[HN Gopher] Why do they still make car alarms?
___________________________________________________________________
Why do they still make car alarms?
Author : apsec112
Score : 59 points
Date : 2021-01-19 09:20 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.popularmechanics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.popularmechanics.com)
| time0ut wrote:
| Headline needs a (2015).
| buckminster wrote:
| House alarms are worse. People take their car alarms to work with
| them but the house alarms are here all day.
| buro9 wrote:
| > This content is created and maintained by a third party, and
| imported onto this page to help users provide their email
| addresses. You may be able to find more information about this
| and similar content at piano.io
|
| Is Popular Mechanics just a SEO site?!
|
| That was in a hidden piece of HTML at the end of the article:
| <div class="screen-reader-only">
| chc wrote:
| Based on that note's placement in the page, "this content"
| appears to refer to the newsletter signup form.
| mikeryan wrote:
| As someone who's car has been broken into several times, to steal
| "stuff" it seems there's a market for _something_ to prevent
| property theft from within a car. I don 't know what it is and
| maybe cameras like Owl are the solution but I'd pay good money to
| keep my car from being broken into.
| idlewords wrote:
| This is why I tore out my backseat and replaced it with
| beehives.
| hedora wrote:
| I really wish there was a way to disable the panic button on my
| key fob. It has a hair trigger and only requires one click to
| activate. I regularly trigger it by bending over with my keys in
| my pocket.
| Triv888 wrote:
| Mazda have a pretty good key-fob for that reason... all button
| are are to press and small... On my Honda I triggered it all
| the time...
| jagger27 wrote:
| Yep I've never accidentally activate the panic on my Mazda.
| TheAdamist wrote:
| My last key fob had the panic button on the back which was
| flat, and promptly had a coin taped over it.
|
| New fob unfortunately doesn't allow that, but it's recessed a
| bit more and is less likely to be hit.
|
| Useless feature is like to disable as well.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Take it apart and cut the trace going to that button.
| tomchuk wrote:
| Depending on the make, this could be something you could
| disable via app/ODB dongle. I use the Carista app/BT dongle and
| have used it to disable the panic button on my last two
| Toyoyas.
| moistbar wrote:
| > this could be something you could disable via app/ODB
| dongle
|
| Ol' Dirty Bastard sure knows his way around cars, I tell ya.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Even my car mechanic calls it ODB.
| ghaff wrote:
| I sometimes wonder about the ratio of assaults, etc. the panic
| button has ever curtailed to the number of loud horn blares
| that have awoken people, distracted people to the point where
| they've had an accident, etc.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Are panic buttons a US thing? I never saw one on a fob in
| Europe?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| More specifically, a North American thing. They also exist in
| some other markets, but generally not in Europe, as you
| noticed.
|
| I have no idea if they are required by some obscure law, or
| if it is just tradition. Probably the latter. I don't know
| anyone who has ever used the panic button in a panic, but
| almost everyone can remember hitting it by accident.
| arprocter wrote:
| Depends on the range, but if you're inconsiderate and can't
| remember where you parked...
| darkwater wrote:
| I second this. What's a panic button?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| A button on the keyring next to lock/unlock doors to start
| an alarm, generally honking and flashing the lights. Nearly
| ubiquitous on cars in the US, though personally I've never
| seen one activated for anything but a mistake.
| j_walter wrote:
| You can always desolder it from the board...most fobs open up
| pretty easily.
| mikestew wrote:
| If you don't feel like desoldering, just fill the button
| depression with epoxy. It's what we did with our Scion xB. And
| then it would start panicking on its own, at which point we
| returned to the dealer and told them to take the whole damned
| thing out. Which they did without charge.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| If your vehicle is a Ford, you can use a program called Forscan
| to disable the panic button or change it to require multiple
| presses before triggering. While there is a paid version of the
| software, the free version should be able to change the panic
| button functionality.
| psmithsfhn wrote:
| better, why do they still make car horns?
| Triv888 wrote:
| One problem with car horn is the cars that beep it every time
| you lock your doors...
