January 19, 2020 – Honda UK is reportedly fighting back at motorcycle and ATV theft by installing free Datatool Trakking gps tracking devices to each of their new vehicles.
ATVs were the most commonly targeted items on farms by criminals last year, accounting for $3.9m of claims to the insurer NFU Mutual, according to The Scottish Farmer.
I got curious and decided I would do a little research into these devices and their practical us, so that I could share the results here for any curious readers, or any RORE listers who want some peace of mind! I came across this video from Honda, behind the scenes at Datatool Trakking.
Leveraging 24/7 technical support and monitoring with direct lines into the police, Datatool handles the descriptions and negotiations with the police on behalf of the customer when a vehicle gets stolen.
Datatool claim to produce anywhere between 800 to 1000 devices per day with the capacity to double production fairly easily if required. Last year alone they recovered 350 vehicles.
How it works
Datatool installs a GPS tracking unit to your Honda vehicle. For a monthly subscription of $16.92 Datatool monitors the device 24/7 to alert you of any signs of vehicle theft.
The early warning is a text you receive to your phone within 5 to 6 seconds of your vehicle being moved. If the bike is moved further away from where it was parked, the customer receives a call from the Datatool monitoring team in order to confirm theft.
Once the theft is confirmed with the customer, the monitoring team tracks the theft, leveraging GPS and other data provided by the unit. They will relay this information to the police to aid in the recovery of the stolen vehicle.
Datatool claims they’ve recovered vehicles in as little as 14 minutes from the time of theft.
Unfortunately, so far it looks like Honda will only be providing these devices for vehicles sold in the UK, but we hope to see similar services hit the market here in North America. Then again, maybe it’s not such a bad sign that Honda doesn’t feel a compelling need to fight ATV theft
so diligently in our part of the world.
