Worsened by the fact that you get an insurance discount if you have a car alarm. So everyone has one, despite that we all know they are only effective at annoying neighbors and bystanders. The only writing I've read that touts the positives of a car alarm fall in the "wishful thinking" category, a.k.a, "well, it can't hurt!" Everything else I've read that tried to be at least a little scientific indicates they're more trouble than they're worth.
On the other hand, it's possible that the reason car alarms are mostly false alarms these days is due to the huge decline in auto theft rates over the last 30 years [1], which is due at least in part to the prevalence of car alarms.
30 years ago I could open a locked car, and get it started and driveable in sixty seconds (the steering wheel lock will be collateral damage). Not a car thief, but I was a mechanic. But now there are better door locks, a lot of cars don't even have a key-locked wheel lock, and you don't just short two wires under the dash to start it like the movies. Granted, a career thief probably has quick workarounds for all of this, but the bar for quick car theft went up from "low-life with a slim jim", I think.
Point is, yeah, car alarms likely had some effect, but was it more or less than the fact that cars are just generally harder to steal now? And I have no idea what the answer is.
It's also possible it's because the number of movies Steven Seagal starred in for the past 30 years has also declined [1].
Car alarms can deter joyriders but don't do much for the professional car thief [2] ([3] has more references). Also, as an anecdote, there's been a bunch of car prowls in my apartment building parking lot for the past year or so. The victims were high-end vehicles with valuables in-sight (briefcases, dashcams, etc..) and they all had car alarms.
Lots of merchants sell non-street legal straight mufflers with a wink wink nod nod description. In the Internet mail order age it's even easier to buy one.
Saying "for off road use only" is just to reduce liability in states that happen to have byzantine restrictions on whatever you're selling. You don't want someone to sue you because you didn't tell them that the thing you sold them wasn't legal in their state or because a law changed that you weren't aware of.
Most straight through mufflers are street legal because most states just have a law about X decibels at Y distance and don't care what you have as long as it's quiet enough. CA has quite asinine rules about car exhaust systems though and you could be considered not in compliance with emissions rules even if you somehow make your straight through exhaust reasonably quiet.
To me, this is the biggest problem with car alarms. When people hear one, they don't think "A car is being stolen" they think "Ugh somebody accidentally triggered that".
This phenomenon is a serious safety issue in hospital intensive care facilities; with so many machines producing so many audible alerts, genuine emergencies often go un-noticed.
"When a smoke alarm goes off in a school or an office building, everybody stops what they’re doing and walks outside in an orderly fashion. Why? Because when smoke alarms go off (and there’s no drill scheduled), it frequently means there’s actual smoke somewhere."
Actually, I think it's because the potential consequences of ignoring a smoke alarm (vs a car alarm) are much more grave.
The cost of a false alarm for a smoke alarm is borne by owner of the smoke alarm. The cost of a false alarm for a car alarm is borne by everybody in earshot (typically not the owner).
The car alarm owner is forcing an externality cost onto society; there is no incentive for an individual car alarm owner to reduce false positives so it is no surprise the products are so bad.
(Even in the true-positive case, the car alarm is extracting its value from the attention of third parties to the thievery, at no cost to the owner.)
Conclusion: every sounding of a car alarm should attract a substantial tax penalty.
For burglar alarms a lot of jurisdictions require a permit. The police triage alarm calls without a human report as very low priority. Where I live alarm permits get cancelled after three false alarms.
Large commercial facilities are required to handle small emergencies themselves by noticing 911 calls coming from their lines and directing public safety personnel to the exact location, training safety & security staff on AED and fire extinguisher use, etc.
> The cost of a false alarm for a smoke alarm is borne by owner of the smoke alarm.
By the tenant, anyway. And any of the tenants' neighbors close enough to hear the shrieking.
> The car alarm owner is forcing an externality cost onto society; there is no incentive for an individual car alarm owner to reduce false positives so it is no surprise the products are so bad.
Modern smoke detectors also have extremely high false positive rates. I've lived in two buildings built after 2009 since 2013, and in both, if you so much as look sideways at a piece of toast the alarm goes off screaming "Fire!" at 120 dB. Nevermind trying to broil steak...
I read that a photoelectric smoke detector gave far fewer false positives and found that to be the case. No more alarms when boiling water or making a stir fry. This one is very affordable, if you have control over your smoke detector.