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| Almost every car that has the ability to disable this,
| including my 2004 Subaru. The method was strange and
| complicated but it did work.
| Triv888 wrote:
| but many people don't and when you live in a dense area,
| horns beep all the time, often because of that.
| brobinson wrote:
| I have a 2003 Subaru, and it was just "hold the lock/unlock
| buttons for two seconds".
| microtherion wrote:
| Yes, I hate that feature, especially when a rental car has it
| and I can't figure out easily how to disable it.
| switch007 wrote:
| To alert other people about your presence.
|
| What would you do if a car was reversing and it looked highly
| probably they are going to hit you? Or when driving round blind
| bends on single track roads?
|
| It has very valid use cases, it just happens to be abused by
| idiots quite often
| jxramos wrote:
| I think it's actually illegal not to have an operational
| horn. Sound travels faster than cars so it's a great
| mechanism to communicate presence during an emergency.
| andai wrote:
| Ah.. so the real question is, why do they still make idiots?
| mcculley wrote:
| There are occasional valid uses for horns. I would like a
| mandatory feature that limits honks per mile to a reasonable
| maximum.
| kubanczyk wrote:
| For some countries, it could alternatively implement a
| reasonable minimum limit.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| If the author had a Ring doorbell (and looked at their crime
| reports), or participated on NextDoor, they would know that theft
| from parked cars is the number one problem in most neighborhoods.
| An alarm is still a good deterrent for people who do not park
| their cars in a garage.
| thelean12 wrote:
| The best and only important deterrent is to not have anything
| to steal, especially in plain view. If everyone did this then
| theft from parked cars would drop to zero, and break-ins to
| near zero.
|
| Smash and grabbers don't care about alarms. They'll be gone in
| a few seconds anyway.
| Areading314 wrote:
| Right. The alarm makes them only target the easily available
| junk that is in plain view. With no alarm, the thief could
| quietly spend 30 minutes "working on" the vehicle so they
| could clear out your trunk, and maybe even a few parts like
| the radio/GPS
| haser_au wrote:
| No thief is going to spend 30 minutes on a suburban street
| rifling through a car. If it's in a secluded parking area,
| or behind a building, maybe. But not on a main street with
| neighbours and traffic.
| thelean12 wrote:
| AFAIK, people don't really steal stock radios anymore. Or
| at least, it's not very common.
|
| Your trunk should also be empty of anything valuable.
| There's no reason to keep much back there overnight. I
| guess thieves could steal my tire chains and donut right
| now, but that hardly seems worth the trouble.
| spideymans wrote:
| My friend had a thief steal her _microwave_ in a smash and
| grab. She stopped to go into the gas station for nor more
| than a few minutes to pay for gas.
|
| Store your stuff in the trunk. Always. We all think it won't
| happen to us until it does.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I don't get what people are stealing from parked cars? You
| can't remove radios anymore. What are they taking? Surely
| nobody's leaving a laptop or a purse in a car?
| thelean12 wrote:
| Anyone with a car alarm enabled in a city is just straight up
| rude and inconsiderate. I can't imagine the mindset involved for
| someone to put a device outside someone's bedroom window that
| will somewhat randomly start blasting loud sounds at all hours of
| the night.
|
| I'd support legislation making it illegal. Why are car alarms
| exempt from noise ordinances?
| nefitty wrote:
| Imagine this, but coming from an industrial building. During
| the lockdown, it seems like the office space across the street
| from my house lacked maintenance/security people. There were
| times when an alarm at the building would go off, and literally
| stay on for a day or more. Maybe they forgot to pay their ADT
| bill...
| 6nf wrote:
| I think there are some laws - you're not allowed to have an
| alarm that wails for hours on end for example, it's gotta stop
| in a few minutes.
| coding123 wrote:
| Even if it goes off for 1 second it basically ruins sleep.
| svachalek wrote:
| Last time I got car insurance (a year ago?) I believe they still
| asked if it had an alarm, implying they still give a discount for
| it. Do insurance companies think it actually matters? Or do they
| just get kickbacks from alarm companies?
| Topgamer7 wrote:
| Insurance companies are in theory statistics companies. They
| collect data on data points to infer where cost savings can be.
|
| Although in practice they are money making companies, and
| likely use statistics to find ways to upsell you.
|
| So once upon a time car alarms were rarer, and they could
| charge more if you didn't have one.
| josefresco wrote:
| I'd rather see a tracking system attached to several parts of the
| vehicle. This would allow law enforcement to track the vehicle,
| and/or the parts if the vehicle is broken down and sold.
