[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! ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-01-19 23:00 UTC)