Car Alarms

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Yesterday, my mom took my brother, my sister, and I to the market/GameStop. As soon as we got out of the car, some lady remotely opens her trunk. Because the car was locked and armed, it assumed a thief opened the car and blared into my ears.

I ran onto the sidewalk practically crying and flapping my hands and I huddled on the sidewalk and rocked on the pavement. It took 10 minutes for my sister to get me up and take me back to mom. I lay down on the floor and dangled things in front of my face for half an hour when we got home.

I wish the car manufacturers prepared the car to know whether the thief or the owner opened the trunk. This only reminds me that my meltdowns make me feel more helpless.

The stupid thing about car alarms is that people within earshot usually just assume by default that the owner accidentally set-off the alarm, even when it's actually a thief trying to break-into it. Newer vehicles must be super-difficult to steal without the genuine keys to them though.

They serve an important purpose, but it's one that can only be served by being annoying and drawing attention, and the only way to do that is by making large amounts of noise.

When a car alarm goes off, nobody will bother calling the police, and hardly anyone will even look in the direction of the alarm because they are so often false alarms. All they really do is annoy everybody. One apartment complex I lived at, a van's alarm malfunctioned and sounded for hours. I was the only one to call the police (six hours after it started), and that was to see if they could find out who the owner was and contact them to deactivate the ^&*! thing or, failing that, tow the vehicle away. They said if it wasn't damaged, they couldn't tow it. I asked them whether a brick through the windshield would be enough. They quickly located the owner.

I might do that the next time.

The only thing I can see a car alarm being useful for is to help you find it in a crowded parking lot.

Years ago, I was living in an apartment. About three am one morning someone's car alarm kept going off. It would go for a couple of minutes and then quit. After a minute or two, it would start off again.

After a while, the police showed up. I tried to talk him into using an axe to break open hood and destroy the battery, but he wouldn't do it.

I later came to the realization that he should have forced the trunk open by whatever means necessary in case someone was tied up inside and managing to set off the alarm in hopes of getting help. For all we know, the owner of the car might have been in the trunk about to be murdered by a carjacker when he came back.

Today's car alarms now have a auto-reset function in them to prevent those non-stop annoyances. But you're right. the damage has been done. Car alarms have pretty much fallin victim to the "Cry wolf syndrome". I'll bet that you could steal a car in broad day light in front of a crowd of people and no one would bother to call the police.

The car thief in question would be risking a lengthy term of imprisonment on that "bet".

I hate car alarms because they're so annoying, especially when I'm trying to get some sleep!

It's a risk some would probably take. Here's an article with some stats: Link.

Hmmmm, I never read the statistics on that matter. Does'nt surprise me too much, except for that they actually included "damage the car" in a list of public reactions to a car alarm.

My comment on the "bet" was that I'd think most thieves would think a few times before stealing a car in broad daylight in front of a crowd, which was the situation presented in the quoted post. In the usual situations, which is what OddButWhy presents, yes, they are ineffective against all but the most unskilled criminals.

Cell phone cameras might be more effective than car alarms these days.