Car alarms: Do they do any good?

Factual Questions
1

Does anyone have any first-hand experience with a car alarm actually stopping a theft (either of the entire car, or the radio, or something else inside)?

Yes, I know that one of the ways that an alarm is supposed to prevent theft is that a would-be thief spots the little blinky light and decides to steal/break into someone else’s car instead of the alarmed one, and that in most cases such an event would be hard to document. Still, has anyone seen a surveillance video in which a thief is checking cars in a parking garage, passing up the alarmed ones and breaking into an unalarmed one? Or has anyone even come back to their alarmed-car to find the car next to it had been burglarized? This would certainly not be clear-cut evidence that the alarm worked, but I’d be interested in hearing of such close calls anyway.

I tend to think that car alarms serve no useful function, other than to annoy people in the vicinity when the false alarm goes off. So I’m looking for anyone with experience to the contrary.

Obligatory anecdote: Many years ago, a friend of mine had the stereo in his car repeatedly stolen (ok, for the nit-picky: not the same stereo repeatedly stolen, but the original and each replacement stereo stolen in turn). He finally invested in an expensive alarm that, in addition to the usual horn blowing, sent a radio-signal alarm to his keychain. He was at a friend’s house, and the alarm went off. He immediately ran outside to find (you guessed it), the stereo gone and no sign of the thief.

2

Well most modern car alarms are good at keeping your car from being stolen. They normally have some linkage to the ignition or fuel system that keeps the car from running when the alarm is tripped or active. Your radio and other belongings can’t really be helped though. If a burglar wants your radio, the alarm is only as good as the glass in your window. The only real solution is a cheap radio that can’t be pawned for much or one that has a detachable faceplate you can take with you. Also, don’t leave gold bricks or diamond rings on your car seat where anyone can see it.

3

I am firmly of the opinion that people who install car alarms do so totally with form in mind, not function. That is, they like having another goofy, electronic gadget that blinks and beeps more than they fear their car will be stolen.

If your car is valuable enough to be at risk of being stolen you’d have theft insurance. Everyone hears car alarms going off all the time and nobody gives a crap or does anything when they do.

4

I’ll agree with the gist of Roadfood’s OP as well as Hail Ants’ appraisal. But a thought occurs.

Yes, we have become desensitized to them and we universally fail to react with anything other than resentment at putting up with hearing them. If we look at all, it’s generally to identify a suspected repeat “crying wolf” offender. The rightful operators of so-equipped vehicles as well as innocent passersby initiate the goings-on often enough that we’d all have a hard time deciding if it was truly alerting us to a miscreant’s endeavor.

And yes, FWIW, I’ve had my little blinky light stolen a couple of times.

Then this OP got me reflecting on the situation, and I think it’s possible the phenomenon has peaked. There was one - I don’t the name – that seemed to dominate the market and you all know that sequence of sounds. My cousin’s parrot learned it and my cousin was seriously considering a new home for the bird.

But contemplating it now, I truly think I do hear them less often than I did say 5-10 years ago. Perhaps the owners of such experienced enough collective embarrassment or annoyance that their reliance on these babies has subsided. Or maybe they had the cathartic sort of experience my ex did when it went off again and she just stomped the **** out of the remote and went without.

But I do, for now, feel that their presence is dwindling. What say thee, TM?

5

I reserve the right to smash and key any car with an alarm that has been going off for over 5 minutes. If you have a car alarm - that’s great - make sure it automatically turns off in under five minutes or else I (or someone like me) will smash your car and turn the alarm off for you.

6

A much more effective vehicle security device would be the {url=http://www.lojack.com]lojack. Cars can and are stolen with alarms and alarms do not aid in recovery. The lojack vehicle security services have helped recover over 40,000 stolen cars.

We live near Houston and in a three month period our extended family had one Cheverolet Silverado Suburban stolen and two attempted. All three vehicles had alarms. The lojack is the vehicle security device recommended by all three of the officers to whom the incidents were reported.

Abby

7

Oops, I apologize for the coding error. I would sure appreciate it if a mod would take the time to fix it.

I really must preview more often!

Abby

8

I don’t mean to sound unappreciative, and maybe this is my fault for going on at length in the OP, but no one has yet addressed my actual question:

Does anyone have any experience with a car alarm actually preventing a theft?

Or should I take the lack of response to that question as an indication that it’s never happened?

(I really didn’t want to start a discussion of how to best project your car, I just want to know if a car alarm has ever served the purpose for which it’s designed.)

9

I had a special dance(I called it the “Safety Dance”) that I would do every time I heard one one of these, with a different move to accompany the seperate sounds of the report. It offered me endless pleasure during my high school years. I bet the parrot misses the alarm as much as I do.

10

I’ve never heard anyone’s car alarm preventing their car from being stolen or broken into. Just recently, one of my friends had their car vandalized - the theives got away with 3 of the tires, and smashed the heck out of the body of the car. And not a peep from the alarm.
My friend had to turn off the alarm so he could get his stuff out of what was left of his vehicle before it was towed away. What good is that?

11

Well, quite a few years back (early 90s), a number of vehicles in the company parking lot where I worked at the time were broken into (if I remember, via the rear quarter window). Cars that had ‘functioning’ alarm systems DID NOT get broken into (a running joke that day was the engineering guys trying to figure out how to build and mount a flashing red light in their cars).

