I have. I was stopped at a light, some people who walked past the guy sticking the coat hanger in at the top of the door and said something to him. He answered them and they continued on their merry way. I’ve no idea if he said it was his car (and that the keys were inside), or if it was his car or not, but he continued fishing around with the coat hanger and no one else asked him anything or bothered him.
Jochstrap I’ve seen a car towed with it’s alarm going off. Sure you notice. And people probably would call the cops if they saw a car driving around with the alarm going off. However, if the thief just wants to get at the $2000 stereo system rather than the car… That’s what happened to a friend of mine. His alarm went off no one did anything, contents of his car – gone! Including over $1500 in sports equipment that was in the trunk.
About 7-8 years ago (so may make this post irrelevant :)), my mom’s car alarm went off in the middle of the night. The alarm hardly ever went off unless you actually opened the door. Well, I guess that summer evening, we forgot to close the window (southwest side of Chicago), and someone opened the door to get at the things with the tollbooth change in them. Alarm went off, they fled. Next day a neighbor from across the street said he found one of the tollbooth thingies in his backyard.
So there’s a counterpoint. But as I said, this was a long time ago.
Back in the early 90’s my car alarm saved me from theft twice. But car alarms were a relatively new technology, and people actually reacted when the alarms went off and scared away the potential thieves (who were kids, anyway, both times). Now my vehicle doesn’t even have one, since nobody pays attention to them anymore. I do, however, use a burglar alarm for my house. I’ll definitely pay attention if that goes off!
What’s up with the idiots who don’t seem to know how to get into their own vehicles without setting off the alarm? Are they just the kind of buttheads who like to annoy other people, similar to the loud, revving engine/thumping stereo thing?
A guy’s alram was malfunctioning and going off eveyr few miutes. We asked the security guards in the lot to tow it. They refused saying they weren’t allowed to. So we called the cops (by now it was 3 a.m.).
The cops said all we could do was take down the licence plate number then go file some paperwork at city hall. Several weeks later there would be some kind of court thing and then MAYBE it would result in a fine because his stupid ass alarm vioalted noise bylaws.
We have an account with a towing company now (job related), so next time, security guards or no, we’re having the f**ker towed.