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Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows a technological innovation that has been introduced to combat car theft. This innovation involves spraying microdots over various parts of a new car. The clip includes interviews with Phil Harding from Holden, Ian Allen from DataDot Technology, whose company developed this innovation, and Ray Carroll from the National Automotive Theft Reduction Council. Footage shows microdots being applied to a car in the Holden Special Vehicles factory during the assembly process. The clip is taken from a Four Corners program and includes a narration by journalist Chris Masters.

Educational value points

• Australia has one of the highest rates of motor vehicle theft in the Western world. In 2006, 85,000 motor vehicles were stolen in Australia, meaning that on average 235 cars were stolen each day or one car every 6 min. The annual cost of this theft is about $1 billion, which includes the cost of repairing or replacing vehicles and increased insurance premiums.

• Most car thefts are opportunistic – for example a car may be stolen by joy riders, to aid a crime, or simply as a one-off means of transport when public transport is not available – and police usually recover these cars after they have been abandoned. However, one-quarter of car thefts are carried out by organised gangs and these vehicles are generally never recovered but are sold either interstate or overseas through a black market for stolen cars and car parts.

• Car thieves are able to sell stolen cars by ‘rebirthing’ the car; that is, giving it a new identity. This is done by replacing the stolen car’s unique vehicle identification number (VIN), which is recorded on a compliance plate attached to the car, with the VIN of a car wreck of the same model that the thieves have legitimately purchased, usually through a wrecker. Stolen cars are also stripped for parts.

• The Sydney-based company DataDot Technology has developed a revolutionary method to deter car thieves and to prevent ‘rebirthing’, which involves spraying the car chassis, including the main panels, engine and gearbox, with thousands of microscopic polymer dots that are laser-etched with the car’s VIN. The microdots, which are about the size of a grain of sand, can be detected with an ultraviolet light and read with a magnifier but are almost impossible to remove.

• Between 1,000 and 10,000 data dots are applied to the car on the assembly line. This innovation, which DataDot Technology likens to ‘creating a unique asset-based DNA’, has been adopted by a number of car manufacturers in Australia and overseas. According to DataDot Technology, car manufacturers who use data dots have experienced a significant reduction in vehicle theft.

• As Ray Carroll points out in this clip, car thieves increasingly steal car keys in order to bypass security systems that have been installed in cars made since the mid-1990s. Thieves cannot hotwire – that is, start the car by bringing the ignition wires into contact – late-model cars because the cars will run only when the ignition key has triggered a complex exchange of security codes with the car’s computer system. Car keys are used in about 70 per cent of late-model thefts.

• Some car manufacturers now install keypad immobilisers in new cars, which are connected to at least two electric circuits, such as the starter, ignition or fuel system, and which prevent the engine starting unless the correct code is entered into the keypad. Other antitheft devices include alarms with motion sensors to detect movement of the car, and automatic antihijacking door locking, which locks the doors once the car is driven away or ‘drive’ is selected on the automatic transmission.

• The clip is narrated by Chris Masters, a highly respected investigative journalist for the ABC program Four Corners and the author of a book on Sydney broadcasting personality Alan Jones, called Jonestown(2006). Masters has produced more than 70 programs for Four Corners and won three Walkley awards and a Logie award. His 1987 report on corruption in Queensland helped to spark the Fitzgerald Inquiry.