|
| In the United States we have "LoJack" but it's not a standard
| feature rather a dealer upsell.
| sithadmin wrote:
| >and/or the parts if the vehicle is broken down and sold.
|
| In the US, there's a product/service called Phantom Footprints
| that many dealers offer as an add-on. They affix tamper-evident
| stickers (the sort that leave a 'tattoo' if removed)/laser
| engrave a unique identifier that ties the vehicles/parts back
| to the owner in a database maintained by Phantom Footprints. On
| some vehicles, getting it installed and registering can even
| get you a discount on car insurance.
| nexuist wrote:
| Tesla probably has the best solution to this so far; they have
| cameras around the car that record movement and send it to the
| cloud. A tracking system would work only until thieves figure
| out how to disable it; at which point it just becomes another
| part to sell. The Tesla solution is nice because it live
| streams the carjacking to the owner, enabling them to pick out
| details about the thief that could be useful to arresting them.
| Of course, Teslas also have GPS tracking on top of this.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Wait, so parked Teslas always record videos of me when I walk
| by?
|
| That does not sound legal in quite a few places.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| In the USA, as long as you're not recording audio and it's
| not in a place where people have a reasonable expectation
| of privacy, clandestine video surveillance is A-OK.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I don't know why cars don't come with built in dash cams
| yet. Seems like there is huge demand for it.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Teslas do. Just plug in a USB drive and it starts
| recording.
| filoeleven wrote:
| That's a good move.
|
| I have a Subaru with the EyeSight system for lane
| detection, adaptive cruise control, etc. It's annoying
| that the cameras are RIGHT THERE and always on, and they
| even store a 22-second history that can be accessed by
| police or insurance in case of a crash, but I, as the
| vehicle owner with a vested interest in access to the
| feed, have no way of tapping into it and storing it for
| myself.
| fletchowns wrote:
| I think it's only a matter of time before all new cars
| come with front and rear facing cameras. I think the next
| step after that would be some sort of reporting system.
| Seems kinda crazy I can click a button to report somebody
| cheating in a video game but I can't press a button in my
| car to report soembody for extremely unsafe driving.
| aronpye wrote:
| You're in a public place, have no reasonable expectation to
| privacy, and the recording is not intrusive, so perfectly
| legal.
| harperlee wrote:
| At least in Spain* it does not work like that, there are
| very stringent limitations on what you can record on the
| street, e.g. through dashcams or tesla sentinel mode:
|
| https://www.aepd.es/sites/default/files/2019-09/informe-
| juri...
|
| For example, you can't use dashcam recordings of an
| accident in trial.
|
| * And I don't want to spend a bunch of time reading law
| but quite sure this is very tied in with GDPR, so I'd say
| that most probably in all Europe everything you record on
| the street is still subject to the privacy rights of
| whomever you record.
| andai wrote:
| > you can't use dashcam recordings of an accident in
| trial.
|
| Doesn't this entirely defeat the purpose of having a
| dashcam?
| sml156 wrote:
| For most people yes, If your willing to take matters into
| your own hands no.
| dharmab wrote:
| No, because an insurance claim is usually not a trial.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| many places cars are stationary are not public places,
| and still visible to pedestrians.
| lights0123 wrote:
| "quite a few places" can mean "not the US".
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dos8fRzBH24
| xeromal wrote:
| It's not legal in Germany and probably a few other
| countries but its perfectly legal here in the US.
| bdowling wrote:
| There is at least one Youtube channel, Wham Bam Teslacam [0],
| dedicated to publishing Tesla camera recordings of thieves,
| vandals, and other incidents.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbMoDtZ6Ani-eyHzCvxeVCw
| moistbar wrote:
| You can't stream video from the car to the app, not yet at
| least. It's rumored to be coming in a future update, but it's
| not here yet.
| overscore wrote:
| This implies that Tesla can view the vicinity and location of
| your car at any time. Is that true? That would completely
| destroy any desire to own one.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| This is one example of when it's useful:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/SALEM/comments/l0nohv/mischievous_
| a...
| overscore wrote:
| I don't think the security benefits - while considerable
| - would be enough to allow a car manufacturer to surveil
| everywhere I go.
| caf wrote:
| For the video clips, you can control whether any are sent
| to Tesla under the data sharing options on the in-car menu
| system.
