UKH

Article doesn't give many details. 

BBC News - 'Thieves' knocked off mopeds by police in London
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-46321715

Rough justice or not?

For me, fair game. 

Do it. Thieving scum!.

(Bet that gets a few dislikes!)

'Tactical contact' apparently.  Hard to argue against really.

Suspected thieves. 

Nope, not fair game in my book. 

Suspected thieves...... that are refusing to stop when requested by police and riding dangerously through the streets of London. 

If innocent they'll stop when the blues lights come on. If not they had it coming.....

Well why not just shoot them from the police car window and avoid the risk of scratching the bumper?

What on Earth happened to innocent until proven guilty?

And how long until they kill or maim someone innocent through mistaken identity?

I’m fairly robust when it comes to law and order, but this makes me uneasy. 

New policy from the Met,  2 strokes and you are out.

Telegraph article including footage of some of the Met in action:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/23/police-will-ram-moped-criminals...

It isn't a judicial process.  The police (as are we all) are allowed to use reasonable force to protect the public or arrest a criminal.  Given that there is a police car behind them with sirens and lights on, mistaken identity doesn't come into it.

It seems a reasonable way of stopping a very dangerous pursuit with minimal risk to the public.  It also looks like they are well rehearsed stops.  It looks like a sensible policy to me.

Won't *someone* think of the *children*?

I like how a couple of them get up and gesticulate as if to say 'what the 'ck are you doing!?'.

Well, what the 'ck are you doing failing to stop?

I can't really understand how that statement is relevant in these circumstances, please explain? 

More info. 

BBC News - Met Police scooter crash video released as IOPC investigates
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-46321720

If you run from the police then they are perfectly entitled to chase you and catch you.

If that involves knocking you off your moped then its fine in my book.  Its just a shame they can't then run them over to save the cost of a trial.

The police already can and do use a tactic to spin vehicles out of control.

Though as the police have just got done for covering the blue lights on their cars with tights to stop people seeing them I'd not trust a word they say.

As a ukc wet lefty, I don’t have a problem here. They have been exploiting a policy of not chasing mopeds because of the risk of injury to the rider, whilst some e of them have been committing fairly violent crime- acid attacks, knife/ gun crime, so tbh, I think they are fair game. Joy riders, kids on scooters, I’d have more qualms about, but in the context of London mugging. Frankly, feckem

I agree with you on that. BUT ...

 due to a combination of being 'soft' on criminals and the ever declining number of coppers, these yobs don't give a f*ck about you, me, anyone else or anything except themselves.  People are having acid chucked in their faces, coppers being beaten up on the street, etc etc. because they know that they'll almost certainly get away with it.

I reckon we're just a couple of years away from out and out vigilantism.  I bet there are groups of people polishing their baseball bats as we speak.

Anyone up in court for maiming a criminal gets a not guilty from me.

You do realise that you're on the same forum that thinks murder is an OK solution to trespass (as long as it's in a far away place)

Tactic now being reviewed by the independent powers that be....so no doubt will come down on the side of the scrotes.

That's on the small lights as used on plain clothes cars.
I assume that the ones used in these cases are the big ones on the roof that even Nora Batty's stockings would fail to hide.

Zero sympathy for the bike riders on there. If you run from the police expect to get taken down, whether you're on foot, on a bike or in a car. If you won't stop when they ask then you'll be forced to stop if at all possible. 

I hope they also get billed for the damage done to the police cars too. 

I’ve got some two inch thick sections of wild rose stems with the spikes on.  I’ve been thinking about whittling the ends down and wrapping them in racquet tape...

LOL. Perhaps you can expand on "done". And maybe you should look at what type of cars they were using.

Rough, but fair.

Guilt or innocence does come into it.

If the police request you to stop, you stop or accept the consequences.

Dave

I ride a motorcycle and strange as it may seem I have never been run off the road by the police. When the lights start flashing and the siren goes I pull over and stop. Had the people in the video pulled over and stopped they wouldn't have been rammed. Here's hoping this is rolled out country wide. Twice this week alone I have seen a bike going up Dewsbury Road with lads with no helmets on weaving through the traffic. I have seen them maybe a dozen times over the last few  months. A different bike every time, sometimes 2 up and sometimes 3 lads on it and always turning up to Middleton  My gut feeling is they are using the rush hour traffic to get away with bike theft. 

The  Home Office should spend a few million to get someone to design a safe way to stop mopeds and other vehicles: nudging them with a car is  last century bullsh*t.     It doesn't need to be mechanical like spikes on the road.  Could be a encrypted 'kill code' mechanism by which cops could instruct the engine management electronics to shut down.

There's been a spate of thefts, muggings, ram raids, assaults etc etc in the capital committed by scrotes  using stolen mopeds and the police have been powerless until now to act except to pursue those concerned until they evade arrest by pulling into pedestrianised areas, or into backstreets of their local manors. If a short, sharp trip across a bonnet of a police car and then the full weight of the judicial process puts a few of those "badman" types involved off their reckless outlaw crime sprees then I'm all for it, I'm afraid.

My take is that it'll be the pairs of people on mopeds riding in ways that are a danger to others as well as themselves (one rides while the other one grabs phones and bags) breaking traffic rules and general norms of decency too, who'll get knocked off after failing to stop at the request of the police.

I guess in the end it might amount to how carefully they're knocked off their mopeds, how well they're recompensed for damages where/if it's been unfairly done, and whatever else relates to it happening. 

That technology already exists; it was fitted to all Aston Martins from 2008, and was an option on Jags. Unfortunately it was seen as a very bad thing to just cut the engine of a moving vehicle, but worked by not allowing the car to restart, and the location software led you to the car to recover it. It is just too risky to all road users to just cut the ignition of a moving vehicle, and hence lock the driven wheel(s).

Right, but that is 'a' technology, not 'the' technology, if the police hired someone to solve the problem they don't have to stop at what was done in 2008.    For example you could program the engine management system to cut power gradually rather than all at once and the command could be issued by the chasing police car which has full context of where the vehicle is in relation to other road users.  

Sounds like the chap had it coming. I hope my taxpayers money is not paying for his sick pay.

Just as well “secure” systems are never hacked, and that government and the car industry have such a good record on security of embedded systems...

(says the poster whose key fobs live in a metal lined box...)

I'm all in favour of this sort of thing. It's about time that an apprenticeship playing GTA was rewarded with a job at the end of it. 

maybe they had the car undercover as a bank robber?

I've not heard about this but I highly doubt 99.9% of police cars are doing it. These people are running, driving like d*cks putting other people at risk (in addition to the poor sod they just robbed) and blatantly know its the police. F*ck 'em - they've got it coming. 

Very poor level of trolling.

And very weak variant of the "I pay your wages" comment.

2/10 

For political and infringement of liberty issues, I cant see it being thought of as highly desirable. And the tech already exists; f1 has used it for years.

Some fraction of cars on the road have it already. DAB radios in infotainment systems connect to the same CANBus as the ignition system, brakes and all sorts of other critical systems. (*)

Big mistake as DAB is complex enough to be a security nightmare and receives uncontrolled input.

https://www.wired.com/2016/08/jeep-hackers-return-high-speed-steering-accel...

Not by coincidence my two vehicles don’t have DAB, don’t have keyless features and one doesn’t even have any sort of radio key fob...  

* this is such astoundingly bad practice it’s hard to understand.  If any stats from the vehicle’s CAN connected systems are to be aggregated and displayed on any onboard,  connected computer with internet, radio or USB/SD card features, there should be a one way, hardware firewall that literally doesn’t have physical wiring to transmit the other way between them.

My wife’s Leaf can have its battery pack remotely disabled over cellular.  This is for the pack rental option (we have ownership of our pack).  Well, it can unless you pull the SIM from the TCU...

Just because somebody has an opinion you find laughable or daft enough to think it's trolling, doesn't mean they're trolling. 

Reading youtube comments is a revelation in what some people can think, from likening being gay to bestiality or pedophilia, to telling people who prefer civilised brown people to white racists to 'Go to Africa then'.  Brown's post is quite mild in comparison, in thinking that somebody making his police car less easy to make out as one, shouldn't be getting sick pay paid by himself.

He might be being genuine?

Nothing not written within this post, should be inferred or extrapolated from what is written, though...

We were burgled today - quite a lot stolen, house turned upside down and mud everywhere (bizarrely almost the most annoying thing).  Great Friday present and the other half is 37 weeks pregnant so the stress is undesirable.  I'm still managing to remain fairly objective, surprising even myself.  But I'd still be quite happy if they got dealt some rough justice.

The wife's Astra has it; every month we get a condition report sent to her mobile which shows tyre pressures, miles driven, average mpg for the month and to date, brake pad condition etc etc. It also has a built in sim that acts as a hotspot. So everything is there to control the car by mobile phone.......

Not fair game in my book - horrific.

Last time I was burgled I was extremely upset and extremely angry but at no point did I think it was fair game to run the bastards over.

Maybe your perspective changes if you've been run over or had friends and relatives serious injured or killed by being run over or knocked off their bikes - it's f*cking horrible in a way that having your ride taken isn't. I wouldn't wish it on anyone even if they are thieving little scotes. 

Those that disagree should grow up and be a little less nasty.

I was once rear ended on a motorbike and pushed along for some distance with the bike on top of me.

But - the point here isn’t the theft of a moped but the perceived and actual status the criminal then has when using the moped for crime.  Anonymity, a perceived unwillingness of the police to risk injury to the rider by giving chase, the difficulty of chasing them etc.

This leads to a rapid opening for violence and intimidation against people when using a moped, and if it comes to (a) setting a precedent that you can commit violent crime consequence free with a moped or (b) nudging some people who wilfully ignored the following police car, I’m not going to fret about it.  In theory it’s a bad precedent to set but I’d far rather that than shooting at them, and something has to give.  We are a long way from the box section steel ramming bars common on US highway patrol vehicles.

In my view, that depends very much on why they disagree.  When there is no good option (inaction is an increasingly bad option), picking the least bad option is not nasty, it’s sensible and has shades-of-grey moral justification.  

I can see that there are political or civil liberties issues with a system where it can be done remotely over the internet.  ( I don't think these concerns will matter in the medium to long term because the whole direction of the technology is electric cars with sophisticated computers on board and networking between cars and between the car and intelligent highways.  The ability to stop cars remotely is just going to be a natural side effect of systems put in cars for other reasons.)

I don't think there are any civil liberties issues with a short range system allowing a police car to bring a nearby vehicle to a halt.    It is far better for all concerned to stop the suspect vehicle without forcing a crash.

Are they entitled to shoot you in the back, like has happened a few times in the USA.  Are they allowed to drive a car into a fleeing pedestrian?

If you knock someone who isn't wearing a helmet off a moped with a car at any speed there's a serious chance that person could be killed or get a life changing injury, it is getting close to lethal force.   Lethal force might be justified if there is an ongoing threat to the lives of others but I don't think running from the police is anywhere near that threshold.   

Sentiment is all with the cops today.  That will change in seconds if a teenager dies as a result of being knocked off a moped.

This country is following a really dangerous path which leads to the levels of violence that are seen regularly in the US.  It is not a coincidence, the thing that is driving it is the Tories pushing the whole country towards a US style economy and US style social systems.

In reply to gravy:

FWIW I think they do a lot of the thieving while the mopeds are being ridden i.e pushing people off at knife point etc. Not nice. 

Maybe, maybe not. “After stealing 30 phones in an hour, throwing acid at pedestrians and mugging fellow teenagers at knife point, little Timmy was tragically killed while evading capture by the police...” 

Then wear a helmet and don't nick stuff or throw acid at them.

Or, and this one could be the game changer, stop when the plod put the blues and two's on.

Simples...

Bingo!
Let's make it political and blame the Tories for it...

I don't think he is blaming the Tories for the idea itself?

You really don't think that Tom is trying to make a cheap political statement?
 

But in the mean time they can ram them.

After disabling key saftey equipment in their police car they drove recklessly and crashed into a member of the public.

The idea that following a failure of judgement like this an officer should receive paid leave is abhorrent to me.

I personally feel they had their injuries coming. If you place other people's lives in danger through your own reckless, possibly illegal actions don't expect sympathy. As a citizen who funds the police I'd rather the money was spent on officers who knew that they were not above the law.

As for the OP. I'm sure that when the controversial cases arrive the camera footage will have mysteriously disappeared.

Shouldn’t be a problem to pop it in to limp mode. Revs limited to 2000, job done.

What's your response to 18.11 Fri ?

Yeah, i'd agree withthat. in a situationwhere there is an active pursuit, i have no prob at all with the power being cut; no more risky than stingers etc. 

However, it is very easy, especially on a bike, to disable these disabling systems............

I admire your ability to see the best in everyone, however were you to read the story that is being referred to - a police officer was seriously injured when swerving to avoid a vehicle that pulled out in front of him. The review showed that someone else had masked the blues with nylon tights - used to hide the covert blue lights when they are off whilst the idea is they are still fully visible when active.

No police were blamed and the conclusion was that it may have been a contributory factor in the crash (as it might have prevented the vehicle pulling out).

