Love your new car? You're not alone...
We all work really hard for our cars working 9 - 5 most days and in some cases even longer.
And some of us it's a dream to own a luxury car and the moment you pick up your new car
it can be extremely exhilarating even if you're not a car person!
But what you don't want is someone who's jealous of that...
Someone who wants to take something from your hard on work...
Someone who's out there to steal...
And of course with new cars they're extremely desirable I mean just look at some of these
interiors they literally look something like out of a Sci-fi movie in a spaceship or something.
I know what I want for Christmas so to help you guys out I put together a list today of
10 ways you can keep your car as secure as possible!
So then guys first on the list is switching off your key.
So in most manufacturers now they feature some kind of
form of keyless start or or keyless entry and that sort of thing.
In Mercedes-Benz for example with these new style keys if you leave the key unattended on like a
countertop at home or something like that and don't touch it there's actually a motion sensor
built inside of it where the key turns off after a short while. It's around about five minutes or so.
Which then means hackers and people like that can't access
the key signals and then gain access to the car and then steal the car.
However for ultimate protection if you press the lock button twice,
not only will that lock the car that will also turn off the key immediately.
And of course just before we move on to the next one make sure that
you do this for the spare key as well! So it's okay doing it for the main key,
if you have spare keys for your car make sure you do this as well because just in
case it's like in a safe or something like that in your house or a secure location
You want to make sure that key's off because not only will it save your battery life
it'll also stop any signals being emitted from the key just in case it's moved or anything like that.
Now thinking in the minds of people who like to steal what drives them is an opportunity.
So if you're walking past a car and you see this you might not think anything of it.
But then compare it with this one...
The first one has loads of valuables on show so
basically what I suggest in this one is to hide your valuables.
Now of course make use of things like the glovebox, door pockets
if you have privacy glass, pop things and valuable items in the rear of the car, then of
course you've got your boot as well and in some cases an underfloor area in your boot as well.
So basically if it's out of sight it's out of mind!
So next up guys is consider where you park again it's all about removing that potential
opportunity for a theft to occur so a car parked in the dark vs a car parked under some bright
street lamps for example it's less likely to be targeted if it can be seen visibly by others.
So if you know of any dodgy areas that you shouldn't park in or don't want to park a
luxury car in for example, best to park somewhere where it can be seen by others
or maybe under some lights so that others can actually see it if anything did happen.
So then guys just covering one more basic thing before we move on to some more advanced things
this one is really really simple but it's actually just to make sure your car is locked.
I've seen so many times in car parks where the door pins on the car
are still up meaning of course it's unlocked.
Now on Mercedes-Benz cars for peace of mind when you press the lock button you'll get
three flashes from the indicators to say it has successfully locked and I say successfully
because if you've left the door open slightly you won't get those flashes from the indicators.
So for added peace of mind you could also enable a thing called "Acoustic Lock"
meaning you'll get a toot from the horn that sounds like this:
*Car Horn*
And that will let you know that it has successfully locked.
So guys for my next tip and moving on to some more advanced tips and tricks
for securing your car did you know you can actually limit the amount of doors that
unlock at any given time so when you unlock the car normally all doors unlock like so.
But if you hold the unlock and lock button at the same time for about
six to seven seconds for this specific key you can have it only unlock the driver's door.
So if I lock it back up and now unlock it it will only do this door
so all the other doors remain locked.
Just give it another simple unlock to unlock the remainder of the car.
Now you may have heard of these things before called a faraday
pouch and what they are is basically a pouch with many layers but most importantly
one of those layers is metal and they basically block all signals from your key
meaning that even if someone tried to hack your key before it had turned off with like the motion
sensor I mentioned a few tips ago you can be sure that it's in this pouch they won't be able to.
So to test this out on Mercedes keys I bought one off of amazon that had about a four or five
star rating and funnily enough had nice red stitching just like some of the AMG models
and it genuinely works! You pop the key straight in and yeah it won't work no matter what you try
no matter how close you get it to the door it won't unlock when the keys in this pouch
and sure enough taking the key out of the pouch it works just like before.
Now next up on the list is collision notification and damage notification on the Mercedes me App
now sadly this isn't available on all models of Mercedes-Benz it's a very new thing that's come
out recently on selected models so if you want to check to see if you have it you can go onto
the app and have a look on the "Manage Services" section see if it's listed in there or just get
in touch with your local Mercedes-Benz and they can advise if your car is capable of doing that.
But if you do have it and say something did happen you'll get a little notification on the app saying
collision notification detected and if you go into it you can see the time and date that it happened.
Now sadly on technology as of today it doesn't take any photos or anything like that
probably due to data protection or something like that but
it could be something that could happen in the future but this does help because it
gives you the time and date, a very valuable piece of information of when that happened.
So I guess from that information you could then use some kind of maybe
local CCTV of the area or something like that to get in touch with the police at least most
importantly you have that kind of time and date that happened rather than no information at all.
Now as we move on to an All-Electric future with electric cars and Plug-in Hybrids,
if you own one of these this tip and trick is for you!
So make sure you don't leave your cables out on your property so yes if you use a Type 2 connector
like this one it does actually lock both ends when it's charging, so when you plug it into wall box
and then plug the other end into the car it locks both ends which is great....however!
When it's not charging if you don't have a wall box that kind of locks that cable in place
it will just sit there and the thing is while you're away because it's not charging you'll
be using the car someone will come along and then steal that cable and they are
quite expensive because they do carry quite a lot of current down them,
so the last thing you want to do is have to replace one of these!
So then guys the final one today is a Tracker now if you really really love
your Mercedes-Benz and sometimes your insurance company may actually request that you get one,
a tracker can actually locate the car on the map but before you go anywhere...
Mercedes me can actually do this but it is slightly flawed in one sense
is that it only uses GPS and some of these
car thieves and things like that can actually buy these GPS blockers and render that useless.
Compared with an actual dedicated Tracker unit, they use other frequencies like VHF
and Mesh networks to help try and locate your pride and joy.
This is of course really good because it ties directly with all the UK
police forces and they can get your car back in no time at all.
In fact actually if you have seen on TV before you know those Road Wars and Police Interceptor
programs all they do is just like put the antenna on the roof and then suddenly they're looking for
a car that's that exact same system you can get installed in modern cars today!
However obviously just bear in mind that you have to pay for the installation
up front and then there is a yearly charge to use that service as well so do just bear that
in mind it is a little bit more expensive than like the kind of vehicle locator on
Mercedes me but there again if you do need it for your insurance it could be well worthwhile!
And there we go guys that concludes this week's video on the 10 things that you can do to help
keep your Mercedes-Benz nice and secure so huge shout out to Sandown Mercedes-Benz as
they provided all the cars you see in the videos and of course for me hit that like button and
that Subscribe button if you liked what you saw but until next week we'll see you then!