Feedback on your Caravan's Security Devices

We have collected all of your responses from our recent poll with regards to your caravan and its security devices.

Thank you to all those who responded to our latest poll in our last Safety & Security Newsletter. All answers and comments were gratefully received and remember we do share the overall information with industry ‘think tanks’ and security companies where appropriate, so they can improve their products to provide you with products that you really want and need.

AL-KO Secure wheel lock

Your feedback showed that you buy a range of wheel locks but the one owned by the majority was AL-KO Secure. We were very pleased to find that 72% of you have an alarm on your caravan and discovered that 89.5% of you with an alarm said that your caravan was already fitted with the alarm when the caravan was purchased. 

We asked how are your fitted alarms triggered? The majority of alarms were triggered by the Infra-red or internal alarm at 58%, with the tilt sensor covering 25% and just 8.6% by the corner steady sensor.

We were pleased so many of you own a hitch lock. These can be effective but do make sure they're used to lock the caravan on to something substantial, otherwise their effectiveness is really undermined. This could be a security post, if you’re storing your caravan at home or whilst you’re away on tour you could lock it to the towcar when you’re parked up. We don't recommend leaving the hitchlock on while actually towing though, just in case there is a problem with the caravan (e.g. a brake fire) means you need to uncouple urgently. As with all mechanical security products, the best of them have independent attack test certification (e.g. Sold Secure).

We asked our members, how many of them owned a wheel clamp, and only 50% of those who responded said that they did. We would like to encourage more of you to own a wheel clamp or even two, as these are known deterrents to thieves as it means that your caravan would take longer to steal with a wheel lock on, than without. Again, make sure the wheel clamp you buy has independent attack test certification to confirm its effectiveness.

The VIN Chip plus  - where CRIS provides you with an electronic RID chip and microdot solution to code your caravan with a unique vin number  - has been bought by 58% of our poll responders.

The graph below highlights which products you feel gives you the most impact on security.

We asked our members to give their own pieces of security advice to help their fellow caravanners make their caravans more secure. As always our members delivered! Here’s just a few of the comments:

"Try to make sure every security device is visible. The only way to stop thieves is to make it too much trouble for their time."

"I keep my caravan behind locked gates with the towing hitch pointed away from the gates. My car is reversed up to the rear of the caravan for added security. The caravan is covered by 4 separately operated security cameras."

"The money we pay for our vans…the more security the better"

"Fit as many theft deterrents as possible"

"A thief will always prefer an easy target; make sure your van does not present an easy one to take. Thieves will know how to find and disable a tracking device so don't advertise that your van has one. At least, if then stolen, the tracker should ensure recovery."

We know how much our members caravans mean to them, so we hope this insight and shared advice can help protect those caravans, should the worst happen.

First published in March 2023.