|
| Video is only recorded locally if Sentry mode is enabled
| (when parked) or Dashcam is enabled (when driving). Sentry
| mode prevents the car from going to sleep / opening the HV
| contactor, which costs a small amount of battery if it's
| enabled for long periods.
|
| The car's location is accessible through the app, so this
| is sent through Tesla's servers.
| pound wrote:
| I haven't heard that they send it to the cloud, do you have
| more details on it?
|
| And for even locally - you need to buy ssd and plug it in to
| start recording video from sentry/dashboard.
| 01100011 wrote:
| I don't know if that would help. There are enough independent
| auto repair shops out there who don't care and would provide a
| market for stolen parts.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| It seems to me that the author of the article writes about
| something he has no idea, newer car alarms add real time
| tracking, silent alarms, geofencing, speed warnings, remote
| start and more. Some cars have those features as an option but
| sometimes you buy an used car and retrofitting them is
| impossible or costs half what you paid for the vehicle.
| sparrish wrote:
| Which can all be defeated by the car thief carrying a $100 box
| that blocks all kinds of wireless signals (GPS, LoJack, 4G,
| etc)
| reaperducer wrote:
| 90% of car thieves aren't going to invest $100 in a fuzz box.
| If they had $100, they'd blow it on skag and not need to
| steal the car.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| You could buy a tracker device for this purpose. Presumably it
| would be possible to repurpose an old smartphone to do the job.
|
| There's also the question of who you want tracking your
| movements.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I 'd rather see a tracking system attached to several parts of
| the vehicle._
|
| I'd rather not give law enforcement or anyone else the ability
| to "track" me on a whim. If it's stolen, I'll take the hit on
| my deductible and also keep my privacy.
|
| If it becomes ubiquitous, is only a matter of time before it
| becomes mandatory. Or, the car maker sells your data and
| pretends that doing so helps offset the cost of making the car,
| the way the TV makers do.
|
| That said, my wife's car came with a tracker. It was free when
| we bought the car. Around the fourth year, we got a letter in
| the mail stating that it would suddenly cost $40/month, and if
| we didn't pay, we could no longer be tracked. Sounded good to
| me!
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > I'd rather not give law enforcement or anyone else the
| ability to "track" me on a whim
|
| I assume license plate readers make that moot, especially in
| areas with toll roads.
| naavis wrote:
| Believe it or not, many countries do not have toll roads.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| If you have a cell phone with active cellular service then
| you might as well have a tracking system on your car and
| derive some sort of benefit, as you're already being tracked
| and you already don't have your privacy.
| volkk wrote:
| considering i'm already being tracked in every which way from
| my phone to my credit card usage, to my website usage, to
| toll roads every time i drive, etc. i wouldn't mind having
| this feature to save money on my insurance. to each their
| own, i guess
| serjester wrote:
| > Car theft rates have been since declining ever since, going
| from about 1.6 million annual incidents in the 1990s to around
| 800,000 in 2014.
|
| > Cars have gotten impossible to steal
|
| I'm confused how he makes this claim given his own statistic. So
| are all car thefts done with sophisticated hacking given the RFID
| tech is 25 years old? Still seems like a problem to me.
| mr_tristan wrote:
| Because most thefts are probably of older vehicles.
|
| https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-auto-the...
|
| > The Honda Civic was the most frequently stolen passenger
| vehicle in 2017, with 45,062 thefts among all model years of
| this car, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau
| (NICB). The bureau notes that most of these thefts were older
| models that lack the anti-theft technology of today's models.
| In fact, there were 6,707 thefts of the 1998 model year Civic,
| but only 388 of the 2017 Civics.
|
| But, never underestimate the sheer incompetence of car owners:
|
| > More alarming is the finding that there were 229,339 vehicle
| thefts with keys or fobs left in the vehicles between January
| 1, 2016 and December 31, 2018.
|
| I don't know how many times I've read a nextdoor article that
| states: 1. the car was stolen or broken into, but, 2.) they
| didn't lock their 90s-era Honda.
| AlfeG wrote:
| I wonder why author think that it hard to steal modern cars.
| This IS a billion bucks business. Car part prices are high as
| never. Why not some person to buy replacements from shady
| market?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| xnomad wrote:
| Is nobody going to mention the hilarious typo in this article?
