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By Greg Bartlett

In the past, car theft was a very profitable business for a lot of people. A car could be taken and hid in a warehouse or garage until it could be stripped of any useful parts then sold as junk iron. Some were shipped overseas and sold whole. The commercial availability of GPS tracking technology has changed this forever.

GPS tracking devices come in a variety of sizes from about the size of a quarter to the size of a pack of cigarettes. They are easy to hide in vehicles in places that are difficult to reach or very unlikely to be searched by thieves who are in hurry to make a clean getaway with the stolen vehicle. Once the theft is noticed, the device can be activated and the location of the vehicle determined very quickly using a computer with an internet connection set up to receive the signal from the GPS vehicle recovery device. Some devices can be programmed to send out an alarm to the computer in the event of unauthorized movement so the theft is noticed immediately.

Once the theft is noticed and the signal obtained, it is possible to notify the police and give them the location of the vehicle. If it is moving, the police can be given the information needed to track the signal using the internet connected computers that are a part of nearly all police cruisers today. This makes it possible for the police to follow the vehicle to its destination in hopes of busting a ring of car thieves or making a traffic stop and arresting the driver of the vehicle at their discretion. Generally, it is preferred to let the thief get where he is going if he is not speeding excessively or acting as if he is joyriding. This reduces the chance that a thief will attempt to flee and wind up wrecking the car or endangering other people with a lot of reckless driving.

A log of the GPS data that tracks the movements of the vehicle and the speeds at which it is traveling is admissible as evidence in court that can be used to prove that the defendant had the vehicle in his possession for a certain amount of time and drove it from where it was stolen to where it was recovered. These GPS logs are leading to many more convictions. The presence of GPS locator devices in vehicles has more than doubled the number of stolen vehicles recovered undamaged compared to those without GPS.