, by downloading local crime figures to their GPS unit. Overlaying crime data into a mapping application isn't technically difficult. Japanese sat nav …
Sounds great in theory... However, hearing "Proceed 100 yards then turn left. 23 spaces available at last update." to turn up to a "Full" sign, downloading an update, and seeing the distance to destination change from 0M to 2.5M inner London, rush-hour, may just be the most demoralising thing imaginable.
Honda makes a very good car. Obviously, if you're the kind of insecure, shallow individual who is more worried about the badge than the engineering, then buy some of that German rubbish. That way, when you're talking about how much negative equity you have, you can throw in how much your car has depreciated for a bit of light relief, or remark on how many times it's broken down.
They would upload all your driving data to thier advertisers, this would ensure you only drove down the "right sort of road" and "would improve your security". You would oly then be taken to destinations participating in the program.
Perhaps they already do (or is that just the Congestion charge cameras)
>> Technoride reports that US car makers are less enthusiastic about the idea, with
>> concerns the system might end up guiding drivers away from areas populated by
>> ethnic minorities
What exactly is the problem?
Somehow guiding drivers away from crime spot which happens to be populated by minorities is unacceptable, but not implementing the technology because they *think* that minorities are all criminals is perfectly okay.
What I would like to see is integration with an accident database so that safety conscious drivers could avoid dangerous accident black spots (or at least be warned of them).
Or how about, a database of road plans so that they could have up to the minute maps. Or map of ongoing road works so that they could be avoided.
"US car makers are less enthusiastic about the idea, with concerns the system might end up guiding drivers away from areas populated by ethnic minorities"
But it's acceptable to guide drivers away from high crime areas not populated by ethnic minorities? Weird.
I live in a high crime area. It was a high crime area before 'the visible minorities' arrived and the tradition is being maintained in spite of population changes that have been going on for twenty years. I guess if I lived in the U.S. it would have been acceptable to divert drivers twenty years ago but now it wouldn't because there is a recognizable immigrant population? Weird.
I don't like yankee-bashing but must admit I find their sensitivities regarding 'race' and the consequent refusal to deal with reality somewhat puzzling.
"US car makers are less enthusiastic about the idea, with concerns the system might end up guiding drivers away from areas populated by ethnic minorities"
Aren't areas populated by ethnic minorities normally where cars are stolen from?
Seems to me that satnav people should overlay racial and religious data - not only
would you know where not to park, you could also infer pretty much anything else you wanted to know about various crimes, where to get a good Kosher sandwich, where the best Indian and Asian food was at, where to find a mosque. Racial profiling might be bad for police, but it could be big for marketing.
I'm surprised about the hate being shown against Honda. In the US they're considered one of the most reliable cars you can own, and even truck driving, Bud drinking, GMC/Ford/etc only types will admit that they are a high quality vehicle (even if they'd never own one.) My Honda Accord is 13 years old, has around 250k miles on it, and is driven in one of the snowiest areas of the country. The body only started to rust a few years ago, and around here you see rust spots on vehicles only a few years old, it's great in the snow, and it's reliable with pretty low cost maintenance. It has no major breakdowns on it's record.
why not just come out and say "ethnic minorities steal cars. FACT."
So do white people..
">> concerns the system might end up guiding drivers away from areas populated by
>> ethnic minorities"
if this was true then it would steer you clear of malls too. Malls are like auto dealerships for car thieves .
Well, a dirtbag or three who needed a ride home without paying for a taxi. In this case the GPS wouldn't have done us any good because the car was parked out front of our house. We recovered the car, and keep it in the garage.
According to the NY Times, the Accord was the most popular car to steal in New Jersey back in the 1990s.
The size of the areas this system would break down to would be so large that it would make them totally useless. Everyone knows plenty of places where that you can park in one street perfectly safely, but go 20 yards around the corner and you're practically guaranteed smashed windows. Do the crime figures used specify the exact street? Will this system give figures for each street? I very much doubt it.
So you're going to end up with a system that tells you that the district you're in has a high car crime rate. What are you going to do? Park 5 miles out of your way then walk? No, you're going to park near where you're going, regardless of crime rate, and use the same common sense and hope-for-the-best you've always used.
Yes and no...
I own two Honda motorcycles, and now it's getting to that time of year again, I know I can toss a coin, pick either once, and start it with ease even after an extended winter holiday.
I also drive an 11 year old German car (BMW) with over 150,000 miles on the clock, which has cost me less than £500 in parts during the last 3 years, a big chunk of that would be the headlamp and radiator that the boulder throwing motorway gritter took out for me last winter. Apart from that it's just been brake pads, filters, oil and a couple of hours of my time servicing it myself. I can't fault it.
surely people know by the sheer amount of junkies and skagheads around that they are parking in a less than savoury area
Look at Harehills in Leeds for example, i wouldn't even drive through their with my window open and risk breathing the same area as some of the human garbage that lives around there.... much less drive my new Honda anywhere near that anus of West Yorkshire
And don't even get me started on Dewsbury Moor
quote: "Well, I suppose a public spirited Honda owner could pass on the warnings to drivers of other more atttractive brands."