| "mechanics plug in to asses"
| alkonaut wrote:
| Most likely thing to be stolen from my car is probably wheels,
| catalytic converter. Both of these require jacking up the car,
| shoving some bricks under it, and stripping the parts in a matter
| of minutes. All I need from an alarm is something that takes care
| of that scenario.
|
| If someone steals it the car they have - as the article says -
| likely done it the easiest way: they walked in my unlocked front
| door and took my car keys when I wasn't looking.
| dole wrote:
| Definitely one reason is this. I was surprised to hear about
| the catalytic converters recently, the amount of palladium in
| them is worth the risk. SUVs and trucks targeted because of
| higher clearance, Hondas and certain manufacturers have more in
| them than others. Battery-operated reciprocating saw (Sawzall),
| easy and fast enough to do it while you're in the grocery
| store.
| l72 wrote:
| Now if we could just disable the feature that causes the horn to
| honk when locking the vehicle with the key fob...
|
| As someone who lives on a residential street, but with a hospital
| at the far end, we have tons of patients, families, doctors, and
| nurses that park on our street to avoid paying for the garage. I
| get to listen to horns honking at all hours.
|
| A few cars (Acura comes to mind), do a bit better, in that they
| have a very soft, more pleasant beep instead of honking the horn.
| My vehicle allows me to disable the horn honking completely, but
| it is buried deep in the settings, and I doubt few people would
| ever look for it.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| If you are handy, it shouldn't be difficult to rewire the car
| to not do that or even to add a different sound source to
| confirm lock/unlock. Ironically, any car alarm shop could do it
| for you for probably not much money.
| coding123 wrote:
| It's not just locking, but unlocking too. And even worse if you
| need all your doors unlocked, you have to hit the unlock twice.
| It's not a honk on my toyota, but it's still super annoying for
| everyone. I end up having to walk to the driver's side door and
| manually unlocking my car all the time. There isn't a key hole
| on any other door.
|
| This is the price we pay for 0 feedback avenues.
| arprocter wrote:
| In the UK this is disabled in the ECU, as using your horn while
| stationary isn't allowed
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > In the UK this is disabled in the ECU, as using your horn
| while stationary isn't allowed
|
| Huh my car app has a 'honk' button that works when
| stationary, for finding it in car parks. Is that against
| regulation?
| fastball wrote:
| My car only beeps if I press lock twice.
| elboru wrote:
| Some people think that the honk/beep is to confirm that the
| car got locked and the alarm got activated. So they will
| press the lock button until they hear the confirmation.
| cpgxiii wrote:
| It's not just "think" - some cars _specifically_ beep in
| different ways depending on lock status. Recent-ish Fords
| beep once when locked, and beep twice quickly if a door is
| ajar and can 't lock. It also blinks the lights to match,
| but the sound is much easier to recognize.
| hoten wrote:
| But it is a confirmation. If you're far enough away
| (perhaps you forgot to lock right away), you won't hear the
| lock mechanism and wont know if you are too far away for
| the signal to reach. So you wait for a honk.
| lscotte wrote:
| That's a configurable setting off all of the last few cars
| we've owned. There's no need for any beeping, honking, or
| anything else when the lights flash, as far as I'm concerned.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| I assume this a local cultural problem.
|
| I do not believe I have ever heard an actual car alarm go off in
| my life, I have only seen on television, typically in Anglo-Saxon
| media.
|
| So is this truly as common as the article suggests in some
| places?
| thelean12 wrote:
| Since I've lived in US cities, yes. Almost daily do I hear a
| car alarm.
|
| Probably just a factor of:
|
| 1. More cars around me in the city than in the small town I
| came from.
|
| 2. More things that can set off the alarms (loud motorcycles
| being a big one).
