Fast-tracking vehicle hi-jacking and theft recoveries

In most cases a brilliant idea or innovation is only as good as its implementation and enforcement. Your writer conjured up today’s introductory one-liner following some off-the-cuff discussions with a broker, firstly, and then his go to resource on combating insurance crime

To many cars languishing in pounds

The conversation centred on the sad reality that many stolen and recovered motor vehicles end up languishing in police pounds or salvage yards despite being labelled as the property of ‘insert microdot details here’. Garth de Klerk, CEO at the Insurance Crime Bureau confirmed that micro dotting is a requirement for all new vehicles, including trailers, sold in South Africa, and has been going back to 2012. 

In practise, this means that the undercarriages and hard-to-reach areas of new vehicles are daubed or sprayed with a goo that contains thousands of tiny dots that have been laser-engraved with a unique code linking back to the vehicle’s VIN. That’s over half-a-million units in the latest year; a number revealed if you Google the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa (NAAMSA) 2023 stats. These microdots work because it is impossible for a hi-jacker or thief to remove all of the dots, and since the dots are so small, it requires special equipment to view the information they contain. 

De Klerk offered a useful description of microdots as “exactly what it says on the tin”. They are microscopic dots onto which numbers are laser etched to a dot around 0.5mm in diameter and applied to key areas of the vehicle, giving it a unique identity. Up to 10000 dots are sprayed onto each vehicle making it impossible to remove them. “It is important to note that these dots do not make it possible to track a vehicle, but rather to correctly identify a vehicle once it is recovered, including allowing investigators to identify when parts from a stolen vehicle have been used in repairs on legitimate vehicles,” he said. 

Freaking out MS Word’s spellcheck since…

There are a number of local brands that compete in the domestic micro dotting market including DataDot, DEKRA, Recoveri and Veridot. PS, these names wreak havoc with the MS Word spellcheck, which is something us writers tend to get miffed by. “In our space DataDot is the most active player, and also an active participating member of the ICB,” De Klerk said. They are among the brands that provide support in the form of training and tools to law enforcement. 

Given this background, it seems inconceivable that a recovered vehicle should be separated from its beneficial owners for more than a day or two. Matching car or trailer to owner should be as simple as diving under the vehicle, scrounging around for a dot or two and grabbing it with the reading device, whatever that looks like. Alas, this is not always happening: Our broker friend gave one example of a notification of recovery, using microdot data no less, a staggering eight months after the vehicle in question was recovered. Why the delay? Taking an educated guess at the microdot versus recovery conundrum, this writer came up with the national vehicle registry being in total disarray, meaning the dot might lead investigators to an invalid or incorrectly captured VIN. 

But there are other avenues to explore. For example, are the police pound and salvage yard managers able to check for and read these microdots, and if yes, are they bothering to do so? According to the ICB, all affected law enforcement should be trained on and able to check for microdots; but this is not likely happening at the rate it should. “In some cases, even where SAPS members are trained to do so, they fail to do so immediately or encounter difficulties due to the tools required to recover and read the microdot being inoperable or unavailable,” De Klerk said. 

Another issue is that corruption within the system often results in vehicles that are left in safekeeping being stripped to such an extent that there is no financial incentive for either insurer or owner to take delivery.

Could this be a ‘cash back’ bonanza for insurers

We interrogated De Klerk on whether there was a case for non-life insurers, perhaps through the ICB, to work with the SAPS to address any backlogs in tracking owners and reuniting them with their vehicles. “There are constant ongoing projects between the ICB, insurers and SAPS pounds and other private parties to identify vehicles, however sadly not at the required rate,” he said.

Could this be a ‘cash back’ bonanza for insurers

We interrogated De Klerk on whether there was a case for non-life insurers, perhaps through the ICB, to work with the SAPS to address any backlogs in tracking owners and reuniting them with their vehicles. “There are constant ongoing projects between the ICB, insurers and SAPS pounds and other private parties to identify vehicles, however sadly not at the required rate,” he said.

There was some excellent guesswork in the to-and-fro discussion on this topic, staring with how many microdots are in a typical application… Hundreds, no thousands, came the reply. And how about how much money insurers could save through a faster turnover using the system? “On a monthly basis the ICB and our partners recover millions of rand in value from the pounds,” De Klerk estimated. And although there are no exact statistics, he added you could be sure that hundreds of millions are lost annually to vehicle hi-jacking and theft each year.

On a slightly different track, the South African Insurance Association (SAIA) has made strong progress with its

Vehicle Salvage Database which is used by SAIA members to combat fraud and prevent them from underwriting unfit or unroadworthy vehicles. In SAIA Annual Review 2023 the association said there were already more than a million records on the Vehicle Salvage Database, with over 1600 registered users on the system. This writer reckons a 100% accurate VSD plus VIN registry would resolve many of the challenges the motor insurance industry faces. 

Reduced claims, increased salvage gets lower premiums

Returning to the topic at hand, microdots are useful in combatting various forms of vehicle crime and have application for other assets such as household goods, appliances, valuable paintings etc. “It is a useful crime fighting tool,” concluded De Klerk. “The dots can be retrieved to identify a vehicle or other assets, and if used consistently and in a timely manner can contribute to significant savings for the industry and individual insureds”. 

Writer’s thoughts:

In a world dominated by connected devices, GPS and a vast selection of micro-tracking technologies it seems crazy we cannot reconnect stolen and recovered cars with their rightful owners. Have you had recent dealings with police or third-party vehicle pounds? And did you walk away smiling, or frustrated? Please comment below, interact with us on X at @fanews_online or email us your thoughts editor@fanews.co.za.