Are there more atttttttractive brands? It's difficult for me to tell when all I see of them is their rapidly receding front-ends in my Type-R's rearview mirror.
In my 10 year career as a provider of roadside assistance to motorists I can honestly tell you that if I was driving in high crime area, I would want to be driving a Japanese car, for the brilliant reliability. Sorry, but Euro cars are no way near as reliable as Japanese or even Asian cars for that matter. As someone who naively believed in "european quality", 10 years of attending to distressed vehicles changed my tune.
@ralph , surely you jest , for whilst Honda are a reliable car they are not cheap to fix when major ticket items like gear boxes die , the fact is that whilst a majority of owners tend to look after these cars and usually drive carefully , the reason being exterior body panels and interior fittings not in common use in the rest of the herd tend to be extremely rare and mostly out of stock at the dealers after two short years after end of production run ! Further the pricing of Honda spares and model uniqueness tend to make the German Porsche look cheap in comparison . Guess which car is cheaper to service , is it the top of the line mid engine Porsche Boxter or a Honda S2000 sports car which costs half as much as the sporting faster German toy and the answer is not the Honda by the way ! In thirty years time one would be pushing to locate the few surviving Honda S2000's but will find a lot more Porsche Boxter's of same age and vintage still fully mobile though !
Honda's are easily stolen to order by the five finger repair mobs for mobile replacement parts not available either second hand or new at dealers , as the company insecurity systems fitted at the factory are basically a very bad joke at the best of times , hence the reason why it routinely tops the stolen non recovered car list .
Down under in Oz Honda sold something like almost a million generation one Civic models in about eight odd years of it's production life , Leyland took about twenty eight years to sell about a million older Mini's to end of model run . Curiously twenty five years on , one can see about one hundred well kept and maintained surviving Mini's driving down the same road to one generation one Civic , so which indeed was more reliable and longer lived again ?
Had a Triumph Acclaim – Honda engineering with all the bad parts of Triumph bodywork. Incredibly reliable. It sat outside (battery removed obviously) over a winter which reached -17oC, and started first turn of the key after sitting for about 5 months. A complete joy to work on as an amateur restorer. A couple of local 14yr old scrotes *did* try and steal it, successfully hotwiring it but failing to notice I’d left the steering lock *off* (old trick).
They weren’t to know I hadn’t got round to reconnecting the brakes – oh how did I laugh as I watched 2 panicking 14 yr olds pump the brake pedal and pull the handbrake to no avail as the car rolled downhill towards a wall. They bailed out of the car; falling on their arses in total panic (I stuck it in 5th gear and stalled it before impact). They got caught; and 14yr old #1 was a veritable little crimewave. He admitted to stealing 50+ cars, but due to being a “juve” they kept letting him out to do it again.
Moral of the story? Maybe Honda in Europe and US should *let* the little scrotes steal the cars, and report realtime where the car is so the cops can pick them up (if they can be bothered). Oh yeah, there have been systems like that for about 15 years already…
Mines is the whirley - cos I'd rather be in a HondaJet than a Cessna VLJ
It's true that Ethnic Minorities tend to center around poorer areas because, for whatever reason*, they tend to have crappier jobs. Poor areas are where cars are stolen more.
It's not racist to point out that a neighboorhood is high-crime, whoever lives there. If the locals have a problem with their neighboorhood being designated as high-crime, maybe stealing less cars would help?
* A debate for another day. For the purposes of this discussion it doesn't matter why. Just that they do.
I have a Honda Jazz that is almost five years old with just under 120,000 km on the clock. It has survived an attack by category five cyclone-propelled roofing material and regularly wades through 50 cm of flood water every monsoon season. It flies past road trains (50 metre long double-trailered trucks) on dirt tracks and even though it's parked next to a beach it shows no sign of rust. The only hassle so far has been a knackered wheel bearing. It's also one of the most economic cars you can buy so I laugh at 4x4 owners that need a mortgage to fill up at current prices. The only thing boring about this Honda is listening to the sneers of others.
Go and hang out in a nice sushi joint in the lowest crime area, wait for sararymen to park expensive motors outside and be lured in by naked chicks pretending to be sushi tables.
Steal their motors while they sit in blissful appreciation of personal safety and naked chicks.
"doh! dorobou neko!!"
I want that gps to show me the red-light cameras, the speed cameras, the the local coppers waiting the nab someone going a couple over the posted. Certain models of Hondas and Toyotas are high on the theft list because it's easy to chop them up into parts to resell for repair at the local. I'll take a nice efficient new Honda any day over the gas-guzzling
4x4s out there.