Given that the poster is misdescribing that incident as a sign that police officers constantly lie and is effectively crowing at the serious injury to a colleague, I feel I'm being charitable describing him as a (very poor) troll, rather than the alternatives...

Everyone seems to forget option A - these innocent little tinkers could just stop.

This tactic is deployed by a specific unit, specially trained and operating under conditions. The decision, as always in the police, will sit with the driver to answer - in court if required.

It isn't hard to find examples of investigations in to police following moped pursuits.

In the video there are several examples of crashes simply due to the driver losing control - no police contact, just a pursuit they weren't expecting.

The impacts aren't high speed RTC's as people have described the generally appear to be low speed impact or nudges when the moped is cornering excessively. No-one appears to have been run over as some posters have complained of.

Will it hurt? Probably. Though probably not as much as when you are a pensioner being dragged down the street because you can't or won't let go of your handbag. 

Cry me a river.

...charitable indeed, off duty.

It's funny how those who 'pay yer wages' are quick to revel in the serious injury of a colleague, or huff-and-puff at the suggestion that the police have been given an advantage over the criminals!

I don't think the police being given advantage over criminals is a problem. It's their advantage over inocent people that bothers me.

When you have conservative MPs working as prosecusion baristers of all people bringing a hault to their own cases due to the police lying by omission you have to ask if giving them permission to knock suspects off their bikes is a good idea.

As for the police swinging the lead.....

 https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5626723/amp...

Did anyone else find that like me, watching the video made them laugh out loud every time one of the thieving scrotes goes sprawling accross the bonnet of the police car?

Not sure where that article fits into things, as far as I can work out it is "Police sergeant posts holiday snaps when of ill! No one knows when pictures are taken"

As for in relation to being able to tap scrouts off their stolen bikes they are not innocent by the fact that they didn't stop for police.

There are shirkers and malingerers and liars in all professions...including your own. Some police Sergeant posting holiday snaps whilst she was off on the sick hardly demonstrates that the police service is rotten and corrupt, as you seem to infer. 

Dealing with the issue in hand...

The tights were placed over the covert flashing lights in order to disguise them when they weren't in use...without making them invisible when they're switched on.

This seems to be a pretty smart, and cheap solution to the problem of covert police cars being spotted by criminals. Ask any armed robber - a pair of tights will mask your characteristics when you pull them over your head, but you can still see through them because they are pretty much translucent.

So, was the accident caused because the pair of tights completely masked the ultra-bright flashing blue LED lights and obscured the incredibly loud siren? Or, was it caused because the driver who pulled into the path of the police vehicle wasn't concentrating on what he was doing?

Trick one, eh?!

I hope the copper recovers swiftly, and I hope he receives his wages while he's off. 

Me too. Best thing I watched on the beeb yesterday. Think I watched it three times. Kudos to the police for taking this line. 

I brought it up to highlight what I felt was distasteful smug comments about the injuring of suspects.

You consider that the injuring suspects of criminal activity is acceptable and they had it coming.

I've concerns with the trustworthiness of any professional. The police more than most due to the impact as a result of their actions. If I was a juror I'd be no more likely to take a police officers word as gospel than anybody else's. 

Operationally I'd be interested to see how this plays out in the long run. If I felt the 15 year old who grabbed my phone was going to be run off the road and killed by the police I'd probably not call it in. We saw significant violence in London due to the police shooting potentially unarmed suspects and there have been studies in the states showing that police violence causes disengagement with communities resulting in rises in serious crime.

I don't like the police running people off the road as I don't trust them not to do it to me. As I've said before up-thread, it won't be too long before there is a controversial incident involving more ambiguity and the camera will be mysteriously absent.

And, as I said before up-thread, there's a very easy solution that won't get you knocked off. When the disco starts up behind you, stop the bloody bike.

Ah. The patronising forum vigilante strikes again!! 

At least it's fairly consistent with the attitudes displayed in the murdered missionary thread.

"Highlighting" by bringing up something totally unrelated? 

"Killed by the police" - Crikey, is that what this tactic, deployed by this unit, has led to? I must have missed the news.

Incidentally I'm not sure how you'd ID them as 15 - tall, balaclava'd, armed. Still at least your sympathy could keep you happy as you recovered in hospital from your stabbing or acid burns.

We saw significant violence in London following the shooting of the armed Mark Duggan. Fuelled in no small manner by the useful idiots who wanted to recreate a "racist cops innit" scenario, but then picked up nationally in the retail riots, where the motivation appears to have largely been greed.

I think you're fairly safe as long as you manage to avoid robbing people on stolen bikes, difficult i know.  Even if you did mistakenly find yourself doing that you always have the option of stopping when the blue lights come on as well. Though I'm guessing you might consider that one step too far in this fascist police state.

Sometimes the police chase the wrong guy.    Sometimes people have another reason for not stopping than knife point muggings or acid attacks.  Maybe they have an immigration problem or drugs in their pocket or are just scared of the police.

Knocking people off mopeds who are running away is similar to shooting at a suspect is running away.  You'll catch more people but the downside when you get it wrong and somebody dies will be huge.  There have been near riots when armed police shot a career criminal with a gun.  The situation if a teenager gets killed in dubious circumstances will be ten times worse.     

Most of them were mopeds crashing by themselves because the driver lost control.  Which is on the right side of the line as far as I'm concerned.   Unless the cops were driving so aggressively the moped driver felt they had no choice but to try and stay ahead  because if the cops got close they'd crash into them.

One or two were fairly high speed impacts which sent the rider flying over the handlebars and into the road.  That kind of crash and there's a real chance of death or serious injury.

Isn't it surprising that countries like the US where the police are allowed to use fairly extreme levels of violence but there is an extreme disparity in wealthy, racial issues and relatively low expenditure on public services have a far worse crime problem than countries where the police are far more constrained in the use of violence, there is less disparity in wealth and the state spends more on services.

This is the path the Tories are following.   Too much austerity, not enough money getting spent on the police, education and other services, too big a gap in wealth and trying to compensate by more draconian police tactics and eventually more draconian sentences.   The same arguments used for knocking people off motorbikes can get used to justify arming the police, the death penalty, 3-strikes-and-your-out life sentences and  the politicians that brought us austerity and Brexit and the shadowy US money behind them like that kind of stuff just as much.   These days they can't even bring in a law against .50 calibre rifles because they are scared of the right wing.

Yes, the police need a way to stop people who commit crime on motorbikes.   They need a budget to spend with companies that can solve that kind of problem not improvised 'solutions' like bashing fleeing suspects with cars.   It's like putting tights over blue lights.  A stupid solution because they aren't willing (or don't have) money to spend on getting people who design that kind of thing for a living to produce a good one.

Is that supposed to be valid reason for not stopping as required to do so by law when the police chase you?

"No I didn't stop when the police instructed me to because I'm not a scooter thief, I'm just an illegal immigrant drug mule so surely that gives me the right to do what I like?"

It's not a valid reason for not stopping.  But the penalty for failing to stop isn't getting knocked off a scooter and potentially killed.   Just like the penalty for running away on foot isn't getting shot in the back or run over with a car.

The cops shouldn't be taking potentially lethal action unless it there is a serious immediate threat they need to protect the public from.    They can run over a terrorist waving a knife any time they like but they can't knock someone off a scooter just because they try and get away.

It's just statement of fact - how else would you phrase it?

Edit: I was rather aiming to see if they might continue to explore one another's points of view, rather than being a vigilante.

It seems you can see my posts as patronising where that isn't the intent, and that's just how it is...

If you refuse to stop when required to do so, you are committing an offence. A single rider on an insured, taxed bike isnt going to be chased / required to stop. Two up, no helmet, no insurance, they are absolutely chasing / pursuing / following / requiring to stop the right guy (or girl). What else may be wrong (immigration / drugs etc) is incidental.

Yup.

Really doesnt happen very often. Drivers trained and authorised to do this type of thing do know what they are doing.

One of the problems is very lenient sentences; for many youths, there is almost literally no chance of anything other than community service. They simply dont care about the legal process beyond it being a bit of an inconvenience. Getting chased by the police is just a bit of fun.

They just need a budget to operate effectively. Currently denied to them.

Moped riding thefts are down 36% since this tactic was used.  Only trained drivers are doing this.  From the Guardian;

“A special team called Scorpion drivers have been trained in tactical contact. Policies were drawn up using legal experts to minimise the chances of officers being prosecuted for using the technique, which was introduced in October 2017. So far this year officers have knocked suspects off their mopeds or scooters 63 times, including those who have taken off their helmets.

One Scorpion driver, Sgt Tony McGovern, said it was one of the hardest tactics to use: “It’s just a slight nudge. It’s controlled.” He said suspects were amazed when in some cases they were sent sprawling off their mopeds. “They are shocked. They say ‘We did not think you were allowed to do that,’ especially when they take off their helmet. They are confused.“

He said other police cars would try to slow the scooter or moped before he and other specialist drivers struck the suspect’s vehicle at “as slow a speed as possible”. 

McGovern said Scorpion drivers aimed to minimise injury to those being pursued and civilians. At impact the driver removes her or his foot from the accelerator and uses the brakes to nudge the suspect off the bike, he said. “It’s incredibly quick and very dynamic. Your decision-making changes in a split second.”

Thank you for seeing I wasn't being patronising. In retrospect I he wasn't definitely being provocative.

Saying somebody might not be trolling possibly isn't seeing the best in them.

It's a funny thing but the long term solution to car theft and joy riding was to make cars harder to steal - a non lethal solution to scooter theft is to make scooters hard to steal.  In the case of the scooter I rode the solution to its repeated theft was a really good lock. 

These things are trivially easy to nick - once they stop being trivially easy to nick (MOT regulations? NCAP for bikes?) the problem will go away.  This is trivially easy to do and won't significantly increase the cost of bikes. It will take ten years but if this had been done ten years ago we wouldn't be debating the ethics of the police deliberately running over vulnerable road users.

You are being a bit of a drama queen.  No one is being killed.  Just low speed falling off.  If it’s that or let them rule the streets knifing people and throwing acid in people’s faces I know which option I support.  

If they are not riding dangerously they won’t be knocked off, just sprayed for future identification.  

It’s about them being used in mugings, not particularly about the thefts themselves.  

I was thinking about how when one looks at a country, and thinks of the economic climate, social support network, what crime happens, the prison system, and 'general fierceness' of the police, roughly speaking they all seem to follow the same general trend - or to be on a similar point on a 'spectrum of harshness'. In light of the UN report into the effects of austerity here, I think he makes a point worth exploring. If it's extrapolated from, there's a lot happening in this country at the moment, to do with how harsh life has become, and our approach to things here.

The element of personal responsibility has to exist among it all, but nothing in society happens in isolation of everything else too.   

Then stop.

Tough. Shit happens.

No, no it's not.

Part of the job. Don't be a career criminal, then.

Again, Then stop.

Agreed

Then stop. (See a pattern forming here?)

Then stop.

Irrelevant

Again, agreed.

Again, irrelevant.

It's very, very simple. So simple that even the morons on scooters should be able to understand it. (Though, for some on here it seems a bit tricky).

Nick a bike and, when plod says stop, stop.

And when there's a riot and huge amounts of property damage because you've pissed off a whole community by killing a couple of kids is that 'Tough Shit' too.    Look at what happened in Los Angeles after the cops beat up Rodney King: 63 people killed , 2,300 injured and the army called in to restore order.

Unnecessary violence by the police is not only morally wrong it doesn't make economic sense.   It's like the Brexiteers who believed the UK could get whatever deal it wanted from the EU if it payed 'hardball'.  They thought about their leverage in negotiations and thought it would be a  pushover but they didn't consider the other side also had an agenda and cards to play.   Or the Americans who thought controlling Iraq after an invasion would be a piece of cake because of their military firepower.   

Every time the cops kill or cripple somebody that persons family, friends and neighbours start to hate them and look for ways of getting their own back.   If there is a racial divide as well then its much worse.  It's not worth it.  It is cheaper and more effective to go slower and build trust than reach for the obvious violent solution.

In which case, we'll just let the little c@nts get away with it, shall we?

Or find a nice social worker to give them a hug.

See. I can do touchy feely too...

absolutely, i couldn't agree more.

what's needed is the right for law enforcement to be able to use necessary violence, otherwise you, me, or anyone could simply refuse to be arrested and brought to trial.

Nobody has died *yet*.  It's just a matter of time.  Motorbikes are already 50 x more dangerous than cars in terms of injury accidents with somebody in a car trying to knock you off the danger level is insane.  They've already knocked people off moving bikes 63 times, so far they've been lucky, at that rate it won't be long before somebody lands on their head or breaks their neck.   If that happens the courts may take a completely different view from the press.

This whole 'highly trained police driver' thing is a legend.  The cops have accidents all the time on chases, the police aren't formula 1 drivers multiple sigmas out on the far right of the driving skills bell curve.  They are just normal people and some of them are over confident.   One of the closest calls I ever had in a car was a police car coming round a bend towards us on a two lane road right in the middle of the road at high speed presumably trying to chase somebody and forcing everybody else to make space.

