Car Alarms

[timber]

I have not noticed too many car alarms going off on my street.  When I first moved to JC 7 years ago I lived over near Marin and Montogomery.  It was a sunday during the summer and car alarm went off till the battery died in the car--it took about 4 hours--irony was the car was parked across from city hall. 

[jcindahouse]

I have memorized the local number to my police district and adhere to a ten minute rule of noise pollution before calling it in. A friend in Union City said we was woken up at some ungodly hour by a persistent car alarm and that the police came by and "incapacitated" it (dunno how).

A couple of night's ago the burglar alarm at the Galord Deli at the corner of Jewett & Kennedy went off for 40 minutes. I called it in after waking from strange dreams of horrible screaming and rolled my bathrobed-butt down to the corner with a notepad, sharpie and cell phone in hand. Since I initially thought it was a car alarm, I was somewhat relieved to see two police cars checking out the site. It still took them almost 20 minutes, but they got the thing shut off. I was tempted to start a boycott as a reprisal!

[CeeDub]

I do not advocate criminal mischief.  Anonymous keying or other damage, not connected to the offense, is without merit, and wrong.

Leaving a note on the windshield explaining, "Neighbor, I lost 30 mins of sleep last night.  Now you can lose 30 mins changing your [undamaged] tire.  Get your alarm fixed!"

Of course, this was 15 years ago, in a kinder gentler time, before we had parking dispute shootings . . .

[bdlaw]

While I agree that car alarms are annoying as hell and when they go off for hours at a time I want to go postal, I am kind of surprised that we're advocating vandalism in this thread.  A nasty note, yes.  Letting the air out of someone's tires?  No.

Just my $0.02.  YMMV.

[Binky]

A year and a half ago my car alarm started to go off for no apparent reason.  I thought maybe it had been triggered by a bump or something the first couple of times, or it would be in a parking lot and we'd notice the alarm sounding as we were coming back to it at the mall, and I figured my wife had triggered it with her keychain in her bag or something. We'd just silence it with the clicker and it would stop. 
Finally, it went off a couple of nights one week near enough to our house that we heard.  The police suggested that it could be a faulty battery and our local mechanic concurred and sold us a new battery, but the same thing occurred a week later.  I finally took it to a dealer, but the car was used when we bought it and the alarm was after market, so they couldn't tell me what was wrong as directly as the might have.  It turned out that the car has a computer module which monitors the state of the door locks, and that was faulty, not the alarm per se.
A new module would have cost $1,000, so they just disconnected that aspect of the alarm, and everything has been fine since.
This took over three weeks start to finish to figure it out, since it was an intermittent problem, and I have no idea how many times the alarm may have gone off without us realizing it, so you may be doing the owner a favor by reporting it along with the license # to the police each time it happens.
I'm glad no one let the air out of my tires.

[SamS]

+2

After this morning's episode I am becoming less sympathetic to the owners.  At 4:05 am, someone's alarm started going off, with no response for more than an hour.  If I could hear it, why can't the owner? Perhaps they live around the block and didn't know it was going off, because they couldn't find parking closer to home. Still its their responsibility and its costing me sleep.   

This is only going to get worse after folks start moving into the LeFrak buildings.

[worm]

I absolutely blame the owners, Sam.  There is a car alarm going off in my hearing at least once a night, and far too many of them go off for a very long time.  Not infrequently the same cars are repeat offenders.  It is a HUGE quality of life issue for me. 

First, most folks have alarms that are far too sensitive for city living.  It is rarely an attempted theft that sets them off.  On narrow streets a large truck rumbling by frequently sets off alarms.  Helicopters can do it too.  So do fireworks from LSP -- setting off alarms over here!  Obviously the perils of parallel parking and kids playing ball are also alarm setters.  If your alarm is this sensitive, you MUST get it changed in some way.  It is inconsiderate and uncivilized not to do so.  My car has an alarm and it never goes off unless you actually try to get into the car.

Second, it is unacceptable that an alarm will continue to "go off" for an hour or more.  A few rounds of that horrendous noise should be enough to scare off the perpetrator and notify you if you are nearby.  Since most of us are not near to our cars most of the time, the continued blaring is useless and extremely unpleasant.  It is my opinion that any car that has an alarm that goes off for more than 5 minutes at one time should be subject to a noise violation ticket with a substantial fine.  Thus people will find a way to change their alarms.

Finally, I wouldn't be surprised if people simply don't listen for or notice their own car alarms.  With so many going off, not only is there the collective inaction problem for "bystanders" but there is for car alarm owners.  My first reaction upon hearing a car alarm is not "uh oh, I should check on my car," it is "someone's damn alarm is going off again."  I suspect that most owners react in the same way -- yet another way that the owners of these alarms are at fault.

Grr.  Noise pollution drives me crazy!  Especially when it is so easy to fix.  Now, lets talk about the idling school buses, the screeching bus breaks, the penetrating back-up beeping on everything from a minivan to an 18-wheeler, the incessant Mr. Softee song, and the JC cops using their sirens just to run a red light.

+2

[Olewnick]

Coupla things.

Though I still hear them on occasion, my sense is that the car alarm epidemic peaked 6-8 years ago.

