Who Watches the Watchman?
The ImmoTrack Online Automatic Immobilisation feature for parked vehicles is one of our favourite capabilities.
However, its safety design always needs constant refinement. We had a recent installation at one of our dealers where the ignition state detection on the vehile was unreliable due to the wiring harness layout and the dealer’s chosen secure location for the tracker. The request from the dealer was to use battery voltage as the Ignition signal, but this vehicle and many other modern vehicles use a smart charging alternator, which can drop the vehicle voltage to 12.9 volts while being driven. As we monitor ignition state as part of our control for the automatic immobiliser, it could have created the risk of the vehicle being detected as not moving by the Automatic Immobiliser, especially if the GPS speed ever read “0” for an extended period of time when driving. We don’t have control over GPS, and any event which causes GPS jamming may cause unexpected behaviour in any devices which use GPS for monitoring speed or movement.
Such issues - if they are not corrected - are examples of the “Swiss Cheese Model”, where you might have almost, but not enough, safety nets in place, and not enough variety in your defenses.
We already expressly block using battery voltage for ignition detection on any of our installations using our ImmoTrack Secure, or ImmoTrack Tough products. However, to further avoid risk a third layer of safety is in effect on all vehicles with our Automatic Immobilisation feature. For Automatic immobilisation to trigger, vehicles must:
Have the Ignition signal be OFF for 65 seconds; AND
The GPS speed must be zero; AND
The Accelerometer “Movement” flag must also be OFF which requires a full 60 seconds of absolutely no movement for this to occur. Should there be any motion in this 60 second period, the automatic immobilisation will not trigger.
With our three layers of security, we avoid the risk of issues with ignition detection, the potential unknown results of GPS jamming or GPS malfunctions. For any incidents to occur related to to the automatic immobiliser, all three of our triggers would have to fail at the same time.
