Our street woke up one morning to discover two cars missing from their drives. Ours wasn’t one of them and the camera footage showed that wasn’t due to good luck – it was good judgement! Here’s how simple LED security lights worked to save our wheels…
Our house, in the middle of our street
The Facebook and NextDoor groups for our area are always reporting break ins and car thefts. Everyone in our road is conscious of this and we all have various security measures. We’re careful about what goes onto social media, take parcels in rather than see them left outside etc.
Some of us are even in a WhatsApp group, handy for bin day reminders after Bank Holidays! It’s a nice place to live but obviously that doesn’t stop trouble travelling to us…
I like driving in my car…
No 12 is one of the bigger houses and the family there have 3 sons. They all love their mum and their motors! They also enjoy a round of golf and a good workout at the boxing gym. Lovely lads but you probably wouldn’t want to upset them, you know?
They had a doorbell camera fitted to keep their mum safe from bogus callers. Sadly, all it did to protect the eldest one’s car was record a short, fuzzy video. Someone in a hoody used a scanning device that picked up his key signal and drove off in the middle of the night. The porch light came on but it wasn’t strong enough to get a good view of this car, parked furthest over from the doorbell.
No 19 is fondly known as DIY Den. No matter what you have done to your house he can do it himself for less money. And he’ll gladly tell you all about it! When we had our alarm and CCTV installed Den was very proud to annouce that he’d fitted his own camera that he could view on the laptop for half the price. He was almost offended that we had a professional electrician in to install the LED security lights front and back instead of asking him!
The footage he shared with us was just a couple of dark shapes really. Every now and then you’d catch sight of a tool in the glow of the street lamp. His bright yellow steering wheel lock showed up well. Unfortunately it was as the thieves cut it off and threw it in the bushes before making off with his motor…
It must be light
Obviously we checked our footage from that night to see if we could help. Putting everything together in a timeline showed they tried us first! Three blokes stepped onto our drive and set off the security light. You can clearly see them on our footage. One of them looked up in the glare, noticed the camera and alarm box then nudged his startled mates. I won’t repeat what we could lip-read them saying! They pocketed their tools and sauntered off in the direction of DIY Den…
We were able to give good descriptions because the floodlight showed a tattoo and some other distinguishing features. The Police said this could help to build a case if the thieves were caught but obviously that’s not much help to the lad at No 12 who’s fighting his insurance company. Or poor Den, currently saving money by getting the bus to work each day…
Go one step beyond with LED security lighting
We had an old floodlight but the bulb was always blowing and it really wasn’t that bright. We spoke to a qualified electrical contractor and he suggested an LED security light which is really cheap to run and reaches every inch of the drive and garden. Every time I look at my car on the drive I’m so glad we got him to supply and fit it!
It’s such a simple but effective way to protect your car, it’s madness not to have one!
