You may have heard the terms “Thatcham approved car tracker” “Category S7 GPS tracker” or “Category S5 car tracker” in your search for a suitable GPS tracker system for your vehicle. You probably will also have seen list upon list of confusing features that these systems possess. Don’t worry, ineedatracker.com are on hand to help you understand what these certification standards mean. To provide context, let’s first explain who Thatcham Research are.
Thatcham Research Centre
To provide you with a bit of background, Thatcham Research is an independent testing facility based in Thatcham, England and have 50 years experience in evaluating car safety and security.
Their Security Certification is a robust verification programme for the assessment and recognition of automotive security products which is recognised by the insurance industry.
The certification concentrates on verifying functionality, design and performance of a product through the testing of these products against a pre-set list of requirements to provide an objective evaluation of its capabilities
S7/CAT 6 Certified Car Tracker Systems
For the purposes of vehicle trackers, GPS tracker systems that achieve category S7 certification (sometimes referred to as S6) are regarded as stolen location systems that are activated once a vehicle has been stolen and enable the vehicle to have its location tracked.
S5/CAT 5 Certified Car Tracker Systems
GPS car tracker systems certified as S5, formerly known as Cat 5, are equipped with additional security features which means that they will pro-actively alert the Monitoring Centre, if the authorised driver recognition system is not in place when the vehicle is moved.
S5 Plus Car Tracker Systems
S5 rated car tracker systems which are advertised as “Plus” trackers are not part of Thatcham’s certification programme but indicate to customers that these systems will generally have the remote immobilisation feature built in. This means the system has the ability to receive a remotely sent signal to activate the immobiliser. As a result, the engine will not start again until the system has been reset.
Ryan Myers is a business blog author and writer. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009 with a degree in Political Science. His favorite topics to write about are blogging for small businesses and becoming an entrepreneur.
