Do you ever remember watching science fiction movies where they would seamlessly be able to track objects, pinpointing their location even across an entire galaxy? If you’ve ever experienced the trauma of having things stolen from you, you likely wished that you had such a technology applied to those things that were taken.

One of the most traumatic losses that anyone can go through, of course, is the loss of their car. The sight of an empty parking space that used to be occupied by your beloved automobile has got to be one of the saddest and heart-wrenching. There’s a strong feeling of violation, of course, followed by the despair and sheer annoyance of having to deal with the bureaucratic fallout --- police reports, insurance claims, getting a replacement vehicle, etc. All of that is before you even start thinking about personal items or other things that were in the car that will need replacing. Or will they?

If you have had the foresight to install the Pedal sensor into your vehicle, and you have registered online and have access to your online dashboard, there may yet be something you can do about it. Car thieves, in their haste and often lack of knowledge, will likely have driven off in your car without removing the sensor, which is tucked away in the OBD-II port, out of sight. It’s not a place that the common car thief would normally look.

In that case, the “Vehicle location” information on your Pedal dashboard is the first place you would turn next to find another of the systems’ 20 unique features at work: Stolen Car Recovery.

Pedal Stolen Car Recovery

How Does the Feature Work?

The basis of the Car Recovery feature is the GPS location services that you can access from within your dashboard. If you go to the “Vehicle location” pod on your dashboard, you can determine the current location of your vehicle, share that with law enforcement, and hopefully recover the car intact and without any harm done. Better yet, the scallywags who stole the car can be brought to proper justice in quick time.

It’s a very neat and elegant solution to the problem, and is quite similar in a way to familiar features of the modern iPhone and iPad with their GPS locator features for when you lose them. As long as your iPhone is powered on, it can be located with the “Where’s my iPhone” app and you may have a good chance of recovering it.

In the same way, as long as your Pedal sensor is in place, you can have a better-than-odds chance of your car being recovered. The added advantage is that your Pedal sensor is always plugged in and feeding data. Even if the car is off, it should be able to share the last-reported location with you, and that’s a start.

Why is Stolen Car Recovery a Useful Feature?

Obviously, the primary utility in this feature is increasing the odds of recovering a stolen car so that you don’t incur any major financial or asset loss. In a material sense, this is the most obvious benefit of the feature. In the morning you’re looking at an empty parking space filled with a £30,000 loss, but within a short period of time you could feasibly refill that space with the lost property still in good order.

There are a number of other impacts on you, however, which help to explain why this particular feature is so useful to Pedal users.

Personal Loss

If your car has been stolen, it’s more than just a financial loss. It is a gross violation of your personal security, and a deprivation of an asset that you have likely worked very hard to afford. Imagine that you’d just paid off the finance, or only had the car for a short amount of time after years of saving up to treat yourself to this fantastic new thing. The sense of personal loss there is tremendous.

Secondly, losing the vehicle will have a profound impact on your personal and everyday life. The car that you depend on for commuting, school runs, daily errands and more has been suddenly taken, and the sudden disruption in your life is palpable.  

Impact on Insurance Premiums

Next, there is an impact on your insurance premium. Even though this claim is not being made through any real fault of your own, a theft is always more than likely to result in an increase in insurance premium. That is, unless the car is recovered before you have to make any claim.

Insurance companies work on risk, which is why even though it isn’t your fault, your car being stolen sends a warning to the insurers that wherever it is you park it is a high-risk spot. If the car was stolen from a place where you normally don’t park, then that could be different, but if it’s taken from your workplace or home address, then these are causes for concern in the eyes of insurance company.

Lasting Impact

Finally, the lingering psychological and emotional impact can also be very damaging. It may leave you feeling increasingly anxious or agitated for a long time after the incident. You might never feel totally secure in your home or workplace. Increased anxiety over your car’s security might cause you to take unnecessary and expensive measures to protect a future vehicle.

All of the above factors can be mitigated to a great degree with the help of the Stolen Car Recovery Feature from Pedal®. If there’s a good chance the car can be recovered, then the worst of these effects can be avoided. The sense of relief might just be enough to help overcome the anxiety and stress that the original theft caused.

Car Theft in the UK

The theft of cars in the UK and other countries has long been a serious crime problem. It’s more than just a nuisance; it’s a huge underground industry, the profits from which are fuelling more illicit activity to push it farther and wider.

In 2019, a total of 106,291 cars were stolen according to police figures. That figure represents a rise of 50 percent since 2013, and suggests around 300 cars are being stolen per day. The Ministry of Justice made an even more disheartening prediction that of those thefts reported, just 666 of them resulted in convictions --- a piffling 0.6 percent --- and among them, only a third were actually jailed. It’s hardly enough to make you feel safe or confident.

Pedal is a tool that could help even the score. If your car doesn’t have a GPS tracker built into it by the manufacturer as a security precaution, then Pedal helps create a new line of defence. The faster you can act, then the more chance you have of determining the car’s current location and sharing that with law enforcement. Given the dismal figures of the past few years in terms of catching car thieves, they’d likely be grateful for the location that you and your Pedal account can provide.

Help Fight Back Against Car Theft with Pedal

To take advantage of this and 19 other unique features, all you need to do is first purchase the Pedal OBD-II sensor and then sign up online to set up your account. Once you have registered your account and confirmed the vehicle details on your dashboard, every time someone drives the car, data will be fed back, including the exact current location of the vehicle.

As happens with many things in the modern world, science fiction has become a reality. You may not be able to track your vehicle anywhere in the galaxy, but certainly anywhere in the UK is possible. It will be the first step to recovering your vehicle and stopping you from becoming just another crime statistic. Order your Pedal sensor today and gain a depth of insight into your driving life that you never thought possible.