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Density too. I reckon there are about 200 to 300 cars in the
| parking garage for my apartment building. You're bound to
| hear one with so many cars in one place.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| I had no idea.
|
| How do people sleep then, if this is so common?
| ghaff wrote:
| People in dense cities learn to deal with it one way or
| another. Somewhere like Manhattan, I can practically
| guarantee you there are going to be sirens (which are
| probably even louder) during a given night as well.
| tchocky wrote:
| I live in Berlin in an area that has many parking cars. I
| rarely hear an alarm go off. Maybe 2-3 times a year, if at
| all. I also only know this from anglo-saxony media.
| spiritplumber wrote:
| I have an older RV that people sometimes try to steal (it's
| usually meth heads wanting to live on it; I've taken to leaving a
| plaque on the dash saying that if they want a hot meal instead,
| just knock on my door).
|
| The alarm is aftermarket, and silent. All it does is make the
| fuel pump go in reverse. (The fuel pump is also aftermarket)
|
| It's been hilarious a couple times.
| arbitrage wrote:
| Anyone ever take you up on the offer of a hot meal?
| dangerboysteve wrote:
| In large cities people ignore car alarms and are more and likely
| going to attract a brick through the window from pissed of
| neighbors. The biggest issue is people with car alarms have the
| sensitivity so low anything triggers them. I used to live in a
| condo, owned a Fatboy and when I fired up the bike and rode up
| the underground parkade 6-10 cars alarms would go off.
| inetknght wrote:
| Your loud-ass vehicle shouldn't be legal.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Seriously. I've been considering bricking a couple of the
| street racers in my neighborhood lately. One of the idiots
| likes to rev the engine to vent his frustration as he drives
| back and forth looking for parking.
|
| The funny thing is, a lot of the loud cars aren't even that
| fast. My 2.4L SUV beats a lot of those fools sporting
| straight pipes.
| naavis wrote:
| I wonder if there is some geographical variation in the alarm
| sensitivity. I rarely hear car alarms in Helsinki, the capital
| of Finland. I have never noticed that any slight bumps or
| vibrations would set car alarms off. I have even scratched a
| few cars in the parking lot with my own car back in the days
| when I had just gotten my license, and still no alarms.
|
| Car theft is relatively rare here too.
| telesilla wrote:
| >Car theft is relatively rare here too
|
| Well, you *are* living in a country with some of the highest
| economic equality in the world!
| naavis wrote:
| Well, I was more wondering if there is some correlation
| between the occurrence of car thefts and the sensitivity of
| car alarms. Do they make the alarms less sensitive in
| countries with less car thefts?
| coryrc wrote:
| Congrats on finding something more disruptive than car alarms.
| dangerboysteve wrote:
| well I had muffled pipes, not straight pipes and I never
| gunned the bike with people around or at stop lights. In the
| parkade I would put around. The reason for the alarms going
| off was the resonance and vibration of the bike with its
| crappy rubber engine mounts. I have always found tuner cars
| with their fat pipe exhausts way worse.
| vocram wrote:
| You meant sensitivity so _high_?
| esrauch wrote:
| I think this is a case like high/low granularity or bi/semi-
| annual where either directions are sometimes used mean either
| meanings.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| If you have your car at the mall or are in a big city parking
| garge, sure it doesn't do much.
|
| If you live in the rest of the United States, which is spread out
| and some quite rural, a car alarm can quickly notify you someone
| is messing with your car.
|
| My town has a population a little over 300 people, we have one
| resident that is... not well... that rides his bicycle around
| even int he dead of winter and pounds on peoples doors screaming
| that the government is coming (he did this Saturday to a woman
| who finally called the county sheriff), a few weeks ago he pulled
| a battery out of a forklift at a local business's dock and
| proceeded to smash it on security camera, rides up to people that
| are out and about screaming nonsense at them, etc. Then factor in
| "kids being kids", the people that were spotlight poaching deer
| from the highway - shooting in the direction of houses - a month
| or so ago, etc and car alarms are just one of those handful of
| things that actually do come in handy in some places.
|
| Even in high school in the early 2000s I had someone break into
| my car in the driveway at night in a cookie-cutter edition and go
| through my car. With an alarm we'd have known they were doing it.
|
| Several years later I had someone crawl under my truck, cut the
| fuel line, and after taking all the gas they could get using a
| piece of tape to try and hold it back in place (I actually had
| this in my Facebook memories yesterday), a car alarm may have
| alerted me to that.
|
| Then my mother's boyfriend passed away around the same time.
| Someone flat out stole his decades old beater out of the driveway
| at night, again an alarm would have alerted them to it.
| Unfortunately for the thief the brakes barely worked and they
| didn't get very far before plowing into another car and taking
| off on foot.
