GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — You can buy locks for your brakes, steering wheel and hood along with alarms, trackers and even a kill switch. For one Grand Rapids woman, though, an attribute of her car rather than an accessory has seemingly prevented it from being stolen.
After all, when you don't know how to handle a manual transmission, its difficult to drive away.
"That would be my only guess as to why they wouldn't end up taking it," said Lila Burns-Weerstra, who lives in a neighborhood on the east side of the city and works as a hairstylist at Jade Fox in Kentwood.
On Monday morning, Burns-Weerstra says her black Kia Soul, parked on the street outside her house, was broken into and hot-wired. But the would-be thieves, as seen on a neighbor's security camera, took it nowhere. Perhaps, after the car's interior lights turned on, they saw the clutch pedal and decided to ditch their plan.
"They just left it and didn't take anything out of it," she said.
Since before she was old enough to earn a license, Burns-Weerstra says she's driven a stick shift, learning to do so under the direction of her mother in a "little farm truck" on property in rural Colorado.
Now, her current car is in the shop with a bill for repairs — a busted window, steering column and ignition — on the way. It's the second time it's happened. It's also the second there's been damage but no drive-away.
"Same situation," Burns-Weerstra said about the attempted theft that happened three summers ago in another Grand Rapids neighborhood.
"Yeah, didn't move an inch," she said.
In Michigan's second-largest city, auto thefts have sharply dropped over the past four years, according to data from the Grand Rapids Police Department.
Burns-Weerstra, whose car has nearly twice been part of these statistics, says she'd recommend locking your doors and buying a security camera. A manual transmission might help, too.
"I have briefly considered switching to an automatic after having to drive on the highway to work every single day," she said. "But now I probably am going to stick with manuals."