The Los Angeles riots kicked off because a load of cops were filmed surrounding a defenceless bloke, lying on the ground and beating the living shit out of him over a sustained period of time. Then the cops went on trial. Then they were found not guilty.

....not even remotely relevant to this thread.

The issue of the Police knocking these people off mopeds has got nothing to do with austerity, etc. and has only been introduced in response to criminals thinking that they've found a way of escaping the Police.
To use it as evidence that it is down to austerity, etc. and therefore the Tories are to blame is just a cheap attempt at political point scoring.

The underlying cause was racial tension, deprivation and police brutality over a long period resulting in anger gradually building.    The anger was there before Rodney King got beaten, it was just waiting for a trigger event to push it over the edge.    A kid getting killed by being pushed off a scooter by a police car is more than enough of a trigger in a situation where there is already a problem - especially if the cop who did it gets off.

London is getting crazy these days and trying to keep a lid on it by dialing up the force used by police like they would do in the US is not the way to go.   It's been tried and it doesn't work.

It's not down to austerity, but I'd say it is down to the 'etc'.  I find myself asking why aren't these youths at college, what are their parents doing, why have they chosen this avenue, when in Holland there's not enough prisoners to fill their prisons while our's are overfilled? Don't you find yourself wondering about our society at the moment?

There you go trying to defend the indefensible again. This time your pointing fingers at the Police and its levels of brutality which in your view is a reflection of the harshness of austerity. 

How about pointing the finger at the criminals for once, you know, the ones actually carrying out muggings, murders, robbings and assaults. I know it doesn't fit in with your marshmellow soft liberal view of the world and you're always trying to justify why the criminal acts as he does but sometimes people are just out and out arseholes and should be called out and treated as such. 

You are right, nobody has died.

Maybe, but probably not.

More vulnerable, not intrinsically dangerous.

Nope, these are exceptional and more controlled circumstances. But yes, if you get nudged, it is fairly risky. But nowhere near as risky for them under those circumstances as the risk to a pedestrian from an unlicensed, inexperienced rider riding on footpaths mugging them in a ride past. Its called protecting the law abiding citizens.So you should stop when required.

Or maybe skilful?

Or even longer. These things have been extensively risk assessed, you know.

Sadly i agree with you on this one......

No it isn't.

Marcus Ericcson crashed in Abu Dhabi yesterday, all on his own. It wasnt his finest moment....it happens to the best of us......

but pretty well trained.....

 >One of the closest calls I ever had in a car was a police car coming round a bend towards us on a two lane road right in the middle of the road at high speed presumably trying to chase somebody and forcing everybody else to make space.

If he / she was chasing, youd have probably been aware of who he / she was chasing. Although it is probable they were attending an incident elsewhere (fire / accident etc). Its not all police interceptors......

Did anyone else watch the BBC/OUP series "The Met: Policing London" I think earlier this year? One of the episodes of that looked at moped crime but it also talked with the family of a guy who came off a moped or motorbike when the police were in pursuit and IIRC was killed. I think the programme said at the end that one of the officers featured in the episode was either under investigation or even possibly charged in connection. It may have been this case https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-41697985 but I'm not sure. My memory from watching the programme though was that the death was one of the reasons why less pursuit of bikes was being done for some time afterwards.

It's a tough policy decision to take. People obviously hate the violent robberies and such that is being done by youth on mopeds but then if someone gets killed because of the tactic, there will probably be another outcry and the pendulum will swing back the other way, if for no other reason than police officers won't want to be open to liability claims or investigation.

Last year at the school where I work we had a training session on the use of and legal issues around physical restraint. Most teachers I know work to an unwritten rule that even an investigation into whether a use of force was "reasonable" or not would be pretty devastating to your career and potentially place you in serious legal jeopardy that it's just not worth trying. Of course the downside of that is staff being nervous about, say, trying to break up a fight between 13 year olds. Obviously police are in a different position but I imagine ultimately they must worry about falling foul of the same laws.

Whilst they are light enough to be chucked in the back of a van by two people, they'll always be very easy to steal, and turn into a pool bike to be shared amongst the various crims. Unless you spens lots on a serious chain and always attach it to a very strong piece of scenery, theres a high chance any scooter will be nicked.

I thought I was meant to be the patronising one? Nowhere have I defended anybody on mopeds committing crimes, and I did say there personal responsibility needs to exist - ie I'm not defending them. You're projecting, again, like you did in calling me patronising further up. You, uniquely among the posters on here, tell me I'm patronising while being patronising too. will you kindly stop? Please. 

I do point the finger at them (especially the acid throwers, I think they should go away for a long time - or pay somehow for what they do), but we need to ask questions of our society too, like why are our prisons full to bursting when Holland's  (for example) are becoming empty? Or else the same ills will simply continue, 'that' is what I'm trying to get across. 

Why are there so many more criminal arseholes in big US cities than in big European cities?  Why is moped crime and knife crime so much worse in London than say Edinburgh or Amsterdam?     It seems to me that if there is a correlation it is that the cities with the most violent police and hardline approach also have the worst crime.

There seems to be 2 general takes on what it means to be human, that we have 'Absolute free will', or 'Autonomy to act within a certain set of parameters', with these being our environment (where we live, parents, role models, school, peers,) our biological inheritance, and random chance, with an element of personal responsibility being present in both.

The science seems to be pointing towards the second one, with profound implications on what it means to be human, how we shape society, on how we should approach a criminal justice system, and all sorts of shit. It's really mind boggling,  we seem to be able stand back and look at how we live, but the things which govern how we act, it would appear that we don't have the same objectivity/control over. Which could be something we're still getting to grips with the implications of 100 years from now - it's something really profound.

If the second perspective is the true one, we need to look really fundamentally at how we shape society, to give the best outcomes the biggest chances of occurring, when it comes to crime and educational attainment, and general well being, everything involved in being human.  There's a lot going on behind what choices people make, it can seem to be.

You do talk some crap. You reckon the Met are more violent than French police, Russian, Chinese, Israeli, etc, etc, etc....

Maybe the police take a hard line in response.  

When did I say the Met were more violent than the Russians, Chinese etc?

What I'm saying is the Met should not follow the US approach and become more violent in an attempt to deal with crime when there is a racially divided community.  They should look at countries in Europe or other parts of the UK with less crime than London and try and try and learn from them rather than a country with far more crime like the US (or a country with a repressive government like China).

Maybe there's a cycle of violence.

Maybe there’s an entire sub-culture glorifying violence and criminality and regarding normal law abiding people as mugs to be robbed and beaten without censure or sanction and the system as something to be bypassed or milked according to circumstances.

Bringing my massive expertise to this (I'm teaching the crime and deviance unit of A level sociology for the first time this year! Although I did at do criminology as part of my first degree many many moons ago.) I doubt it is anywhere close to as simple as that.

I suspect your earlier point about different degrees of relative deprivation and wildly different amounts of state provision of various services from education to welfare will be a bigger part of it, but even that is only going to be one dimension.

Interesting theory. Utterly rubbish, but nonetheless interesting.

For Edinburgh substitute Glasgow.

For Amsterdam substitute Paris and consider the French approach to "hard-line" policing versus the UK.

What "whole community" are you talking about?

Dear off Duty, or may I call you Cressida?

Purely in a public spirited gesture may I donate one of my old climbing ropes to your pals in the Met; this could be strung between opposing lampposts at neck level to stop the acid throwing / machete wielding pond life on their stolen, non- insured mopeds, committing serious crime to mostly unassuming innocent tax paying individuals trying to go about their lives.

This will reduce the cost of damage to the police cars and reduce the cost to the public purse.

It’s obvious the UKC jury fully supports the police response in this matter.  

Thank you

Albert

Spot on. Let’s take back our city streets.

Is this the same Glasgow that cops from the US and London are visiting to learn about violence reduction?     The one that developed the programs that halved Scotland's homicide rate in 10 years and reduced knife crime by 62%?

If you knock a teenager off a scooter then you've stopped that one guy.  But you've also made every other teenager scared when they see a cop car behind them.   The ones that get chased are going to think they can't give up because if they slow down the cop car will knock them off the bike.   

Are you being a bit thick on purpose?

Do you not think that, having your mate knocked of a (stolen) bike intentionally you might think "Hmm, better stop now, they might do it to me...)

Best thing to do is just let the crims crack on with it that way they won't get hurt. Has it occurred to you that the increase in violent crime may have a correlation with the chances of not being caught because they believe the police are not allowed to chase. 

I agree with you that out of 63 cases it's lucky there hasn't been a death. I know how much falling off a bike hurts even at low speed but I have zero sympathy.

Due to being a dick when I was a kid I probably have more experience of being stopped by the police than most people on this forum and I always found that by stopping and being polite I have never been killed by an officer.  Even when I was stopped on my motorbike by 2 armed police when I was in possession of a shotgun I still felt safe and Deffinatly wasn't shot by either of the officers.

Most police in this country do a fantastic job and deserve our support. 

The police have always been able to ram bikes. I remember a lad who was being chased all round my estate by the police . When they eventually caught up with him (at his house) they told him he was just about to be rammed after permission had been given over the radio when he turned up a narrow ginnel and escaped. This was in the 70's.

In moments of blind panic where I need some calm, I remind myself of the time my dad was stopped in a brand new Capri with a boot full of guns whilst dressed as a tramp.  He was stopped by a lone motorbike cop who had a bit of a moment and called some armed officers over.  It takes a certain kind of calm to not get shot in circumstances like those...

WTF? ....

You are the lovechild of Carlos The Jackal and Ulrike Meinhof and I claim my £5.

You must mean the violent crime reduction unit, staffed and driven by the heavy handed police thugs that you have just claimed are why the UK has such a violence problem.

Incidentally one element from the public health approach to violent crime is enforcement. It's essential that there are consequences. 

The public health approach is also, of course, utterly pointless if you can commit crime with impunity because you never get caught. Like for example if you commit violent robberies on mopeds that you know won't be pursued.

I think what you meant to say is "If you knock a robber off a moped, then you've stopped that one guy, likely to be responsible for multiple robberies on that and previous days. You've also made every other robber scared when they see a cop car behind them.  The ones that get chased will think they can't give up because if they slow down the cop car will knock them off the bike. Some will tell their mates ' Not worth it any more, the police will take you out'. Some will even listen. "

Why do you think many black people in the US are scared sh*tless of being stopped by the cops even when they are respectable and middle class.  Law abiding people start to think 'they might do it to me' as well as criminals.

We aren't there in the UK but starting to knock kids off scooters in anything but extreme circumstances is a step along that path.   Not banging into the scooter with a car is not the same thing as letting them get away.    They need to find a safer way of dealing with it - the DNA spray idea is a good one, making scooters harder to steal or providing a way for cops to tell the engine management electronics to stop a vehicle is another. 

Here's the first article I found when I Googled 'DNA Spray':
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/dna-spray-being-used-by-police-in-lon...
If you read the article, you'll see that they Tactically Stopped him as per the technique that this thread is about and DNA Sprayed him when he tried to escape.  You'll also notice, that he had removed his helmet prior to being Tactically Stopped and did so because he thought that would mean the Police would stop chasing him. i.e. it needed a Tactical Stop to administer the DNA Spray.
As for making scooters harder to steal and/or modified management systems - who is going to pay for something that is going to be undoubtedly very expensive.
You also have to factor in Human Rights issues regarding handing over control of vehicles to the state - I personally don't mind, just surprised that someone seemingly so concerned about individual freedoms is so blase about it...

These are not, as you so innocently put it, "kids on scooters". These are, at least in part, vicious thieves and muggers who have been known to throw acid in people's faces just to distract them whilst robbing them and who knowingly remove their helmets in the belief that they are then untouchable by the police.

If knocking the off their peds makes them "scared shitless" then I, for one, think it's a f*cking good idea!

You 

You can't compare shooting innocent black people in a country that is still very racist in some areas with what the police are doing in London.  In the USA there is a real chance of the officer being shot, add in the nerves of the situation, a bit of racism and a gun and the inevitable happens. Things are different here. The police are not ramming every ped they see. There will be a protocol involved that once they have exhausted all other options and obtained permission to use the car to nudge/ram/use as a weapon (delete as applicable depending on your view point) and take them down. 

An interesting point of view. I know you won't define what you mean by "whole community", which is interesting, but on the basis of your argument, since you previously mentioned the riots following Duggan's shooting, it appears you are suggesting we shouldn't conduct armed operations to arrest violent armed criminals, because there's a risk that we could start a riot?

And I use the word " start" cautiously as I don't remember the police running around robbing shops or inflaming the situation by whipping up the " racist police" trope.

Unnecessary violence yes.  Reasonable force in order to effect an arrest is covered by section 3 of the Criminal law act.

If they were in a car they might have a stinger deployed, or be boxed in with tactical contact. They have specifically adopted mopeds to try and avoid that, along with removing helmets when they are in a pursuit. These are conscious actions with consequences. As can be seen in the video a number of the crashes are them simply losing control.

