Automakers could do more to stop carjackings. They should do so.
Carjackings in Chicago rose 38% from 2020 to 2021, as the city saw more than 1,800 carjackings in 2021. In all of Cook County, there were about 2,100 carjackings in 2021.
Carjackings are dangerous crimes, in a host of ways. Victims can be injured or killed. Children might be in the back seats of cars that are stolen. Thieves fleeing in carjacked vehicles often crash. Carjacked vehicles frequently are used in other crimes. In one recent carjacking arrest, police said two men used a stolen car as they robbed victims in the West Loop, Lincoln Park and West Town.
If police could more quickly track stolen cars, they could recover more cars, make the streets safer and reduce the number of stolen cars used to commit other crimes.
That’s where automakers come in.
Most cars built since 2015 contain some kind of tracking device that could be used to find carjacked vehicles. But right now, the process is too cumbersome and time-consuming.
Some automakers won’t turn on a location device remotely if a theft victim has not subscribed to the automaker’s tracking service. Some accept calls from police only on weekdays or during certain hours. Others want car owners to be on the phone with police to request a tracking, but that might not work if a vehicle owner has been injured in the crime and is in the hospital. Still other automakers require a time-consuming, judge-approved search warrant or a subpoena.
Some auto manufacturers have been more cooperative than others. But what’s needed is a single hotline, for all auto companies and dealers, that police can call 24/7 to quickly track the location of a stolen vehicle once the owner has filed a police report. The hotline should be staffed by experienced people, not by individuals who aren’t proficient in the technology.
The technology is there. The auto companies just need a nudge to do it. And they should do it in a way so that no one — auto companies nor police — can track or keep records of people’s movements later as they go about their daily lives.
In April, legislation was introduced that would create such a hotline, but it stalled in both the Illinois House and Senate. Backers of the legislation will try again in the veto session, but there may be too many other potential topics to consider.
“I’d like to get it done in veto, but I am not hopeful,” said state Rep. Martin Moylan, D-Des Plaines, who is chief sponsor of the legislation in the House.
In the meantime, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart is pushing a consent form that drivers can sign ahead of time to speed up retrieving location information from auto manufacturers. That could help, but we suspect many people won’t think of doing that until they are carjacked at gunpoint. We also suspect many people don’t even know automobiles contain tracking technology. It’s really up to automakers to act.
The technology to track carjacked vehicles works. Recently, police used it to recover a vehicle in Ford Heights within two hours. But the average recovery time is 39 hours.
That’s not good enough. For many people, carjacking feels like it could happen anywhere, anytime. It affects public perceptions of how often they will drive, where they want to live and which cars they want to buy. No one wants to suddenly have a gun pointed in their face as their car is stolen.
We understand that automakers are focused on building and selling cars. Chasing down carjackers might be a side issue for them. And maybe they see carjacking as a little off-message for them.
But by helping police make more arrests, automakers could help deter carjackers, which would allow anyone who drives around the Chicago area to breathe and drive a little more easily.
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