Vehicle theft and hijackings, as well as the theft of cargo, are an ever-growing problem in South Africa. MiX Telematics has a solution.
Crime statistics, published in September 2015, revealed an alarming increase of 29% in reported truck hijackings over the past year. The Road Freight Association published a report, in 2014, stating that truck hijackings cost companies and insurers more than one billion rands a year. The increase in incidents where signal jamming devices are used during vehicle and cargo theft is one of the prominent challenges that the South African transport industry is facing today. Any standard GSM and GPS telematics devices used to track vehicles and cargo may be susceptible to illegal signal jamming by criminals. What is signal jamming?A signal jammer prevents telematics devices from communicating their position to the vehicle tracking service provider. Criminals acquire illegal GSM and GPS jamming devices on the black market, which are then used in the hijacking of vehicles and trucks. These devices can be small hand-held units or large industrial briefcase-size jamming devices. Most jamming devices are simply plugged into the vehicle’s cigarette lighter jack-socket and then block all tracking signals. This results in the control centre losing contact with the vehicle. The vehicle tracking system merely shows the last position of the vehicle before the signal was lost. Many different types of devices are susceptible to signal jamming, including smartphones, remote controls, and tracking devices. The signals these jamming devices emit on the GSM or GPS frequencies prevent tracking devices in the vehicle from receiving and transmitting messages, thereby blocking the positioning signal. The tracking device may be disabled without the driver even being. Anti-jamming technology
MiX Telematics, a leading global provider of fleet and mobile asset management solutions, has recently introduced a jamming detection solution to commercial fleets in South Africa. Combined with other services like Stolen Vehicle Recovery and the MiX Track and React Bureau Service, MiX Telematics offers a comprehensive transport solution to fleet owners to protect their assets and the cargo being transported. The MiX Jamming Detect technology is combined with the state-of-the-art MiX Communicator fleet management onboard computer. It is an enhanced jamming mitigation solution to counteract the jamming of an on-board computer in a commercial vehicle. It enables proactive action to be taken if signal jamming is detected by the MiX Communicator, including: • attempting to transmit a warning notification of an impending GSM jamming event, prior to complete jamming taking effect
• using one or more of its outputs to act as a deterrent
• utilising satellite communications or radio frequency to communicate the jamming event and assist with the recovery
• switching to another satellite network if one satellite positioning service is jammed. Grant Fraser, product and marketing director at MiX Telematics, says, “This solution has already resulted in numerous successfully recovered vehicles, trailers, and cargos. In some cases, the criminals have also been arrested with the jamming devices in their possession.
“The Stolen Vehicle Recovery service offered by MiX Telematics has one of the highest recovery rates in the industry.”- Grant Fraser, MiX Telematics.
Telematics technology ensures full visibility of the entire fleet to allow for the early detection of potential theft and is one of the most important measures in combating crime. However, to realise the full benefits of a telematics fleet management system, drivers need to be proactively managed in real-time,” says Fraser. Track and react
MiX Telematics offers additional services to reduce the risk of vehicle and cargo theft, and for the effective management of drivers. The Track and React Bureau Service, managed by Compass Fleet Management (a division of MiX Telematics), is a control centre dedicated to monitoring vehicles and drivers 24/7.