These tactics are proportionate and legal to deal with a specific crime type, and not just any old moped that is failing to stop.  You can see the seriousness with which it is treated by the fact that there are 3 moped crash cases in front of the IOPC at the moment where as I understand it the issue is that it is " normal" police that have been involved in the crash.

You've thrown in the word "racial" there in a conversation about moped crime. I'm not clear why.

Every time a moped robber assaults, stabs or kills a victim, on top of the robbery itself, how do you think the victim feels about moped robbers...?

You seem to be playing a Rotherham style race card here with your use of "community". It's not a race issue.  Some of the perpetrators are white, some are black.  It's quite racist of you to make assumptions.

As for deaths, there have been deaths.  People stabbed by these riders.  My sympathy is with the victims.  If we have another riot so be it.  If the alternative is letting these criminals off and letting them rule the streets I know which is worse.  

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwitn7i...

How will making bikes harder to steal when parked up help things like this

youtube.com/watch?v=_2-xzMIGJwY&

or
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6169859/Masked-thugs-throw-moped-r...

These are damb violent people that don't give fcks if they kill you while stealing your bike. People that ride are not going to be worried about getting run over by cops if they slow down to stop, ffs man. They know they have been untouchable do stuff like this

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5533855/Gang-mopeds-try-steal-TV-c...

and

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/moped-thieves-jailed-after-being-film...

Which leads to people getting involved: 

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/dramatic-moment-londoners-confront-ha...

But you know, they are just innocent little kids, they don't KNOW what they are doing is wrong, lets all sit down and sing kumbya and have a hug. Apart from the people that were killed by the thugs of course, they can't make it any more, or those blinded by acid, might be hard for them to make it.

It turns out that those officers involved in knocking people off their bikes are involved in criminal activity according to Tim Rogers of the police federation.

I for one will have no sympathy for them when they finally injure themselves.

After all the comments above that we should trust them as they know what they are doing it turns out they are a bunch of law braking scumbags themselves.

Cry me a river.

Call them what you like, but its them very same scumbags who would step in to save your life when you are shitting your pants, fearing the worst.  Putting their life on the line for yours.

As a social concerned person I'd like them to do so whilst staying the correct side of the law.

It will become a race issue after the first couple of times a cop from one racial group kills a teenager from the other. It is naive to think it wont.

It's a false dichotomy to say the only options are knocking teenagers off moving mopeds and letting them do what they like.   It's a technical problem, put some money into it and it will get solved.   A society capable of landing a spacecraft on a comet can figure out how to safely stop a moped. 

It's exactly like this bullsh*t of cops covering blue lights with tights so they are less obvious as if that was the only option.   If they spent some money with a company that designs lights they could easily have some made which were not obviously blue until they were switched on.

Who is going to pay for something that will undoubtedly be extremely expensive?

There's no 'undoubtedly' about it.    It might be fairly cheap - electronics doesn't tend to be that costly.  If it was done by telling the engine management electronics to gradually reduce engine power it  would  cost next to nothing when built into new mopeds because most of it would be software running on a computer which was already there to do something else.   If it was retrofitted to old mopeds that would cost money.  If the retrofit version also provided a mode where owners could locate and disable a moped that had been stolen they'd get something useful for their money.

Knocking people off scooters isn't free either.   You've got more police involved in chases than if the scooter could just be stopped at the touch of a button, you've got damage to cars to repair, you've got costs of medical treatment and every now and then you've got absolutely  massive legal costs and if you are unlucky the damages from a riot to deal with.  

Dude....move on! You lost the pair-of-tights argument yesterday! 

The real cost is going to in the device that allows a Police vehicle to communicate with a specific moped and only stop that moped and not stop all the other mopeds in the immediate area.
I assume that the only way that could actually be achieved would be by having a unique code based on the number plate.  If that is the case, wouldn't the people in question just cover/remove the plates?

You appear to have a very loose grasp on the legal principles and the actual operational activity taking place and it's consequences.

In itself, that would be fine, you are entitled to be ignorant.

When you try and make some sort of point based on that ignorance you don't really do yourself any favours.

I'm paraphrasing Tim Rogers of the police federation who is concerned for his officers as they are operating outside of the law.

The full quote is

“We need to reinforce the fact that the tactics used, necessary as they are and supported by senior police leaders, are in fact in breach of current legislation. Judged against the common standard, as police officers are, it is dangerous to drive a car deliberately at another road user. The law clearly classifies this as dangerous driving, and officers could be prosecuted. No defence, no exemption.”

He wants the law changed to protect his officers as they are currently in breach of current legislation.

I don't approve of criminal activity in any form. They are breaking the law and should be prosecuted.

Bonkers idea.  As if you could force people with no respect for the law to have a system like that fitted and prevent them from disabling it if it was fitted. Pointless waste of time.  

Much of the driving the police do isn't normally permitted.  

You may as well worry that Fire Officers will be done for burglary when they break into a house to rescue people.  

Ambulance drivers go a bit fast sometimes too.  

As I said above the lawyers were involved in drawing up the policies. 

There is a difference between not normally normally permitted and not permitted.

A spokesman for the police federation says the police are braking the law and could be prosecuted.

This is very different from people are not normally permitted to drive people off the road and the police are.

Wrong'ns

??????

Ha, see what you've done there  Like it. 

According to one bloke, who to be fair is just trying to protect the interests of those officers who would be tasked with carrying out the order and not just wayward scumbag officers as you like to call them.

I'll garner from your comments that you don't know how the command structure operates for this kind of 'sting'. Nothing is just cops ramming bikes as they see fit.

I don't have an issue if the moped thing isn't your bag, thats your call, but make no mistake these are all operational decisions which will have been risk assessed there and back again before coming into force.

You might just as well say that the deployment of a stinger is illegal, or nudging cars too, which are all part of the arsenal... which requires authority before an officer can use it.

Yes. You really don't understand the issue. Thanks for clarifying that.

It's against the law to hit someone with a big stick in ordee to then arrest them.

Luckily various pieces of legislation exist to justify it.

Those pieces of legislation also justify hitting them with a car.

Unfortunately the way the dangerous driving legislation is written, there could be issues in relation to the defences available under that legislation.

Which is a bit crazy isn't it - I can legally shoot someone dead, but if i nudge them with a motor vehicle in exactly the same circumstances using exactly the same legal powers, there is a potential for a dangerous driving charge.

This lacuna in the law even applies to using police legal exemptions when driving.

For example if you are, entirely legally with full blues and twos on, driving in excess of the speed limit and using your exemption to red lights in order to cross a junction, then you can still be liable for the offence of dangerous driving - quite literally on the basis you are in excess of the speed limit and have contravened a red light signal.

No, they would just use clone plates. Some poor bugger pootling down the M1 at 68mph would suddently find him/herself in a porly car.

The only problem with the wonderful idea of being able to externally control vehicles (which currently exists) is that the technology exists to disable that and drive / ride a vehicle without. Lets face it, every vehicle built prior to 2000 already comes equipped without the new tech........*

* commwnt mainly aimed not at you, but those (hi Tom) who seem to think it would make the slightest difference.

All I'm doing is quoting the police federation.

A crime is a crime.

If you think they are morally superior to other criminals who consider themselves to be above the law so be it. Everybody has a justification that sounds acceptable to themselves. The fact that the CPS declines to prosecute them does not make it legal or acceptable in my opinion.

You really haven't grasped the issues have you.

For what it's worth the Police Fed themselves have put forward a slightly confusing statement, which isn't unusual unfortunately for us.

The background to this is the issue of police responding to jobs, and to a degree involved in pursuits - NOT actually the use of more robust tactics like "tactical contact".

There is currently a bill that the Fed are trying to push through parliament (though it has just, this week, been knocked back till March. This bill is attempting to close the gap that means on the one hand police officers are using their legal exemptions (speeding, crossing red lights) whilst on the other this fulfils the criteria of dangerous driving. Making the exemptions meaningless, which clearly defeats the object of the law providing them to the police (and other emergency services) in the first place.

Where the situation gets more complex is when more robust vehicle tactics are being used to stop criminals. This is more complex because it is actually an application of force. There are numerous bits of legislation that cover when, why and how officers can use force. The oddity in this occasion is if that force is applied through the means of a motor vehicle then there is the potential for dangerous driving to rear it's head. The reality is that in the case where force/tactical contact has been used, it is extremely unlikely that dangerous driving would ever be considered due to the numerous laws around use of force that would govern that action and it's consequences.

Unfortunately I suspect the Fed have taken advantage of this news story in order to promote the bill they are pushing. Whilst this is laudable, the primary purpose of that bill isn't directed at tactical contact (though it may well be covered).

The result is that ill- informed commentators appear unable to unpick a reasonably complex legislative problem and come up with criticism that is fairly close to gibberish.

Sometimes I'd consider the advice of Abraham Lincoln(possibly) - "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt".

Are you a Daily Mail reader by any chance?

Yes police contravening ill defined laws to apprehend criminals and protect society at large are morally superior to muppets on mopeds robbing and assaulting innocent members of the public.

...bit thick of you needing to have that explained.

Not usually like you to resort to insults (mild as it was)

There are technological solutions to that but really it would be much easier, and much less at risk of allowing “unforeseen consequences”, to apply technology to making mopeds harder to steal.  

Fair point. Unfortunately too late to edit.

Here's a well written post  on the topic to make up for my lapse!

https://policecommander.wordpress.com/2018/11/25/on-mopeds/amp/?__twitter_i...

Very well written and hard to fault but I can already imagine where it will be seen to be flawed by the critics.

It doesn't really address the issue of the police operating outside the laws of driving to stop the criminals in the course of their activities.

But since I've never criticised ambulance drivers , paramedics or the fire brigade  for crossing the legal line in the course of their duty I think it would be right to give the police the same consideration.

i appreciate the sentiment in your last paragraph but again the point has been missed....the police are perfectly and legally entitled to operate ‘outside the laws of driving’ in certain circumstances- this being one. That is not the primary issue. The primary issue is one of reasonableness and proportionality of the force used. It seems entirely proportionate to me if the riders failing to stop have committed a violent crime and are likely to be armed with knives or similar. They clearly pose a significant threat to the public. The fact that the police being legally entitled to speed, go through red lights etc to effect an arrest is at odds with a potential offence of dangerous driving is a legal anomaly that the Federation are trying to address. This dilemma is not new and, even so, police officers consistently accept the personal risks of legal consequences in order to protect the public. Fortunately, in the vast majority of cases, the CPS support the police action.

I fascinated to hear more about the 'engine kill' technology, of which you speak.

Given that the combined technological might of Audi, Mercedes and BMW have failed to keep up with the car-thieves, and their latest keyless technology can be defeated in less than 20 seconds by a skilled thief...I find it unlikely that the cops will be able to achieve something that the automotive industry has been unable to do, and develop some kind of ray-gun which they will be able to point at a speeding vehicle to stop it in its tracks.

I suggest that this technology doesn't exist in any usable format. And if it did, it'd only take the baddies a couple of days to find a way round it.

Also, where would we get all they funny video's from?

Shooting a stolen moped with a ray gun is unlikely to produce the kind of comedy-gold on offer in that video...I almost spat my beer out at the chap whose shoes flew off as he sprawled across the bonnet of a cop-car!

As for the guy who ended up soaked in his own acid! Classic!

They're not on their own bikes.  They nick the bikes.   Government could fairly easily persuade people who own mopeds in London to fit a system like that to their bikes by making bikes which didn't have them fitted subject to the congestion charge.  

A system like that could also potentially cut road casualty figures for moped riders by monitoring speed, acceleration and location to detect people driving like d*cks.  Which would give insurance companies a reason to offer reduced premiums when it was fitted.

If the system is built into the engine management electronics your average teenage moped thief isn't going to be able to disable it.

None of the car manufacturers have been able to develop this kind of technology without the baddies being able to find way to defeat it. Easily.

You seem to be trying to argue your case by claiming that technology which doesn't exist, does exist!

I think you underestimate them.  There is always a way around all these electronic systems and these are soon found and he information shared.  

And Tom.

It exists now.

It doesn't need to be defeated; it can just be removed to return a vehicle to the good old formula of fuel / air mixture ignited under pressure by a high voltage spark (ie just remove the clever defeat devices).

Perhaps we should put the smart meter engineers on to the problem?  Maybe those people behind DVD encryption as well.  

Edit: Sorry you meant “baddies” as in car thieves, not as in our future robot overlords (or the Russians)...

"black boxes" fitted to cars as part of insurance company requirements do exactly this.

Exactly!

It didn't take them lock to detect the undetectable gps trackers which were supposed to bring about an end to high-end car theft.

As the owner of a new Volvo XC-90 I was somewhat concerned to read that a half-organised car thief can buy on ebay the equipment he needs to clone the 'key' and steal it without so much as the need to lob a brick through the window!

If the mythical, much vaunted and undefeatable kill switch did exist its inventor would be a millionaire and offence of TWOC would be a thing of the past.

Sadly, it doesn't and it isn't.