|
| Car alarms definitely serve a purpose, and I don't need Popular
| Mechanics to justify them or not.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Man, there sure is a lot of crime for a town of 300. I've lived
| in a big city for 20 years and never had anyone mess with my
| car.
| idlewords wrote:
| He must live in Cabot Cove, Maine.
| amalcon wrote:
| I've owned a car in a city, a high density suburb, and a low
| density suburb (all USA). I had the one non-alarmed car as a
| teenager in the low density suburb. It was broken into in the
| quiet residential driveway. In the city and the high density
| suburb, I have only ever had false alarms.
|
| Maybe the answer is to give the user the option to arm the
| alarm or not when exiting, with equal friction (i.e. separate
| "lock" and "lock+arm" buttons on both the door and the fob).
| u801e wrote:
| > If you live in the rest of the United States, which is spread
| out and some quite rural, a car alarm can quickly notify you
| someone is messing with your car.
|
| That really depends if you're close enough to the car, or in a
| building that makes it easy to hear noises coming from a
| parking lot. If I go to a mall or a big box store, I'm not
| going to hear my car alarm going off and other people are going
| to largely ignore it (since they've experienced so many false
| alarms in the past).
|
| Car alarm systems should be silent and sent an alert to your
| phone so that you know someone is doing something to your
| vehicle and can check on it in a timely fashion.
| mc32 wrote:
| Isn't it implied that the noise not only get the attention of
| the owner if nearby, but also passers by which in theory
| might deter the criminal?
| u801e wrote:
| In my experience, passers by don't care. I've heard many
| car alarms continuously going off and everyone else just
| going about their business.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Passersby won't deter the criminal. In places like the USA
| or Latin America where criminals are believed to possess
| guns, passersby wouldn't want to risk getting shot for the
| sake of some stranger's vehicle.
|
| Even in Europe, if passersby in the big cities saw e.g. a
| bike thief taking an angle grinder to a bike lock, they are
| unlikely to intervene. It would just be asking for trouble.
| mc32 wrote:
| Right, that's why I mention that that is the theory. In
| practice it is not a great deterrent, but it will deter
| some none the less because it brings attention to
| something happening.
| tsdlts wrote:
| You can silence alerts, your phone could be dead. The point
| of the alarm is to alarm you at the exact moment something is
| happening.
| svachalek wrote:
| Times in my life that I have seen someone racing to their
| car while the alarm is going off to chase off the supposed
| thieves:
|
| 000000
| vangelis wrote:
| 99% of car alarms from my experience are either people
| backing into cars, false alarms, or in my case, my truck
| being a POS because I had a key but not a key fob.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It's 100% in my experience. I don't think anyone I know
| would hear a car alarm and think someone is stealing a car.
| They would ignore it if it isn't their alarm, cussing out
| the owner of the car for causing a disturbance, or cuss
| themselves out for accidentally hitting the button on the
| remote.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| > Several years later I had someone crawl under my truck, cut
| the fuel line, and after taking all the gas they could get
| using a piece of tape to try and hold it back in place (I
| actually had this in my Facebook memories yesterday), a car
| alarm may have alerted me to that.
|
| Holy cow, US really is a bizzare place. With your level of
| wages and your low prices of gas, the value of the gas stolen
| was an equivalent of 2-4 hours of minimum wage labor? And yet
| someone went through this trouble and risked jail for it.
| grecy wrote:
| A comment here recently said "The US is a poor country that
| just happens to have a few rich people in it", and I really
| think it's very true.
|
| There are literally tens of millions of people in US who are
| in a very desperate situation, barely surviving.
| alibarber wrote:
| I think everywhere in the world, there are people that for
| whatever reasons, might not be making what we'd consider the
| most rational of choices.
| s5300 wrote:
| It's really not a lot of trouble - and, presumably, the
| perpetrator may not be able to easily get a job for a variety
| of reasons - such as prior felonies, untreated mental health
| issues, etc - and for those same reasons, likely doesn't care
| too much about the fact they're risking further jail.
|
| No disrespect in the slightest - but you're thinking into it
| too much, haha. Things like this are very common in the
| MidWest/South and such. US is quite a bit of a shithole for
| some, sad reality. Life is often cold and hard in general
| though.
| burnthrow wrote:
| > rides his bicycle around even int he dead of winter
|
| That maniac!
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