I moved around a lot, from Illinois, Virginia, to now Florida, and I have seen many of them neighborhoods with that, but I am not really sure how effective it is. But again, I think security is only relative/subjective. The question is, what do we define as "security". My nana lives in a gated community there, and many times they have you call the house to see if the person will accept whoever is coming in. But in theory, someone could just follow the person in the car ahead of them and then go from there. No matter what, it will never be completely foolproof. Plus, if you are going to do something like that, I would think that it would be considered before it was built. Many residents where I live talk about security, but what are they going to do? If they wanted to do something like a gated community, they would have done that right from the start. Also, we are surrounded by creeks, another nearby neighborhood, and so forth.
Yeah, having a vehicle stolen is the worst, especially when you can't get it back.