Cutting the ignition doesn't come close to locking the drive wheels, your engine produces no power whenever you lift off the throttle, that's all a dead engine feels like.

I had a pretty sketchy ignition cut in thick rush hour French urban motorway traffic in a tiny sports car amid lots of HGV that I couldn't really expect to see me very well. Maintaining control was no problem at all, diagnosing the problem quickly and wriggling toward the hard shoulder with my remaining momentum was more taxing.

jk

That depends on how it is done.  If the security is integrated with the engine management system then you can't just pull it out without leaving the vehicle useless.

The reason these systems can often be defeated is that the design goal isn't to produce an absolutely secure system it is to produce a system which is convenient, low cost and 'secure enough'.  Arguably they don't get the right balance between cost, convenience and security, sometimes they are just lazy and assume that pathetic levels of security will suffice.  But equally, a teenager trying to nick a bike in the street doesn't have hours to mess about or any special equipment or skills.  It probably doesn't take a super secure design to defeat 90% of attempted thefts.

As you say there are already 'black boxes' fitted to cars as part of insurance company requirements.  So fitting one to a bike which also includes a capability for police to stop the vehicle is just an incremental development.  Give people a sufficient financial incentive and they will install them.

I think some people fit aftermarket switches to their cars, putting a break in an essential cable essentially so that it won't run if the switch isn't flicked. 

I don't have enough knowledge to provide a sensible point of view on this matter.

However, I do feel sorry for the Police Officer who will eventually be scapegoated for trying to do their best in, what is clearly, a very difficult and important job. 

I'm puzzled by the term "dead Engine".

Does your steering and braking system still work properly?

My 306 used to develop these spontaneously, usually in some burried bulkhead connector.

The difference with what you describe is that the police have to throw the switch remotely by radio.  As soon as the radio frequency is leaked publicly (which it will be, one way or another), someone will be selling a radio jammer for it.  

You’d be better off giving the police an EMP (electro magnetic pulse) weapon to disable the bike, but just nudging it is a lot easier...

The only petrol vehicle I have left is probably quite EMP resistant, being a magneto based lawn mower.

It’s all good until you try turning it off and on again and then discover that there’s a steering lock, and that it’s hard to turn the key to unlock it with an external torque applied to the wheels...

I was amused when a rear light on my Mum's Fiat Uno didn't work until I swapped the bulbs around, and then they both did. I know there's a difference between remote kill switches and switches to disable cars, I was just aiming to be helpful.

You just aren't getting it.

You can always just rewire the ignition system to ignore all and any security / cut out systems. It doesnt matter how clever the system is that is supposed to disable the vehicle, it can simply be bypassed by some quick rewiring. Even fuel injection systems on bikes are very simple, and whatever you do to to enhance the security can be bypassed so very easily. As I said previously, two blokes can chuck a scooter in a van in 10 seconds, and work on it at leisure later. It will take them less than 30 mins to get the thing working with no keys, no ignition barrell, and no engine management. This takes very little skill. Anyone wanting to use scooters for the purposes under discussion on this thread will know someone who can do it at short notice.

Second that. I have what I like to call a "small collection" of bikes. All heavily modified or customised. The most modern has been rewired. The only thing left on it electrically is the spark plugs. All the rest in the bin. No light, nothing.

Trust me, if I can rewire a bike anybody can.

So, now that we've established that the kill switch option is pie-in-the-sky, how do you suggest we deal with the moped robbers?

"...the responsibility that every critic has (is) to suggest alternatives to the things they don’t like. It isn’t enough to sit back and tell the rest of us what you are against. You need to tell us what you are for. If you’re not keen on the idea of suspects being knocked off mopeds, you need to come up with a better alternative.

Because doing nothing is not an option..."

I just mean one not producing power, either because it has no air, fuel or ignition. It's really unspectacular when it happens.

In most cars they would work normally for long enough to pull over and stop, in many with no ignition power they'd keep working normally until the battery died or the car ran out of momentum. Power steering is only power assist, you can do without just fine at speed. It'll work normally while ever it has power anyway. Many modern systems are electrical-mechanical run off the battery, mechanically driven systems hydraulic will remain powered and working normally while the engine spins either because it's making power or spun over by the driveline like when you lift off the throttle.

Power brakes have enough vacuum 'stored' for several applications but brakes still work fine without vacuum, you just have to press harder. Again, while the engine is spinning or the car electrics live the vacuum system is kept pumped down anyway.

jk

So you have a bunch of mechanical/electrical components like fuel injectors, spark plugs and so on which need electrical signals supplied to them in a precise sequence.   You have a box of electronics that produces those signals.  You cut the connections between the box and the actuators and sensors.  What you have then is a broken bike with a really loud alarm going off.   If you want it to work again you need to install a new box of electronics so those spark plugs/fuel injectors etc get the signals they require.

To nick a moped your teenager now needs two men with a van and a workshop and tools and the parts to install in place of the original engine management system.   And the two men have the slight problem that as soon as they pick the moped up to chuck it in a van the alarm goes off and their location is transmitted to the police.   Those two guys could be fixing bikes and making reasonable money for their time, skills and investment with no risk of going to jail so when your teenager asks them to steal a bike they are going to want a fair bit of cash for their trouble.

The moped can still be stolen.  But the difficulty and cost and risk of doing it is much higher.  All the security system needs to do is take that cost past the point where the value of a stolen moped isn't high enough to justify it.

Do you have any idea how much a cheap Chinese ped costs? Even new they're silly cheap. The cost of your gubbins would probably be as much as the bike. And it still wouldn't work.

Most small bikes are still carb, not fuel injection and I'll guarantee your average scrote could bypass any affordable system in minutes.

I appreciate you've taken a position and you're trying very hard to defend it but, trust me, it won't work.

How long is it going to take to implement your tech idea on a bike?  would the manufacturers say that its not their issue?  and in the meantime - given that (from the link supplied by Off-Duty) 19,000 crimes using a moped were recorded in 10 months, what do the Police do to try and curb this? sit and wait - and get more hassle for not stopping them.

They should impose minimum specs on mopeds for pollution, safety and security which force the really cheap ones and really old ones off the road.   Medium term all new ones should be electric rather than internal combustion.    If they don't meet the latest specs then make them subject to the congestion charge.  Not just because of the crime problem but because the number of casualties on mopeds is 20x worse per traveled mile than cars and a cheap engine with no electronics has worse pollution.  

You have to implement this system, which doesn't exist but is technically feasible, together with IFF systems so you can identify the stolen moped with false plates to kill it, in a standardised format across all manufacturers worldwide.

Then you'd have to retro fit it to the millions of existing vehicles, or ban all vehicles without the system from the roads (and crush them too as criminals perhaps might not be too fussed at riding an illegal moped).

So until that point some 20 years hence we're perhaps going to have to let the police use reasonable force to arrest criminals...

If I were to ‘borrow’ a moped, my first task would be to find and pull the master fuse on the battery. This is about a 15-second task on any bike I’ve seen.

Perhaps the GPS unit has a redundant battery, but a GPS jammer is trivial tech and would I imagine rapidly be sold for £50 to those in the business.

In reply to Oceanrower:

With regards how cheap mopeds are - perhaps this is part of the problem.  Legislate a minimum level of anti-theft technology and let people live with the price increase.  I don’t know how many people this would leave without an option for travel; given the rise off affordable battery electric pedal cycles I’d be surprised if it’s many; but I don’t know.

Ban the import of 2-stroke carb based children’s toys from China as well...

I have mixed feelings about this one.

On one hand, yes - there is clearly a problem with criminals using mopeds, generally stolen, as tools to commit crime and the police have, previously, been powerless to pursue them. Indeed, the criminals knew that not wearing a helmet was an automatic "no pursuit" order and made the most of this. So the fact that this is going some way to address that is some sort of balance and there is a part of me that thinks that if you fail to stop for the police when ordered to do so then you expect everything you get.

However...

On the one occasion I have been stopped by the police sporting blue lights, it wasn't immediately apparent it was me they were after and I probably drove for a mile, or so, before stopping. I will accept that if you're a criminal, however, there's probably a 100% chance it's you they're after.

Also, I HAVE been knocked off a motorbike and I can tell you it hurts. I had a very bruised left foot and calf muscle, a bruised right foot, and very stiff neck for a week, my boots and trousers were wrecked with some of the hard plastic armour ripped off one of them at impact and my helmet is a write-off as that hit the floor and had visible damage. And that was at low speed, 15-20mph wearing full leathers - not 40-50mph in a reckless chase. A good friend of mine is a traffic officer in the police and has apparently lost count of the number of moped riders with their feet hanging off, for example, as they crashed not wearing proper gear.

If you are tactically stopped driving a car, then you're probably going to walk away from it with minimal injuries - on a motorbike, rather less so.

Interesting.

It's just that I had a bit of a scare last year when I lazily decided to let my car roll down the street a couple of house lengths without turning the engine on.I unlocked the steering, took the handbrake off and off we went.

And when this falls into the hands of people other than the police?

The system doesn't need to be perfect to be better than knocking people off moving bikes.   They're already knocking people off bikes and it hasn't reduced motorbike crime to zero.  It's reduced it by about 40%.  Whether that will last is another question because the criminals will develop their own tactics and quite possibly get more violent.  If you are a criminal and think you're going to be seriously injured if a police car gets too close then you might think about chucking tacks or oil on the road or getting a gun instead of a knife and taking a pot shot at it.

Whether it needs to be standardised depends on how it is done.  If you have a special 'death ray' device in the police car which sends out a low range radio signal to circuits in the moped there needs to be a standard.   If it works over the internet using the mobile phone infrastructure then the communications is already dealt with.  You just need an API to hook the police into the manufacturer's cloud service.

London is easier to control than other parts of the country because there's already infrastructure for the congestion charge.

It's not always obvious, usually, because you either haven't or you're not aware you've broken the law (brake light out or something), but I doubt they will resort to ramming you if you don't pull over instantly. Providing you don't slam on the accelerator they will assume you've seen them and are just looking for a suitable and safe location to pull over at. Only criminals get chased because only criminals would run. 

Indeed, all the more reason to pull over and give it up. The only reason they run is that they gamble they can escape. Raise the stakes enough and reduce the odds enough and it'll soon not be a chance worth taking. 

FFS, Tom. 

If its a single cylinder, you only need a timed spark. You dont have a broken bike with a loud alarm, BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN DISCONNECTED FROM THE BATTERY. You dont need to install a new box of electronics because bikes (and cars) simply dont need them in order to run.

You need a couple of spanners and screwdrivers to remove the electronics, and maybe a new HT lead. Their location may be transmitted to the police for a few seconds whilst they rip off the transmitter and throw it out of the van, (which will significantly muffle the sound of the alarm). They then drive somewhere else. This is generally how bikes and scooters are stolen now.

It doesn't matter how wonderful the system is, it can be torn off and thrown away. The bike will still run. Have you really got no idea how simple small bikes are?

Please stick to Brexit threads; you make some excellent points. But you seem to be wilfully ignorant of bikes and security.

Yes, fair game - and this is yet another motorcyclist agreeing with it.

 "..If you have a special 'death ray' device in the police car which sends out a low range radio signal to circuits in the moped there needs to be a standard.   If it works over the internet using the mobile phone infrastructure then the communications is already dealt with.  You just need an API to hook the police into the manufacturer's cloud service..."

Have you considered a new career as a science fiction writer?

Even a lot of fancy pants modern diesels are at the core of the engine.  If you stick a pipe from a  butane tank into the air intake, crank the valve open a bit and push start it, it’ll probably run...  Allegedly.    Edit:  it’ll run like a dog but it’ll run...

My motorbike was a carb model, not fuel injected. There was absolutely no "brain", as such - if you could get the engine to turn over with a live spark, it would start and run quite happily, even without a battery. You could even run it without the instrument panel connected - all that was doing really was displaying info about speed and some warning lights, rather than relying on it to run the bike.

Modern, big capacity bikes are fuel injected, but the sort of mopeds used by gangs are far more basic and don't have much more electrics than the wiring for the lights.

So, now that we've established that the  engine killing technology which would be fitted in every car that rolls off a production line if it existed, doesn't exist.....what options are available to the cops if they're not allowed to knock them off their bikes?

They could always hope that the court system would apply consistent sentencing at a level likely to deter the scrotes. 

I do feel sympathy for the police, as even after they have arrested and processed a suspect, the punishments handed down by the justice system don't act as anything like a deterrent. Its one thing asking the police to go in hard, but the whole system needs to act consistently.

The prisons are full to bursting. I guess we either build more prisons, or go in the other direction and look into the roots of why people become criminals in the first place - towards becoming a little bit more like Holland with it's empty (ing) prisons.

Edit: Though I'm sure Holland isn't utopia.

And the choice of direction is a difficult one...........

Edit: There's the issue of prison being something of a 'university of criminality, too, where one can apparently learn how to do different things. Even if one thinks criminals deserve to be locked up, I'd be surprised if it wouldn't be better value for society if their potential could be directed into making them helpful tax payers rather than career criminals.

You have to catch them first before you can give them their day in court.

