Petrol station owners are installing “stinger” devices to puncture the tyres of drivers who fail to pay for fuel after a sharp increase in incidents in recent months.

The rise in what the industry calls “drive-aways” is being linked to the 20 per cent increase in the cost of fuel in the past year. It now costs up to £80 to fill a 60-litre tank, tempting more drivers to try to steal fuel.

A cashier activates the device after a sensor near the pump detects a vehicle attempting to leave without paying. Red lights flash at the entrance and loudspeakers broadcast a warning telling all drivers on the forecourt that their tyres will be destroyed if they attempt to leave.

Any driver who ignores the warning will trigger a row of metal spikes as the front wheels pass over pressure pads.

The spikes, embedded at the entrance as well as the exit, spring up and penetrate the rear wheels, deflating them in about ten seconds. The system leaves a metal tube with a unique identification number embedded in the tyre.

The tube allows police to link the vehicle with the theft and prevents the tyre from being reinflated with roadside repair kits which seal the puncture.

Mukesh Patel, the owner of a petrol station near Finsbury Park, North London, installed the Drivestop system last month after losing more than £5,000 in drive-away thefts in the past year.

“More people are attempting it with the high cost of fuel and we have been getting at least one a week,” he said. “But since the notices about the spikes went up last month, there haven’t been any drive-aways.”

Mr Patel installed CCTV several years ago but found police did not respond to his reports of fuel theft, even though he stored the evidence.

“The police set up a system two years ago where you fax them the vehicle details. I sent in dozens but they didn’t respond so I gave up six months ago.”

Mr Patel believes the system, which costs around £10,000, will pay for itself in two years.

The system was invented by Jaginda Singh, whose family-owned petrol station was almost driven out of business by drive-aways.

“My father used to sit on the forecourt writing down number plates but the thieves would just use fake ones. I decided to build a system which speaks the only language these people understand.

“Interest in it started slowly but I am now having to double my staff to cope with the calls from forecourt owners who have people queuing up to steal from them.”

The system has been installed in ten petrol stations so far, including in Luton, Sutton Coldfield, Bradford, Sheffield and Wickford, Essex.

The only attempt so far to drive over the spikes occurred in New Eltham, southeast London, last month. The thief drove 100 yards down the road on punctured tyres before abandoning the car, which turned out to have been stolen.

The Petrol Retailers’ Association said drive-aways cost the industry more than £11 million in 2006 but this was likely to have grown in the past year. Ray Holloway, the association’s director, said: “There is a point not too far north of the current price when all forecourts will have to require card payment at the pump or prepayment.”

Fuel retailers are reluctant to end the current system of paying in the kiosk because they make most of their profits from selling snacks and car accessories. The average retailer makes only 2p a litre from fuel and poor profits have resulted in more than 5,000 petrol stations, a third of the total, closing in the past decade.

Mr Holloway said some retailers were using automatic number plate recognition cameras and sharing data of cars which have been used in drive-aways with other businesses.

Police in Hertfordshire have begun an operation to follow up every drive-away and have found that fuel thieves often turn out to have committed other crimes.