CAR SECURITY WINDOW ETCHING

According to the Home Office, a car is stolen in the UK roughly every five minutes. What’s worse, 72% of stolen vehicles are never returned to their owners.

With vehicle theft rates so high, more and more drivers are considering extra measures to protect their vehicles.

How you can protect your vehicle

Window etching is a way to give your car an extra layer of security if the worst were to ever happen. This simple process involves etching your car with a unique code, making the vehicle easily identifiable.

In most cases, this is enough to deter thieves, as the extra effort of either replacing the glass or trying to remove the etching is both time consuming and costly. Vehicles with window etching are 45% less likely to be stolen, so you may well prevent a theft from even happening.

If your vehicle is taken, the unique code - linked to a fully certified Police database -makes your car easy to identify. Therefore, it’s much more likely to be found – an etched vehicle is 50% more likely to be recovered in comparison to a non-etched vehicle.

Security Window Etching Service

Here at Halfords, we offer a comprehensive Security Window Etching Service to protect you and your vehicle.

The process involves visibly etching the windows of your vehicle with the logo of the International Security Register (the ISR) and a unique code, via a permanent chemical etching process. We can etch up to six windows (including your front and back windscreen) to give you maximum protection and peace of mind. The process should only take 10-15 minutes, and we etch at the bottom of the glass to ensure that your view isn’t obstructed.

The unique code also helps to protect against VIN cloning, or car cloning – this is where people use a vehicle identification number (VIN) from a legally registered car to hide the identity of a stolen or salvaged vehicle. This involves replacing the license plate of a stolen car with one from a similar make, model, and year.

With etched windows, your car will still be clearly identifiable, even if a car thief tries to clone your vehicle.

The code is linked to a secure, fully certified database that’s available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and is recognised, valued and used by all Police Forces in the UK. Thanks to its high level of visibility, the etchings put criminals at maximum risk of being caught, and in a lot of cases will be enough of a deterrent to prevent the crime from happening altogether.

So, pop into your local Halfords store where one of our expert team can carry out our window etching service for you quickly and easily. We also sell various other accessories to keep your car safe, including steering wheel locks , wheel clamps, driveway security, key security and trackers; browse our car security section online for the full range.