My sister in law just posted on Facebook that she had returned to her car to find the window smashed and a "very nice man" nearby who, miracle of miracles, just happened to be a car-window repair man with all the kit he needed in the back of his van. This clown tried to charge her seventy five pounds or over a hundred dollars to repair the window. Last year she suffered injury when someone in her neighborhood threw a half-brick through her window as she was driving along. All this is a town where I grew up and have happy memories of it being a nice place where people would stop and help if you broke down, not rob and burn your car.
The police in the town where my sister in law lives are useless and regularly refuse assistance to people who have been robbed or attacked. She lives in "quiet" a little place in the south of England away from the urban nightmare of rabbit-hutch living in the big towns so the scale of bad behaviour in such a place is even more surprising.
It struck me that an old Android phone with a couple of cameras and software that enabled it to control other items via bluetooth such as an engine immobilizer and remote door lockers could do a number of interesting things such as phone police while on the move to report thefts. Take photo's of occupants and e-mail them immediately to a mailbox, wait until the car stopped and lock the occupants inside, sound horns and flash lights or many many other things that would discourage second offenses.
This sounds like the kind of project that hackers who want to take back their neighborhoods from thieves, vandals and con-artists could use to good effect.Anyone interested in working on such a project?
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