Personally speaking, I am absolutely fed up of people stealing your shit and the 'solution' being to treat the symptom rather than the cause.

Someone stole your motorbike? You should have put a disc lock on the front wheel and chain the back wheel to an immovable object. Someone used an angle grinder to remove the lock? You should have used a tougher/bigger lock. Someone stole the back wheel of your bicycle? you should have used a cable lock through all your wheels. Etc. We need to treat the CAUSE of the crime, not the symptom. And stop putting the onus on the victims, whether that be in carrying big locks around or having to bear the cost of increased security/alarm systems.

Catching them with the stolen goods or drugs or whatever while not on their bikes. Not easy of course, especially with a service pared to the bone.

jk

You really do live in a bubble don't you!

Yeah, that'd be the gold standard...i suspect the 'proportionality test' applied to the new tactics was based on traditional / less risky tactics not delivering results .

He mentioned tacks and oil a moment ago, so also a fan of Adam West's Batman..

Right now I can say "Computer, turn on the living room light" and a Philips Hue light will come on.  If I said "Turn on the hall light" a light from Innr would come on, if I said "bedroom light" a smart plug from Kasa would switch on a dumb lamp.   They all can be controlled from the Amazon cloud because there's a simple API the manufacturers can use to make it work.   It's the same problem as the cops being able to have a kill-switch on engine management computers from many different manufacturers.

As per previous posts ad nauseam, this tech has existed for 10 years for cars and bikes. You can fix it to as many scooters as you like; the nature of the vehicle means it can be removed VERY easily. Nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

There's a big difference here between using tech that YOU WANT to be there versus easily removing/bypassing tech that you don't want present.

So you need a timed spark.  Where do you get a timed spark when you just chucked the electronics away?  Because if you were going to design one of these things you'd make sure that the circuits which were making the spark were inside the secure box.  You'd also put a small Li Ion battery inside the box so the alarm would continue to sound if someone cut the connection from the main battery.

The guys in your van had better hope there's no CCTV around the location because the cops know exactly where and when to look for them.

Hmmm. Try saying:

"Computer, kill the engine on the moped that's just whizzed passed my gaff...but make sure you don't hurt the acid wielding hoodlum who's at the controls....clutching an old-dears handbag."

Let me know what the reply is...

"OK"

Blimey. Point made!

That'll be you being patronising again...?

Locking lots of people up isn't the only approach, if it was, there wouldn't be other countries in Europe with much lower prison populations than our's (proportionally speaking). 

You can tell me I live in a bubble if you like, or you can consider the possibility that the approach in the UK isn't the only one to take, and that another approach to our's may be a better one. 

Go and look at how other countries do things.

You aren’t an engineer I’m guessing.  

R-i-g-h-t... So the system you propose "doesn't need to be perfect" but you are critical of the current tactics which have reduced motorbike crime by FORTY PERCENT. There's around 7500 less crines, so pretty significant.

You might. They haven't so far, but they might I suppose. (Probably worth pointing out that it's actually pretty hard to get hold of a gun in the UK, despite what the man down the public will say).

It's also worth pointing out you are poo-poohing suggestions that criminals would come equipped to break your magic box, but are happy with the hypothetical situation that they will come equipped to deal with pursuing police. Which they haven't done so far....

I'm not technical enough to know if your solution is even remotely practical. It would be good if the manufacturers did more to prevent moped thefts. I'm guessing there just isn't enough money in it for an effective practical solution.

The Magic ray gun idea gas two obvious issues, 1) getting in to the hands of criminals, it doesn't sound to difficult to replicate 2)not sure how controlled any loss of power would be on a bike desperately making off at speed.

You'd be wrong.   I've got a different view because I'm usually not thinking about what I can buy now but what I could design which would sell in a few years.  It is always fun to refine ideas and see how far they go and you need to start out by assuming things are possible. 

So what are you going to use to power this loud alarm?  How will it be possible for it to start or continue making a noise if the battery is disabled?  

How do you plan to ensure the electronic device can’t be bypassed?  

How will you stop the knowledge of the design from getting from those who make it and those who fix it when it goes wrong to the criminals?   

I am assuming things are possible.  I assume it’s possible to break or bypass whatever system is put in place for a price.  

Children/teenagers join gangs because they lack a sense of family, belonging, boundaries and structure in their lives, the people who's role in society is to stop this from happening all say this (in an age of growing poverty, they get drawn in by older people with money and goods). The most critical time to be excluded from school, in terms of turning to crime and going to jail for male pupils, is during their teenage years, the statistics say this (while exclusions are increasing, as schools seek to improve their results and their place in the school tables). A higher proportion than is found in the general population, of those who are illiterate, and have been in care, end up going to jail, again, look at the statistics. 

All of these are factors which society should be looking (very much more) into addressing before people end up in a life of crime and go on to being locked up.

.....

''I'm not sure if it is? (a difficult choice, see thread for context) Not if one thinks about how much potential each individual has, which can be misdirected or squandered if they become a career criminal, and whatever unhappiness they cause, and resources used in policing them, and jailing and feeding them, and them coming out and the cycle continuing.  Edit: There's the issue of prison being something of a 'university of criminality, too, where one can apparently learn how to do different things. Even if one thinks criminals deserve to be locked up, I'd be surprised if it wouldn't be better value for society if their potential could be directed into making them helpful tax payers rather than career criminals.''

.....

Yet when I wrote the above which is quoted, with everything I've just written about factors in going to prison in mind (which I've not set out to discover, it's just 'washed past me' in the general media) you tell me I'm living in a bubble. 

Surely you can see society being better than it currently is, without sending people to jail being the 'go to' solution - or without our prison population being as large as it is?

It is very significant.  If you could do that without risking people's lives then it would be awesome.   If you are allowed to risk lives then it is a much easier problem.

That is almost certainly true.  The cost of a box with a good level of security relative to the cost of a cheap moped is too high.  So to make it economically feasible you also need some action by government to mandate a certain standard or provide an incentive such as reduced congestion charge or insurance premium .

Hopefully if the 'magic ray gun' was only issued to the police there'd be a degree of physical security i.e. you'd need to nick it from the police.   Also, you'd put in a mechanism for de-authorising the keys from units which were reported stolen.  So if you did nick one it wouldn't stay working for long.

You'd need to be careful about how you handled the loss of power.   The key would be to do it gradually and maybe you'd want to use an accelerometer to make sure you didn't do it when the bike was cornering.   You probably want an accelerometer anyway to detect people trying to pick the bike up or detect a crash and auto-call the emergency services like some cars do.

It will be powered off the bike electrics with a small rechargable battery inside the tamper-proof case of the security unit.  So it can run an alarm and GPS for a reasonable time after losing power from the bike.

You put some critical part of the bike inside the tamper proof box.  Such as the circuitry which makes the HT voltage for the spark plugs.

The key part of the device is on a custom chip.  It doesn't get fixed and unless you've got a very large budget you're not going to be able to reverse engineer or duplicate it.

Yes, but if you do a good job you can make the price so high it isn't worth it.

Or until it gets pulled off the bike and discarded.

Which is fine until it gets pulled off the bike and discarded.

It doesnt need to get fixed. Just throw it away.

It costs approx £10 in parts and 30 mins to make a small engined bike run again, once you've thrown away your expensive clever bits.

We aren't risking any lives. The cops that confront the dismounted armed robbers might be.  The victims, who have no control over what happens when they are robbed certainly are.

The only people who are putting lives at risk are the robbers. All this tactic does is very marginally tilt the balance so that the risks they take now include a minor risk to their own life - IF they steal a bike, AND commit a robbery, AND get in a pursuit AND fail to stop.

People use mopeds because they are cheap. Not for much longer seemingly. Especially when this complex box of electronics goes wrong.

It will have to operate on some fairly obvious principles. Given that you can buy kit to hack a keyless car, intercept a phone call or hack WiFi on eBay I can't see the tech being that difficult to reproduce.

It's getting to be a more and more complex (expensive) bit of kit that is tailored primarily for preventing pursuits, rather than preventing theft. I'm not entirely convinced there's a market for it, particularly as we have appear to have a fairly effective low tech solution to moped pursuits already.

distributor / electronic ignition unit.

Because if you were going to design one of these things you'd make sure that the circuits which were making the spark were inside the secure box.  You'd also put a small Li Ion battery inside the box so the alarm would continue to sound if someone cut the connection from the main battery.

The secure box would get cut off and thrown away.

Not once you've driven away with false plates.

I exchanged the normal Points on my motorbike for an electronic version which adjusts the ignition as you accelerate/decelerate - much improved performance (mind you on a bike with a top speed of just over 60).

It took 5 minutes to view the video on youtube, and 20 minutes to fit it including washing my hands afterwards - worked first time and hasn't been touched since.

Never done it before, and I'm not even the best motorcycle mechanic in my street. Anyone with any real knowledge would be able to do something similar to a stolen vehicle in less than 10 minutes easily.

1 week. That is about how long it will take before replacement boxes appear on eBay that bypass everything  

You'd also put a small Li Ion battery inside the box so the alarm would continue to sound if someone cut the connection from the main battery.

Alarms already have this but no one pays any attention to alarms anymore. 

Car stolen from outside my workshop. Police "sorry we don't have time to come and look at the cctv" 

Me "I will bring it up to you" 

Police "we still won't have time to look at it" 

The police are overworked and under resourced and society is paying the price for that. Its not just that though. In my opinion there is a direct correlation between lack of discipline at home and in school, everyone wins a prize / participation medals,  instant gratification without working for it,  celebrity culture full of people famous for being famous, TV and video games glorifying violence.

 Eddited to add, a whole load of lefties blaming everything but the criminal. 

Now you've got:

Two guys in a van with false plates with tools capable of cutting the secure box off (and obviously you'd design it so this wasn't easy).

A workshop

A stock of replacement ignition units / cables etc.  Because cut cables need to be replaced.

Skilled worker to fit the new ignition and test it.

Everyone involved getting paid enough to compensate them for the risk of jail/fines and having all their kit confiscated.

That's a very different cost to a teenager walking up and nicking the bike themselves.

Yeah, but that exactly whats happening at illegal chop-shops up and down the country all day, every day.

And, far more plausible than:

1.) Invent a new vehicle security technology which, for the first time in history, can't be defeated by the villans.

2.) Renegotiate trade deals with moped manufacturers worldwide to make them fit this new tech to their bikes.

3.) Recall all the pre-existing mopeds in the UK and retro-fit them.

4.) Introduce new laws to make it illegal to ride a moped not equipped with this tech.

5.) Enforce this new law...without resorting to knocking the lawbreakers off their bikes.

6.) Train-up mechanics to service the new tech.

7.) Train-up the police to use the new tech.

8.) Etc etc etc

And after all this, the new tech will be bypassed within a week...like every similar piece of tech which came before it!

I think:

Pretty much covered all bases!

1. Yup (already exists,as it happens every night already). Incidentally, how are you going to fit this to a scooter when the VAST majority are sold in countries where this problem simply doesn't exist?).

Dont need it, but nice if you've got access to any space greater than 8ft x 4ft.

How expensive do you think cables are??????? Esprcially if they come from other nicked bikes. And yes, these people will happily nick 2 bukes to make 1.

As several have said upthread (have you actually read the posts?) it takes almost no skill.

This is their "career". they think differently to you or I with respect to prospects / wages / bills etc. Don't forget, they are willing to risk death / serious injury by removing their helmets to try to persuade the police not to chase them.

They are mainly attached to gangs anyway, usually centred around drugs. There aren't many self employed in this game.

But to help you refine your idea, where on a 125 or a scooter are you going to fit your box of tricks in order that it can't be bypassed / removed?

Edit - when we made the autotxt unit 10 years ago, it could identify and stop individual vehicles using a SIM card. The unit measured 8 x 6 x 2cm, and hadn't been "miniaturised" as the target market was expensive cars.

I'm not proposing to do any of that.

It turns out that not only is it feasible for London to make rules for scooters they are already doing it.  As are other cities including Amsterdam which is banning any scooter built before 2011.   Not because of the crime but because of the pollution the old low-tech scooters produce.  So the scooters in these major cities going to be relatively new and have electronics to control the engine in order to reduce emissions.

https://www.bikesure.co.uk/bikesureblog/2017/12/motorcyclist-advice-for-lon...

There are actually three different problems with these scooters: pollution, death/injury rate in accidents 20x worse than cars and crime.   As long as you are fitting a box of electronics to deal with the pollution aspect and legislating so only compliant scooters are economic to own then why not go a bit further and require additional capabilities in the electronics such as theft resistance, the ability for police to stop the scooter,  and to report to emergency services after a crash.   You might even do what some insurance companies are now doing and have a function which records driving behaviour to try and clamp down on people driving scooters like complete d*cks and maybe cut the accident rate.  

This kind of technology has been available for cars for years, some of it is even being considered to be made mandatory for new vehicles by the EU.   If it was possible to build a box like this for a car ten years ago it is almost certainly possible to build a better and cheaper one for a scooter today.

