There is a raft of road bylaws in Victoria which police do not often execute. One of the less known is that if you pull over to answer a mobile phone and are safely parked you are potentially liable to a fine if the motor is still running. Leaving your fog lights on; parking on a footpath or even honking goodbye are all liable to various fines.
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But one law that may well shock many Ballarat residents is that it is illegal to leave a car unlocked when you are more than three metres away from it.
While it is unlikely police will start patrolling the supermarket carparks trying doors and unfurling tape measures, the salutary reminder in even highlighting just how important and simple a step it is in preventing theft.
Given the resources wasted on car theft, it is almost a responsibility to the community as much as to the owner to do whatever possible to prevent opportunistic theft. Modern remote car locks hardly make locking the car undue exertion..
Insurance companies maintain three quarters of car thefts are opportunistic. The easy pickings for lazy thieves are where the car is actually open or they have easy access to keys.
Their complaints are more than words because the cost are passed onto us in the premiums. If 75 percent of the claims which they have to investigate, meet or fight can be attributed to preventable opportunity, then making it harder for the thieves may even relate to insurance premiums. Some insurers may even refuse to pay out if a car is left unlocked.
Insurers also categorise car theft into two broad categories the organised gangs who rebirth cars for money and the opportunist joyriders. In Ballarat the rise and rise of car thefts invariably relates to the latter category and sadly, when the joyride is over, destruction seems to be the standard procedure for disposal.
The imaginative fertility of these individuals, whose reality rarely rises above the monochrome of another torpid session of grand theft auto, is unlikely to consider any other less wasteful outcome for your car.
At the same time the police no doubt are tired of saying; make it harder for these delinquents. But anybody who has suffered the insult of finding a valued car trashed will no doubt be pleased at the press button simplicity of frustrating these miscreants. We have said it before; this is not a country town; lock up accordingly.