IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2015 - 11

David M. Burel

Stealing Cars: Technology & Society
from the Model T to the Gran Torino
By John A. Heitmann and Rebecca H. Morales, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014, 216 pages.

f you ever come
across someone trying to sell a foolproof
antitheft system or
an unstealable car,
you ought to call him a liar or at
least direct him to read John Heitmann and Rebecca Morales's recent
book on auto theft. The authors
have assembled an effective and
concise historical survey of automobile theft in the America. The book
proceeds chronologically, from the
beginnings of automobility to the
significance of the Grand Theft Auto
videogame franchise. It also contains more topically-based chapters
on novel areas such as countermeasures in the built environment and
a study of international auto theft
across the southern United States
border. Furthermore, the authors
demonstrate how this form of
mobile criminality is both perennial and resistant to social, political,
and technological efforts to stop it.
From the perspective of a historian
of technology, the book's strongest
contribution is its ability to demonstrate the fallibility of socio-technical
solutions to large societal problems.
More generally, auto theft is such a
multifaceted topic that most readers will find something that sparks
their interest. Stealing Cars does
not remain fixed on one element
of the story, but instead covers the
criminals, victims, business, and
government institutions, as well as
the technologies marshaled both by

those who tried to prevent theft, and
those who attempted to steal.
The book takes the reader back
to early days of automobility beyond
most people's living memory. During much of this period, manufacturing a secure and difficult-to-steal
automobile was not a high priority of many automakers. This placed
the task of securing one's automobile directly onto the end users.
Therefore, those users looked to
secure their vehicles through either
commonsense use of existing security devices, and/or by purchasing and tinkering with aftermarket
equipment. These many ad hoc
countermeasures did not represent
a formidable barrier to a motivated
thief, but perhaps discouraged the
common joyrider. Despite the ease
of theft in this era, insurance companies and the public were quite
willing to place the "onus on the
owner" and blame driver negligence
for most thefts. It might be easy
to take for granted the police powers the federal government has in
pursuing interstate criminals today,
but this was not always so in the
early days of auto theft. The authors
point to the important institutional
response to auto theft represented by the passage of the Dyer Act
of 1919, which allowed federal law
enforcement agencies to pursue car
theft cases across state lines.
Some people remember the
1950s and 1960s as America's
golden age of automobiles, but
Heitmann and Morales also demonstrate that those decades were
equally a golden age for automo-

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2015.2425591
Date of publication: 19 June 2015

june 2015

∕

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

bile theft. They evaluate the joyrider
phenomenon of this era in reality
and in fiction. The implementation
of federal legislation, manufacturers' responses, and greater owner
vigilance could and did easily thwart
a joyrider or an amateurish thief,
but very little at this time could stop
the growing ranks of professional
auto thieves. It was also near the
end of this era when the annoying
car alarms Americans have grown
so accustomed to loathing and
ignoring began to be installed as
aftermarket or optional equipment.
The authors note that alarms have
become so ineffective that some
studies have found that only about
one percent of people would call
the police if they heard one go off.
The thought that automobile
theft has at least partially reshaped
American's security infrastructure is
one of the more fascinating points
in the book. The authors argue that
part of the reason that Americans
have embraced closed garages,
gated communities, and surveillance
technology has been to prevent the
crime of auto theft. They date this
shift to the 1960s, which seems
plausible given the wider trends of
suburbanization and white flight that
also occurred during this period. In
this era, garage door opener technology became both more secure and
commonplace. Although the authors
note there has recently been a slight
decline in the number of gated communities, these communities offered
another level of protection for homeowners. They also suggest gated
living potentially lend a false sense

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2015