I think we've done this to death, but thanks for the mental image of the "WTF you doing blud! That pre-2019 non-emmision compliant scooter be all illegal and shit, we can't use that in an acid attack!" conversation.

The reply will likely be along the lines of:

"Don't worry homie! The high-tech engine-killing device won't work because I've ripped it off...and the pigs aren't allowed to ram us any more! Fancy a toot on my crack pipe before we drench that old dear in sulphuric acid and swipe her gold fillings! Innit!"

"Not 'arf, blood! Balls to mandatory EU legislation and balls to the compulsory recall notice that has been issued for all environmentally unfriendly 2 stroke mopeds! Let our reign of carnage begin! Ermm...innit"

Not applicable; we'll be out by then 

Fair point. You'd probably be able to make out a "hurrah for Brexit, n shit" as they make off on their unlawful scooter...hotly pursued by a ray-gun wielding copper.

I'm not an expert on the technology, but if this tech has been available for years in cars then I have to say I have never heard of it being deployed.

The far simpler problem of trying to make cars harder to steal has been moderately successful - we certainly don't get anywhere near the amount of quick TWOCs and joyriding in older cars compared to what used to be a weekend/ nightime regular occurrence. I think a lot of that was fairly simplistic - making it harder to start cars with screwdrivers etc.

We still get car thefts, trackers and keyless locks are fairly easily circumvented, so that the MO of choice for a decent level crime is still to steal high powered motor vehicle(s) to use both for the crime and to getaway.

Given the fact that mopeds/bikes are far smaller, cheaper and simpler then I find it hard to believe we can employ a technology to prevent theft that would be as successful as that of cars. Even if we did this is only addressing the problem of theft.

The magic ray gun/ auto deactivation tool you propose appears to be a level of magnitude more difficult and doesn't appear to be successfully deployed in vehicles worth over 50K, so not sure how it would work in a bike worth 500.

It was developed to try to retrieve cars that had been stolen rather than prevent theft; if someone wants your Aston, they are going to take it. By combining GSM / GPS, the car would send a text to your phone if it detected it was moving away from you. If you didnt respond saying it was ok, it would then alert the authorities, and provide a real time physical location, accurate to 20 metres. It worked really well, often returning vehicles before the owner knew they had gone, and in your alter ego of "on-duty" was able to help you (or at least your colleagues) collar a few undesirables.

Part of the issue is people like car keys to work at quite a distance from the car and the designers want to save money by having a really simple 'transmit only' system.  On a scooter there's no doors to unlock and it might be acceptable to have something which worked in really close proximity or physical contact which would make having a cryptographic challenge/response mechanism which needs communication in both directions much easier to implement.   There's no reason a chip key to unlock a scooter shouldn't be at least as secure as the chip on a credit card.

I think it would be difficult to get anywhere with a 'ray gun' solution for expensive vehicles because the number of times the system would get used wouldn't be high enough to justify fitting it to a police vehicle.     The scooters are different because there's more of them and a more acute and geographically localised problem. 

The other way of stopping the vehicle is over the mobile internet and that is only practical when there is ubiquitous and low cost wireless data.  The availability of wireless data gets better every year:  it makes more sense to design a system that relies on it now than it would have done a few years ago.  My guess is this is going to be commonplace because people will put mobile internet into vehicles for other reasons and once it is there it is trivial to implement.  Cars are also going to get much less user serviceable with computer buses replacing point to point wiring to save weight and money and allow more convenience features.  You won't be able to just rip out cables and still have the car work.

Tracking systems I'm aware of, it was the magic ray gun / engine turn off device that I've not heard of.

Any electronic "solution" must be replaceable, reprogrammable or have bypass so that a moped can be repaired when the electronics/keys fail or keys are lost/stolen. Those repair techniques are public as they're known the tens of thousands of garages. It probably needs an update mechanism for security fixes so that's another vulnerability.

Car companies have poor reputation for network security. It would have to be public key/private key cryptography so that the moped only reacts to legitimate kill signals rather than kid with a universal TV remote control. Who knows if the cryptography will be cracked during the 15 yr lifetime of a vehicle or more simply if the private key would remain private for that long.

The "rayguns" would need to be revocable so they can be blacklisted when stolen or cloned. That means the moped needs a network connection to check if the "raygun" is still legit.

A missing or fake number plate means the police don't know the correct kill signal.

A crude jammer over the electronics blocks the kill signal  or the network connection to verify a kill signal.

And finally...

...a tinfoil hat over the electronics blocks the kill signal

Slight problem there, keyless is available on bikes but though it will only start the bike in close proximity it won't stop the bike for safety reasons. Once started you can ride as far as your petrol will allow you and its only when you stop the engine and try re start it that it looks for the fob. This is done for safety because even slow declaration on a bike can be dangerousdangerous,  in a corner coming off the power alters the  shape of the tyre on the road and imagine going for an overtake and suddenly getting a power loss and hitting the car coming the other way. 

If you know where to look you can buy bypass tech for buttons online. A pal of mine is a bike dealer who bought a high end bike with built in  alarm and immobiliser at police auction to strip for spares. When he got it it was in far too good a  condition to strip so he spent £40 on a new lock barrel and keys and £15 on a device that plugs in to the canbus port and bypasses all the security features. No matter what is designed and built someone will reverse engineer it and sellsell the tech to criminals, normally under the guise of freedom of information. 

I like the Ray gun idea though, just need to make it powerful enough to fry the bastards. 

I assume that the Ray Gun will be just a development model and once sorted, different ones will be available to take out thieving scrotes no matter what their name is?

This was a kind of hybrid. The gsm bit was used to prevent the engine restarting. The idea was that you could stop the engine whilst the vehicle was in motion, but you spoisports pointed out that a vehicle losing drive and on maximum engine braking from 70 - 80 mph would most definately spoil the afternoon of the driver following. We were also give an on-track demo of the effect of this happening whilst cornering.......so what happened was that when the car next came to a standstill, it cut out.

I've also now given up trying to convince Tom that any clever system can be bypassed with almost no effort on small bikes / scooters.

It has got me thinking about would it be possible for me to build my own ignition system for my YBR 125. As far as I can work out it should be possible by replacing the cable to the sparkplug and tap into the RPM sensor. Mix that in with an arduino and a FET, I think I could build a workable system from what I have in the house. It would take about the same amount of time to install as breaking the steering lock, and as the bike has a kick start it could run. Bypassing all of the complex electronics Tom would like to put in.

And in case anybody still thinks that bike / scooter bound crime is just bored kids having fun;

From Northumbria Police FB page...

"A special taskforce set up to combat motorcycle disorder in the region are continuing the good work after a successful raid at a house in Newcastle.

Last month Northumbria Police revealed the specialist team had been set up to tackle anti-social behaviour and disorder linked to motorcycles.

Investigations had found that a large number of the motorcycles involved were stolen and linked to serious criminality including violence and drugs.

Dozens of people – including juveniles and adults – have been arrested by the team in the crackdown on the disorder.

And those good results continued last week after a man and a teenage boy were arrested following a raid at an address in Scotswood on Tuesday.

Officers executed a warrant at the address on Shaftoe Street after carrying out an covert operation that monitored suspected stolen motorcycles coming to and from the property.

As well as the arrests, police recovered a haul of fake number plates, motorcycles, weapons and a small cannabis farm from inside the property.

Now one of the detectives overseeing the work of the team has reassured residents that the special task force are “not letting up any time soon”.

Detective Inspector Mal Stratton said: “This was a fantastic result that was only made possible through a combination of intelligence from the community and excellent police work.

“The task force has had some fantastic results but this is one of the best so far and should send a message that we are not letting up any time soon."

He added: “We have seen that these are often not cases of bored teenagers having nowhere to ride their motorcycles. We can be talking about serious criminality and those involved think they are above the law.

“We set up this team because we knew there was serious criminality linked to what, on the face of it, appeared to be anti-social behaviour and nuisance motorcycle activity.

“Over the past few weeks we have seized significant quantities of drugs, a huge amount of weapons and a host of stolen motorcycles.

“I want to personally thank those residents who have reported intelligence to us and allowed us to put some of those responsible for the criminality before the courts.”

The team covers Newcastle and Gateshead and are made up of a number of experienced and specialist officers based at Etal Lane Police Station.

They review every incident where a motorcycle has been used in an anti-social manner and try to establish any patterns of behaviour.

Prolific offenders are monitored and victims are spoken to in a bid to build up an intelligence picture of those involved in the disorder.

The team will then look to secure warrants on addresses linked to the anti-social behaviour and that has already resulted in a number of significant arrests.

Det Insp Stratton added: “There are a number of different tactics we have been using to identify who they are and a number of people have already been put before the courts.

"We are trying to work with partners to identify diversionary programmes for young people but we cannot let this type of behaviour go unchecked.

"If you know anyone who has stolen a motorcycle or is riding in an anti-social manner then we need you to do the right thing and inform the police.

“We want you to report issues with motorcycle disorder directly to our task force. If it safe to do so then take pictures, take videos and send it to our detectives so we can help make your community a better place to live."

Drugs, weapons, money and stolen property have all been seized by the task-force due to their enquiries into anti-social behaviour. Sixteen people have also been charged with in excess of 26 offences since the task-force was formed.

Following the most recent raids a 16-year-old boy was charged with eight offences including six counts of being carried on a motorcycle taken without consent, driving without a licence and driving with no insurance. He will appear before magistrates in North Tyneside on December 7.

A 26-year-old man was arrested for conspiracy to steal motorcycles and released under investigation. However, he was escorted to prison after breaching the terms of an existing licence."

If it has a secure update mechanism then you don't need to trust garages with any anything.  The user can set up an account on the manufacturer website when they buy the bike and log in to that account to buy a new key.

If the public key algorithms get cracked then kids stealing scooters will be the least of our worries.   I'm not sure it would actually need to be public key but that is an option.  If there is a secure update mechanism you can update the software or refresh the secret key every year or so.

Everything has an internet connection these days. I just bought a smart plug for a tenner with a WiFi connection.   It doesn't need a connection when it is moving for the blacklist, as long as it can get an update every couple of days. That could be as simple as a Bluetooth link to the owners phone.   In fact the owners phone could be the key either through Bluetooth or the contactless payment chip.

That depends on how it works.   If it was challenge/response mechanism  the protocol could solve that.

Yes, but it is also dead obvious when there is a jammer on the same vehicle  Very high power signal that is continuously present and doesn't fluctuate even though the bike is moving.  That's a reason to trigger the stop mechanism.

But like the jammer a total shielding of all radio channels would be dead obvious and a reason to conclude someone was trying to nick the bike.

Sounds a cracker of an idea, you should pitch it to a major automotive manufacturer (don't know why they haven't thought of it?)....you'll be a millionaire by next Tuesday!

While you're at it, pitch my idea for reducing air crash fatalities: just make the fuselage from the stuff they make black boxes out of. Simple!

Wife's idea for solving the energy crisis: Cold fusion. Simple!

The design engineers who work for companies that supply scooter manufacturers will already be working on this stuff.   It's an obvious thing to do based on the technical trends in the industry.   There's a difference in perspective between people who are working on products which won't appear on the market for a couple of years and people who are thinking about how products they own now, and were probably designed 5 or 10 years ago, work.

The Chinese will probably go even further than I'm suggesting in next generation products.   They've got no problem at all with using tech to enforce laws in China.

It absolutely would. As per Fred99's post above, it took him less than 30 mins, including watching the youtube instruction video, and he modestly claims to not being the best bike mechanic in his street......

You are thinking too much like a westerner! The next Gen for bikes is electric, but bear in mind the biggest selling small bike has been the same for 50 years (Honda Cub). The markets for scooters / small bikes are India / China / Thailand / Phillipines etc etc, . It is also possible, because of their simplicity, to keep these things running at almost no cost for indefinate periods. There is simply no need or desire in these markets for anything other than the most rudimentary security products, so anything required for London / Glasgow / Paris etc is an afterthought.

Sales volumes - the total market for powered 2 wheelers in the UK is < 100,000 units p.a. The top selling scooter in India alone sold 347,000 units in Aug 2018 alone. The serious volume manufacturers just aren't bothered about the UK market. 

You are missing the pollution problems in Chinese/Indian cities and that two-stroke engines on scooters are one of the contributing factors.    I agree that electric is going to win but a mix of electric and more complex internal combustion engines in the short term.   Both will have far more electronics than an old school bike and the electronics will be a modern architecture based around a processor and bus standard like CAN and will have a means of connecting to the internet to allow for software updates, which might be pairing with a phone.   It's not going to be easy to just rip the electronics out and have a functional bike if the designers don't want you to be able to do that.

Not my Royal Enfield !! - designed in 1948, the only computers in existence then were the size of a small house, and the internet was decades away.

For that matter my 2014 Triumph is completely without any form of internet connection (though quite probably can be hooked up to computers at a dealers for maintenance/service purposes).

Whatever world you inhabit, it's not the same one the rest of us live in.

