Getting it with GPS
I started reading this short article this morning strictly because of the headline. So many of my posts and so much of the media content produced regarding GPS and the subset of GPS Tracking just does not _get_ it, it’s very refreshing to find a paper and a reporter who does.
Now I will say that I don’t like a certain editorial license taken in the first paragraph, which only helps add to the confusion.
Police don’t have radar to help them find stolen vehicles and GPS doesn’t “literally” put a stolen vehicle on that radar, but, actually, it does better.
Theft of commercial vehicles, especially those carrying or hauling high-value commodities like skid steer loaders (the real name for Bobcat and its competitors is a growing problem. This issue is no longer restricted to major US population centers but is rapidly spreading everywhere, even across the plains of Alberta.
There are a number of solutions. The one that comes first to most people’s mind is LoJack, so often mentioned in news and TV dramas it’s a household word. (Tony Soprano to his wife, who has just asked him to recover the stolen car of his their son’s teacher: “I thought I told you I changed our family name from LoJack to Soprano”)
LoJack is a fine product but it is as far removed from GPS Tracking as posting a sentry with a shotgun on a construction site. LoJack puts a low-power radio transmitter in a vehicle and is the vehicle is on the road in a location where there happens to be a police department who happens to have purchased the proper tracking receiver from LoJack Inc., then the police officer gets a notification that he’s near a stolen vehicle and help from the receiver to get near the vehicle in alarm.
Now that’s a fine technique as far as it goes but there are a lot of ifs, ands and buts involved. The right police department has to be in the right place ant the right time and they have had to make a substantial investment in equipment for LoJack to work at all.
OnStar is another service that many people have heard of. Unlike the ancient technology of LoJack, OnStar actually is a GPS Tracking technology. For a cost buried in the price of a new vehicle, a General Motors vehicle purchaser can get a nice tracking unit combined with a voice cell phone installed in the vehicle. If a button is pushed (or if the OnStar tracking headquarters acts on a court order … think about this…) the OnStar control center can hear everything going on inside the vehicle. Is a crash occurs and an airbag deploys, OnStar also receives notification. Many useful convenience and safety services are included in OnStar’s $18 a month and up charges.
Theft recovery is one of the services. But, much like LoJack, an owner has to know the vehicle is stolen because he or she has to file a formal report with the police and OnStar will only cooperate with the police in determining the vehicle’s location. That’s right, you spend however much the OnStar system costs, pay whatever the monthly fee is, and when you need to know what’s up with your vehicle, OnStar tells you “we can’t give you that information”. Customer service at its finest .. should have been a Ford product as it harks back to the Henry Ford days … “any color they want, so long as it’s black”
Contrast this with the inexpensive GPS Tracking systems that the business owners ‘in the know’ are using. For the price of a GPS Tracker far less than the cost of say a set of tires, the owner himself can find out the vehicle’s location any time …no police report is needed and no one except the owner ever needs to know a tracking request was made.
The number one thing holding back the GPS Tracking market today is education. It’s not the technology or even the price (which has ramped down substantially in just the past year or so). What’s needed is education to let vehicle and business owners know that yes, they have the right to know and they have the right to have access to systems that they own and pay for.
So if you have vehicles that you feel would hurt your business if stolen, then protect them. And when you protect them, chose a system that actually works for you, not some third-party who will spend their time telling you what rights you don’t have to use the system _you_ bought and paid for.
(Paid commercial announcement.. if you want to learn more, you can go here: http://www.satviz.com/)