If you want your insurers to recognise a tracking system, then you have to go down the approved route, www.thatcham.org lists all the Category 5 approved systems and yes, they are all more than UKL300.00.
Simply dropping a mobile phone under your seat will not satisfy insurers, nor will it be able to immobilise the bike, or cut it out while moving (serious legal implications here too).
And if someone has taken your bike, and you do (somehow) have the ability to plot it's position with some degree of accuracy (all of which is highly unlikely) you pop along to fetch your bike and what happens then? You politely ask the bad lads if they wouldn't awfully handing it back over?
No, you'd call the police and they'd go, 'is it Category 5, cos if it is, then the Cat5 control room will alert us, and we'll go there treating it as a crime in progress, and if it isn't Cat5, we'll get round to it some time later, here's your crime ref number and thanks for calling.'
I've ignored the problems of recharging the phone, or it getting wet, or vibrated to death, or failing to get GPS lock, or failing to get GPRS connection, or the rest of the reasons why this won't work.
You get what you pay for in this world.
Posted: 23/11/2009 at 22:40