Tom also thinks the UK could not be made to run without the EU control box.  ( sorry guys )

Of course not.  The design for a product which came out in 2014 probably started in 2011 or 2012 and it would have been pretty radical to give it an internet connection.   If you are starting a design in 2018 for a product to come out in 2020 and be in the market for a few years after that then it would be crazy not to include an internet connection.

Arguably it’s more crazy to connect everything to an IP based network that doesn’t have security at the core of its network design and that is built from reams of disparate systems gaping full of security holes.

Says the crazy tinfoil hat person with their smart TV on a seperate, firewalled VLAN...  

No I'm not. Both of the best sellers I quoted above in India are 4 strokes, btw. However, whether 2 or 4 stroke, the technology currently exists to run without any clever electronics, and while there are literally 10's of millions of these engines in existence, and the average low paid asian factory worker has access to simple, cheap transport and has more to worry about than his contribution to air pollution, then they will be the standard for the foreseeable future.

It is. As described repeatedly above by me and others, as long as you have something that can compress fuel, and provide a spark to ignite it, you have transport. Anything else is superfluous, and can and will be removed and probably sold to westerners on ebay!

And in that one, he's right. Can you imagine allowing the current occupant of the drivers seat being given full autonomy without some externally programmed controls?

Interesting. A good friend of mine works in R&D at a major motorcycle manufactorer and I asked him the question about Internet connected bikes. He had to be careful what he said so as not to reveal any company secrets but after he finished laughing he said why the hell would anyone want that.

Our electric toothbrush broke.  My wife bought a new one which came today.  It's got a Bluetooth connection.    It's not that she wanted to connect her toothbrush to her phone its just the equivalent model to the one we had before now has Bluetooth.   It's so cheap to make things internet connected these days the question is why wouldn't you? 

One of the reasons manufacturers want a connected product is to create an ongoing relationship with customers.   Once they have an App you use regularly to control and get information about the connected product they can try and sell you stuff within the App.  If Oral B can sell you new heads for your toothbrush directly without going through distribution they can pocket far more of the price, maybe they can also prompt you to replace them a little more frequently with a program that tells you how effectively you are cleaning your teeth.    The same strategy would apply to parts for a scooter.

The last sentence of your first paragraph is answered, in it's entirety, by your second paragraph.

Bluetooth toohbrush.  I've heard it all now.  

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.  

I'm still not over the 11 hours to make a cup of tea Internet kettle fiasco.  

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/12/english-man-spends-11-ho...

Off topic, but you share a toothbrush?? Ewwww....

I think you're missing the USP of the humble scooter, and the reason for it's worldwide popularity.

It's cheap. It's low tech. It's easy to maintain and it's pretty much indestructible.

As soon as you start connecting them to the internet, installing a mythical engine-killing device which requires updates and specialist garage facilities to maintain, legal requirements and all the rest of it they loose their appeal and they loose their share of the market. 

Even if impregnable engine killing tech does exist, which it doesn't. Even if it was possible to recall every moped in the UK to fit it, which it isn't. And even if the authorities could introduce and enforce the new range of legislative and legal rules which would force moped drivers to comply, which they can't...manufacturers aren't going to design and manufacturer anything which damages their business.

And for what? A few hundred teenagers who are now severely under the cosh thanks to more 'traditional' methods of policing...

Incidentally, I see that imbecile Dianne Abbot has come out as against knocking moped robbers off their steeds. Proof, if needed, that you're on the wrong side of the argument, this time!

I admire your persistence, by the way. You're a latter day patrol saint of lost causes.

No, I just find luddites vaguely amusing.   I've had this debate a few years ago in a minority of one against a bunch of  people explaining to me why they'd never read books on Kindles or their phone because paper was so much better.   Also had the same debate about iPhones being crap as phones and why they'd never buy one.   And a long time ago about why typewriters were better than PCs. 

Same thing will happen with the Bluetooth toothbrushes and internet connected scooters.   In a few years you won't be able to buy one which doesn't have an internet connection and once you buy one you won't be able to set it up without creating an account and using their app.    Once the internet connection and computer is on the bike adding extra features like remote shutdown is almost free.

Tom, this has nothing whatever to do with luddites; you can put as much electronic trickery on a bike / scooter as you like; it can all be bypassed / removed, and if a criminal gang need to do this to enable their activities, then they will do it. No designer will ever be able to stop them.

Blimey, you must spent half your life arguing with people. I suspect the luddites find you rather amusing, too.

How do you square away your internet controlled engine killing app with the inherent problems of internet security?

If a 16 year old with a laptop can hack the pentagon from his bedroom. Not to mention Barclays bank, BA, the NHS, amazon and that extra marital shagging site...and the combined might of Apple and Microsoft have been unable to prevent virus's installing themselves on your computer and stealing your bank details, whats different about your security system?

Its sounds even easier to bypass than your previous ray-gun idea.

Your system will be hacked within a couple of days...

I share your instinct to solve the problem.

As you noted "you need a timed spark".  You can't prevent an alternative system to supply that.  But you could make it difficult to obtain the timing information.  If the optical/magnetic points were constructed in a place that would require complete dismantling of the engine to change them and the information was communicated down a wire with secure encryption to a decoder at the spark generator. Then the only way to defeat it would be too much work. The extra electronics would cost pennies. But it would be a lot of work to redesign the engines.

You’ve outlined the way I think most likely to harden a spark ignition based engine against electronics swapping.

I bet it’s still easy to circumvent with another piece of technology one could invent - a self timed sparkplug with a built in compresson (pressure) sensor.

One of these - https://www.kistler.com/en/product/type-611xc/ - with a phase locked loop or a predictive Kalman filter locked on to the pressure sensor’s output and tuned to the engine’s characteristics, controlling a spark generator.  You could even power the thing off an independent battery.

Yes. That might even be a better system in the first place.

It does go to show that there's always answers to problems. People give up too easily.

So we've gone from a cheap and easy magical kill switch to a completely redesigned engine and a phase locked loop or a predictive Kalman filter locked on to the pressure sensor! 

...all to achieve the same results a copper in a traffic car. 

Kind of proves my (and everyone elses) point!

And yet everyone uses internet banking and apps on their phones and the Pentagon can still bomb the sh*t out of any country in the world it feels like and airliners don't fall out of the sky, all kinds of military systems work just fine every day despite determined and well funded adversaries, banks send trillions of dollars around the world without a problem.   Because the tech actually works pretty well.

Or you could just take the entire clever engine out and replace it with a honda 125 copy unit or one of the twist and go all in one's. Its not as if the thief paid a lot for the rolling chassis, and these engines are "somewhat plentiful".

Yeah, it keeps working because entire government agencies and cyber security agencies dedicate their time to countering the hackers and repairing their damage.

Did you factor-in this level of IT security support for your ray gun thingy, or do you know something that the IT security industry does not?

And, do you ever win any of the arguments you have with tbe luddites?

Because, given that your latest play is to persuade Honda to completely redesign their 2 stroke moped engine in order to prevent the baddies from looping round your magic security box...you're not winning this one!

Never.  Maybe 'late adopter' would be a fairer description than luddite, most people adopt technology after they've seen other people using it.  If you want to design new things you've got to be thinking several years ahead of what the late adopters say they want a product to do today.

They've got no choice but to update their engines if they want to comply with emissions rules.

Look at the Honda website.  All the 2019 scooter models are 4 stroke.  Some have fuel injection, even ABS as an option, fancy LED lights, LCD displays.  Not quite what I'm predicting yet but the level of electronics is going up every year.   

I think more appropriate comparisons are that people now steal keyless cars, GPS trackers in vehicles are routinely defeated and usage of stolen motor vehicles to commit crime continues relatively unabated. And those bits of technology are considerably more risk free than a magic box that turns off the engine.

Incidentally a massive disincentive for manufacturers with that tech may be the potential for being sued when it malfunctions and cuts the engine out by mistake, causing injury.  Alternatively, following the correct deployment of the magic ray gun - the engine cutting out caues injury- currently that risk and cost lies with the cops, put in a device and the manufacturer will be getting sucked in....

Manufacturing 4 stroke engines and LCD displays is a far cry from creating the only vehicle security system in history which cant be defeated by a determined thief or re-engineered by a mechanic operating illegally.

Being the 'first in history' to do something isn't particularly unusual in the electronics industry.  The underlying technology is improving quickly and always opening new opportunities.

I think you missed my point...  which was that any imaginable security system between the engine and the spark plug can be defeated by a spark plug that can sense and conntol its own ignition.  If I worked in the right field this would make a great undergraduate project, and I doubt it would be long before someone was selling them to thieving scroats...  Heck, I’d consider it for classic vehicles - no more boroscoping the bloody timing shaft after I cock up setting the points....

A good basis for a business for legal uses. Probably it was patented and that expired long ago.

I think it probably is...given that the R&D departments for every vehicle manufacturer out there have tried, and failed to produce a vehicle security system that can't be defeated by a determined thief.

Having said that, achieving a world first in vehicle security engineering is the easiest of the tasks you've set yourself.

You'll have to:

1.) Persuade the R&D departments of every moped manufacturer to develop it - at a cost of £ millions. Given that the likes of Honda care not-a-jot for moped-muggers in London, you'll have a job persuading them to do this. They just want to manufacture low-tech, low cost moped for the masses - you'll have to persuade them to change their highly successful business model.

2.) As previously mentioned, create a 'world first' un-hackable cyber security department for each of the manufacturers to prevent your internet accessible mopeds security features being hacked. This would be an on-going commitment, capable of defeating the ever-morphing cyber threat. Still more £ millions...you'd probably need a similar budget to GCHQ. 

3.) Persuade Honda and co. to recall every bike still in existence and retro fit your tech...which will probably involve a newly designed engine, at their own vast expense.

4.) Create a new law requiring everyone who uses moped to agree to a compulsory recall....and any subsequent recalls for software updates.

5.) Create an enforcement process that would involve the compulsory retrofitting of moped that have not adhered to the recall demand.

6.) Establish a network of garages and mechanics capable of retro-fitting millions of mopeds in short-order, without spilling the security beans to the bad-guys.

7.) Create new laws to deal with anyone flouting the ban.

8.) Toughen up the borders to prevent any possibility of grey imports (without the security tech) appearing in the UK.

9.) Dream up never-before-seen Police tactics that would allow them to catch flouters without chasing them.

10.) Create new legislation to prevent the police from giving chase, and an agency to enforce it.  

Kind of a big ask...at the end of which, assuming any of the above is actually possible (it isn't), you'll have a multi-million pound system which may not be any safer that they current tactic being used by the police.

Or, you could stop whinging and let the police get on with it.

I doubt even cold war Russia would have had such a grip on is people, it's laws and it's borders to pull-off this kind of thing.

Well I don't use internet banking, and nor do a hell of a lot of other people - in my case because of all the hacking that goes on in the world specifically to break into peoples bank accounts.

I also do not have a smartphone, only a pay-as-you-go (mainly) in case of emergencies. Unlike your average teenager or techno-geek, I have no desire to walk around with an expensive phone permanently attached to my ear (particularly difficult for a rock climber and motorcyclist anyway I would have thought).

I don't need to do anything at all because the industry is going to build this feature in all by itself.  

My day job is designing encryption systems.  One of the leads that came in this morning was an automotive company in China, looking for an IPSEC design they could licence.   Why would an automotive company design engineer ask about IPSEC if they weren't planning to have a secure internet connection?  Once they've got secure internet why wouldn't they use it to provide features like remote shutdown.   

There is a huge transition underway to the Internet Of Things, it is affecting pretty much every device with embedded electronics and that will include scooters.

Probably the systems will not be 100% secure against hacking and probably not 100% of scooters will have it for a long time.  So what.  My front door lock isn't 100% secure against someone that knows how to pick locks.  It's still useful, it still reduces the chance of being burgled.   You don't need 100% of the doors in the country to have high security locks for it to be worthwhile fitting one yourself.

Oh dear, oh dear.

I fully accept that in the future the technology you're taking about will exist; I don't doubt that one day, we'll all end-up living on Mars, surrounded by sex-robots and 'microwave ovens'...and our Martian decedents will be able to knock an irresponsibly driven Space Hopper out of the sky with little more than the application of a magic space ray. BUT, that has nothing to do with this debate. 

This is debate is about the Met Police using ramming-tactics to counter 'moped enabled crime' NOW. TODAY.

You are suggesting that we can counter this problem with technology which "the industry is going to build"!

Note, your use of the simple future tense; "is going to build". And, your use of the continuous future tense "once they've got secure internet...". You used this to describe actions which will happen in the FUTURE. 

You appear to have confirmed what pretty much every poster on this thread has been at pains to point out to you; the technology you are advocating doesn't exist yet.

How are you going to solve todays problem with tomorrows technology? Please, do explain!

The door lock analogy is nonsense, by the way. It would be accurate if, as a caveat, you denied the authorities the means to investigate the crime and catch the burglar!

Oh, and 'time travel' isn't a valid argument.

Solving today's problems with tomorrow's technology is what engineers do.  There's always a delay between identifying the problem and creating the solution.

And implementing yesterday's technology tomorrow is what happens in practice, particularly for safety critical systems.