When we moved to JC, we soon bought a used car which already had an alarm. For a couple of years, while we had a parking space in the place we were renting (on Manila between 9th and Pavonia), it was never set off. When we moved to 6th St. and parked it on the street, it began going off constantly. Clearly, its sensitivity level was breached by passing trucks etc. So we took it in to the dealership and had it adjusted, obviously the decent thing to do.

While still in Manhattan one evening about ten years ago, an SUV with an incredibly loud and persistent alarm had been going off all night in front of our building. It was nice and new. When I went out to walk the dog, I keyed the damn thing along its driver's side. Felt good.

re: Mr. Softee - NPR recently commisioned some composers to work up a new theme for those aggravating trucks, one of them, a Balinese version,  by my friend Nina: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9945901

[PhillyGirl]

I absolutely blame the owners, Sam.  There is a car alarm going off in my hearing at least once a night, and far too many of them go off for a very long time.  Not infrequently the same cars are repeat offenders.  It is a HUGE quality of life issue for me. 

First, most folks have alarms that are far too sensitive for city living.  It is rarely an attempted theft that sets them off.  On narrow streets a large truck rumbling by frequently sets off alarms.  Helicopters can do it too.  So do fireworks from LSP -- setting off alarms over here!  Obviously the perils of parallel parking and kids playing ball are also alarm setters.  If your alarm is this sensitive, you MUST get it changed in some way.  It is inconsiderate and uncivilized not to do so.  My car has an alarm and it never goes off unless you actually try to get into the car.

Second, it is unacceptable that an alarm will continue to "go off" for an hour or more.  A few rounds of that horrendous noise should be enough to scare off the perpetrator and notify you if you are nearby.  Since most of us are not near to our cars most of the time, the continued blaring is useless and extremely unpleasant.  It is my opinion that any car that has an alarm that goes off for more than 5 minutes at one time should be subject to a noise violation ticket with a substantial fine.  Thus people will find a way to change their alarms.

Finally, I wouldn't be surprised if people simply don't listen for or notice their own car alarms.  With so many going off, not only is there the collective inaction problem for "bystanders" but there is for car alarm owners.  My first reaction upon hearing a car alarm is not "uh oh, I should check on my car," it is "someone's damn alarm is going off again."  I suspect that most owners react in the same way -- yet another way that the owners of these alarms are at fault.

Grr.  Noise pollution drives me crazy!  Especially when it is so easy to fix.  Now, lets talk about the idling school buses, the screeching bus breaks, the penetrating back-up beeping on everything from a minivan to an 18-wheeler, the incessant Mr. Softee song, and the JC cops using their sirens just to run a red light.

[CeeDub]

IIRC the accepted penalty is to deprive the offending owner of a similar amount of time - by deflating one tire and leaving a note.  You haven't had any of your property damaged so the vandalism ("criminal mischief") is excessive IMHO.  They lose the use of their car while they get the tire inflated or changed, and they learn quickly - after the 2nd flat in my experience - that they must get their malfunctioning alarm fixed.  If you just egg the car w/o a note, they may never make the connection.  this way the pain becomes theirs, so to speak.

[SamS]

I have, I think, a very effective deterent for negligent car owners who don't tend to offensive, middle-of-the-night alarms. 
If they don't "tend" to the alarms and keep me awake, I concoct a mixture of raw eggs and pour it down their windshield past the wipers, in to the engine compartment.

(OK, maybe it is not a deterent, but it makes me feel better).

I tried the "menancing" note route, but negligent car owners routinely ignore these.

So, F980 'em.

-M

hmm, this is going to sound pathetic, but I don't get too angry at the owner, because I don't know that they're not out of town or in a hospital or something like that.   That's not to say I don't get frustrated.

[mouse]

I have, I think, a very effective deterent for negligent car owners who don't tend to offensive, middle-of-the-night alarms. 
If they don't "tend" to the alarms and keep me awake, I concoct a mixture of raw eggs and pour it down their windshield past the wipers, in to the engine compartment.

(OK, maybe it is not a deterent, but it makes me feel better).

I tried the "menancing" note route, but negligent car owners routinely ignore these.

So, F980 'em.

-M

[SamS]

I am among the many car owners who had an alarm installed in his car for the obvious reasons.  So I am in no position to criticize anyone who does the same.  But do they create more of  a disturbance than serve as a deterrent to theft.  Last evening an alarm on a car on my block was going off through most of the night and early morning hours, with out anyone doing anything about it.  Of course, I too could have called the police to report what may have been an attempted car theft. Instead I just attempted to bury my head under the pillow hoping the noise would stop so I could get some sleep.  Still, I wasn't alone in my neglect, as none of my neighbors called the police about this apparent attempted car theft.   Of course I suppose, most folks hope the car owner will respond to the wailing or that the alarm is just going off temporarily until the owner gets the chance to turn it off.   I suspect that last night's alarm was probably a result of some malfunction  or another car bumping it because it would go off every 20 minutes for sometime.   

Of course, it shouldn't surprise any of you to know that the cause of my rant, is largely sleep deprivation.  Still, I imagine many others have had similar experiences.   Frankly, I am rather lucky, because this is the first time this has happend in the four years I have lived downtown.

But generally, this is not an uncommon occurance and for better or worse it seems most folks don't respond to car alarms. Instead we grit our teeth and hope it just stops, once we determine its not our car subject to the attempted theft.

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