Thieves will soon not find it as easy to steal a vehicle in Winnipeg. Older vehicle-owners will face installing anti-theft devices.
The concern is that Winnipeg has a high rate of vehicle theft. To deal with this there is a mandate to have older vehicles all equipped with anti-theft ignition immobilizers.
The compliance will be monitored in a rather simple way. You will not get insurance if you cannot show that you have installed an immobilizer in your vehicle. The Manitoba Public Insurance (MPI) is covering the cost of the program. In all it should cost the taxpayers about $15 million.
The initiative starts in September 2010 and coincides with the new federal rules which require every new vehicle being built to have an immobilizer.
Statistics show that the higher risk vehicles are only about 5% of the vehicles in the province but this 5% is about half of the cars that are stolen.
Soon the car thieves will have to walk in Winnipeg!
