Carjacking is a crime of stealing a motor vehicle when the vehicle is occupied. Typically, the carjacker is armed, and the driver is forced out of the car with the threat of bodily injury. The word is a portmanteau of car and hijacking.

Discussion

The crime is extremely hazardous, threatening the physical safety of both the carjacker and the victim. To secure the car, the carjacker may sometimes shoot the victim or physically push/pull the victim out of the driver's seat to force him or her out of the car. they then sometimes hit the victim repeatedly and drove off in the veichle

South Africa

Sweden

After being a problem in the United States some years earlier, carjackings became more common in Sweden where it most appeared in places like Gothenburg and Stockholm around 2001-2002.

United Kingdom

English law has three levels of offense under the Theft Act 1968, each pertaining to the mens rea (Latin for "guilty mind") and the degree of violence used. The least serious is TWOC, which covers any unauthorized taking of a "conveyance", s1 theft applies when the carjacker intends to permanently deprive the owner of property, and violent carjacking is an aggravated form of theft under §8 robbery.Fact: date=February 2007 Amid increasing carjacking cases in the UK, there has been some discussion whether specific carjacking laws are necessary. The current view is that all aspects of the offense are covered in the law, whether as road traffic offenses, public order offenses, the use of weapons and firearms, etc., and there is no benefit in consolidating all the elements in one offense.Fact: date=February 2007

United States

In the United States, a law was passed in 1992 making carjacking a federal crime. This occurred amidst great media attention into the apparent spate of carjacking thefts, several of which resulted in homicide. One of these was the notorious September 1992 carjacking of Pam Basu in Savage, Maryland. Basu was carjacked at a stop sign in her subdivision as she left home to take her daughter to pre-school; she was entangled in her seatbelt and then dragged to death. Libertarians and states' rights activists criticized this law, arguing that the control of crime is a matter for the states, not the federal government, and asserted that carjacking was made a federal crime only to make some incumbents appear tough on crime to gain votes.

The United States Department of Justice estimates that in about half of all carjacking attempts, the attacker succeeds in stealing the victim's car. It estimated that, between 1987 and 1992, about 35,000 carjacking attempts took place per year, and, between 1992 and 1996, about 49,000 attempts took place per year. Carjacking has become less frequent in recent years because sophisticated devices and computer systems have prevented and discouraged theft of unattended cars.Fact: date=August 2008