> every sounding of a car alarm should attract a substantial tax penalty.
I live in a poorer west side chicago neighborhood and car alarms go off all the time. I am jolted out sleep frequently by multiple alarms going off at the same time. I never experienced this in somewhat affluent neighborhoods, I think poor ppl are more sensitive(no pun intended) to theft so they turn alarm sensitivity all the way up.
So fining would affect poorer ppl more than rich ppl and might be politically sensitive much like the chicago soda tax that was rolled back for this precise reason.
> So fining would affect poorer ppl more than rich ppl
Yeah but if you're getting woken up multiple times at night in a poor neighborhood, then it's poor people who don't own car alarms who are negatively affected the most.
If you are poor, you do not have a higher tolerance.
If you are poor, you have significantly less agency to effect change to remedy your situation - so you have no choice but to tolerate things like these.
A rich person can move, install soundproofing, afford air conditioning to sleep with the windows shut, etc...
Yup, you have “higher tolerance” to things that have been continually forced on you—doesn’t mean your tolerance is actually higher, just that you’re more experienced at sucking it up.
I distinctly remember the day when I, as a young teenage boy, observed “Huh, the girls in my class are a lot better than the boys at doing work they don’t want to do. The boys complain and try to get out of it, the girls generally just do it whether they like it or not.”
Then I realised—oh, the girls feel like they’re expected to just do it. They don’t feel as entitled to a say in the matter as the boys do, because that’s how they’ve each been socialised.
And then I began seeing parallels everywhere…so that was the moment that set me on the path of social activism, really.
Higher end cars rarely have aftermarket alarms installed, alarms on lower end cars are sign for thieves, those who have them fitted are because have valuables hidding like tools or sound systems so they just kick the car a few times o throw something at it, after a few "false" alarms the pissed owner just deactivates it or puts it in silent mode. A better solution is the two-way alarm where you have a remote that will sound and vibrate and indicate the type of alarm like shock or open door/trunk there's also some that work with an app and have tracking capabilities and can send a snapshot of the interior of the vehicle or disable the ignition.
I hate car alarms too, but most people either don't know how to lock their cars without arming the alarm, or actually can't... It's hard to see how we could legislate them away locally, it'd need to be national to be feasible.
I had to struggle with this concept as a physician trying to understand the medical literature. Eventually I came up with my own way of thinking dynamically about it. I called this the "two by two diagram". You can find the full text of my articles here:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kevin_Johnson40
As a matter of fact, I would very much like to get this programmed into a Javascript version I can make freely available to people, but am not clear on how to go about getting that done. I have a version in MATLAB but that is not practical for most people.
> People trust smoke alarms. When a smoke alarm goes off in a school or an office building, everybody stops what they’re doing and walks outside in an orderly fashion.
No, it means someone was making popcorn. The reason we leave is because they set the volume to a level that it causes people to feel pain, presumably to force us to leave.
The fire alarm at my apartment is effectively a bacon detector. Multiple residents have covered theirs because of how sensitive they are. Normal cooking will set them off. I'm suspicious they may actually up the risk of a fire, as someone may abandon their cooking to avoid the noise.
If you have a smoke alarm installed in your kitchen (or wash room if that's separate) that is a problem. Kitchens need heat alarms instead for this exact reason; smoke alarms are too sensitive and are likely to be set off by other things (dust from linen, steam from a kettle, toaster, tumble-dryer, etc).
In the UK, new residential construction puts heat alarms in kitchens and smoke alarms everywhere else.
EDIT: If you have a dedicated central heating boiler room, that also gets a carbon monoxide alarm.
My high-rise miraculously had the good sense to install normal-ish smoke detectors in the units so burnt food doesn’t trigger a building-wide alarm. Those still exist too, but the only one I’ve seen was real (sprinkler activation, ladder trucks, the works).
Wow... I haven't heard a car alarm go off in so long I haven't even thought about them at all in a few decades now.
No one uses them in the rural area I live but the title to this and a few of the comments here reminded me of how annoying car alarms could be when I lived in LA.
I learned to drive a beater there so I didn't have to worry about someone banging into or stealing my car. I saw too many people get way too stressed about that and it just wasn't worth it to me. It was really nice to not worry about it.
36 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 90.4 ms ] thread[1] https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/east/2014/12/17/350442...
Point is, yeah, car alarms likely had some effect, but was it more or less than the fact that cars are just generally harder to steal now? And I have no idea what the answer is.
Just plug in your ODB-II tool and press start :-).
Car alarms can deter joyriders but don't do much for the professional car thief [2] ([3] has more references). Also, as an anecdote, there's been a bunch of car prowls in my apartment building parking lot for the past year or so. The victims were high-end vehicles with valuables in-sight (briefcases, dashcams, etc..) and they all had car alarms.
[1] http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
[2] https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/publications/abstract.aspx?ID=1656...
[3] https://priceonomics.com/are-car-alarms-completely-fucking-u...
Most straight through mufflers are street legal because most states just have a law about X decibels at Y distance and don't care what you have as long as it's quiet enough. CA has quite asinine rules about car exhaust systems though and you could be considered not in compliance with emissions rules even if you somehow make your straight through exhaust reasonably quiet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue
Actually, I think it's because the potential consequences of ignoring a smoke alarm (vs a car alarm) are much more grave.
The car alarm owner is forcing an externality cost onto society; there is no incentive for an individual car alarm owner to reduce false positives so it is no surprise the products are so bad.
(Even in the true-positive case, the car alarm is extracting its value from the attention of third parties to the thievery, at no cost to the owner.)
Conclusion: every sounding of a car alarm should attract a substantial tax penalty.
Large commercial facilities are required to handle small emergencies themselves by noticing 911 calls coming from their lines and directing public safety personnel to the exact location, training safety & security staff on AED and fire extinguisher use, etc.
By the tenant, anyway. And any of the tenants' neighbors close enough to hear the shrieking.
> The car alarm owner is forcing an externality cost onto society; there is no incentive for an individual car alarm owner to reduce false positives so it is no surprise the products are so bad.
Modern smoke detectors also have extremely high false positive rates. I've lived in two buildings built after 2009 since 2013, and in both, if you so much as look sideways at a piece of toast the alarm goes off screaming "Fire!" at 120 dB. Nevermind trying to broil steak...
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00PS6EFIE/
I live in a poorer west side chicago neighborhood and car alarms go off all the time. I am jolted out sleep frequently by multiple alarms going off at the same time. I never experienced this in somewhat affluent neighborhoods, I think poor ppl are more sensitive(no pun intended) to theft so they turn alarm sensitivity all the way up.
So fining would affect poorer ppl more than rich ppl and might be politically sensitive much like the chicago soda tax that was rolled back for this precise reason.
Yeah but if you're getting woken up multiple times at night in a poor neighborhood, then it's poor people who don't own car alarms who are negatively affected the most.
If you are poor, you have significantly less agency to effect change to remedy your situation - so you have no choice but to tolerate things like these.
A rich person can move, install soundproofing, afford air conditioning to sleep with the windows shut, etc...
A poor person can have interrupted sleep.
I distinctly remember the day when I, as a young teenage boy, observed “Huh, the girls in my class are a lot better than the boys at doing work they don’t want to do. The boys complain and try to get out of it, the girls generally just do it whether they like it or not.”
Then I realised—oh, the girls feel like they’re expected to just do it. They don’t feel as entitled to a say in the matter as the boys do, because that’s how they’ve each been socialised.
And then I began seeing parallels everywhere…so that was the moment that set me on the path of social activism, really.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kevin_Johnson40/publica...
No, it means someone was making popcorn. The reason we leave is because they set the volume to a level that it causes people to feel pain, presumably to force us to leave.
The fire alarm at my apartment is effectively a bacon detector. Multiple residents have covered theirs because of how sensitive they are. Normal cooking will set them off. I'm suspicious they may actually up the risk of a fire, as someone may abandon their cooking to avoid the noise.
I cook bacon in the oven on racks, it is smokeless. The damn alarms still sing the song of their people every time.
In the UK, new residential construction puts heat alarms in kitchens and smoke alarms everywhere else.
EDIT: If you have a dedicated central heating boiler room, that also gets a carbon monoxide alarm.
No one uses them in the rural area I live but the title to this and a few of the comments here reminded me of how annoying car alarms could be when I lived in LA.
I learned to drive a beater there so I didn't have to worry about someone banging into or stealing my car. I saw too many people get way too stressed about that and it just wasn't worth it to me. It was really nice to not worry about it.