12

They sell (or have sold in the past) blinking red led’s (look in JC Whitney).

With the exception of lojack the thing you are trying to accomplish is to have the theif/vandel steal/vandelize someone elses car. Whether it is a car alarm, the club, a blinking LED or a unlocked club across the steering wheel IMHO they all work the same and much better then nothin’.

Also is it possible that we hear less car alarms because:
1 more are installed by the factory and work better then aftermarket
2 they are better at detecting what they are suppose to detect (less false alarms)
3 #! 0p^|
Also I love those proximity alarms that you can set off by just standing near the car. They are rare but I love to set them off.

13

There is an easy way for the question to be answered here. I’d do it myself but I haven’t owned a car since '95. Someone who does, take a couple minutes to call your insurance agent. Ask them if there it would save you any money on your comprehensive premium if your car (or a newer car if yours isn’t really worth stealing) had an alarm. If the insurance companies are willing to give a discount (i.e. an incentive) to install an alarm, then by the very nature of the industry, there must be a sound, statistically supported reason.

14

http://www.whenigrowup.net/d/20010703.html

15

Roadfood, I offer the following anecdotes from the inside. My information is about 12 years old and drawn from my time hanging around the wrong crowd in high school/college.

1) There are four basic types of car vandals:

a) Teenagers that break in for fun. They hit vehicles rumored to be easy marks for some reason or another (back then, usually Japanese cars). These thrill-seekers go out of their way NOT to get caught and are easily deterred by barking dogs, nearby traffic, people walking around in the distance – and anti-theft devices. This type of thief will occasionally attempt to take the entire vehicle if it is very easy pickings. These were the type of vandals my “friends” were.
b) People breaking in to find valuables to fence (often drug addicts). Stereos and ALARMS were common targets. Sometimes they will put a car up on cinder blocks, deflate the tires, and remove valuable rims because of their high resale value. These guys are neither discriminate about what they break into, nor how they break into your vehicle. They will do lots of damage, and are not particularly scared of getting caught. The bright side is that these guys rarely steal the whole vehicle. I ran into a few of these now & then, as a few of the thrill-seekers I knew graduated into this grade of thief.
c) Criminals fleeing the law (or fleeing another criminal). Experienced criminals who have car-stealing knowledge will sometimes attempt to score an easy getaway ride. They always steal the entire car, but rarely leave any valuables to recover later. They usually dump the car within 20 miles of the point of theft.
d) Professional thieves. These guys normally target only high-dollar or vintage cars. They are the “hackers” of the car-stealing underground. They aim to steal the entire vehicle and get that vehicle into the automobile black market. These guys are intelligent, well-organized, and have access to many specialty tools and detailed engineering info. They often work in teams.

2) Now, with that background info in mind, let me answer the OP.

As of the early 90s, yes, an alarm deters SOME car vandals/thieves. A blinking alarm deters the young thrill-seekers almost without fail. An alarm can make a petty thief pass your car, also, if there are easier marks nearby. They may have the knowledge to disable an alarm, but messing with an alarm can eat up valuable time if the entire car is not the target.

Now, criminals in flight or professional car thieves don’t even consider alarms. A fleeing criminal may just take his chances and drive with the alarm blaring – it always stops eventually. A professional thief, OTOH, will have on hand the knowledge to beat the alarm when performing the theft.

One thing that may have made alarms less popular over the last 5 or so years is that alarm-beating knowledge has spread to even the teenage thrill-seeking thieves. Therefore, I’d conjecture that they are LESS effective than they once were at preventing break-ins and stereo thefts. Of course, alarms still do great at preventing LOSS OF THE VEHICLE if you don’t have an expensive or rare car.

16

No, they don’t do any good. I have heard dozens upon dozens of car alarms go off and no one has every paid them any attention. Personally I would like to smash every damn car alarm in existance.
They don’t do any good because they are like the boy who cried wolf. The same goes with those windshield signs, “Please call police.” Has anyone, ANYONE ever called the police upon seeing that sign? Answer: Hell no!!

17

My car does have an alarm and my insurance company did give a small break in the price of my insurance premium for it. My car also has Lojack which has proven itself much better at getting a car back than just an alarm if the car is stolen and my insurance company didn’t give a crap. They had one little standard deduction for any alarm and that was it (my insurance company is State Farm).

FTR: The only reason I have an alarm is that I wanted keyless entry and the alarm was simply part of that system (factory installed) on my model of car. On the upside my alarm does not go off unless a door is opened while it is engaged. You can otherwise smash the windows and jump up and down on the car with no response from the alarm (in short…it’s not my car annoying the hell out of everyone and if it is then it really is getting broken into). Of course, potential thieves don’t know this when they see my blinky light which is just fine by me.

18

beatle, finally someone else has noticed that birds are singing car alarms! I live in Memphis, and there are lots of mockingbirds here (it’s the TN state bird, after all). I noticed a few years ago that many of them now sing that very car alarm. There’s one that lives in a tree that I pass on my walk to work who seems to be stuck on it. Once I started noticing that, I also noticed that the birds were taking that car alarm song and elaborating on it like jazz musicians. I wonder how the birds percieve the alarm. The voice of some bird god? That would have to be one big honkin’ bird to make a song as loud as a car alarm.

19

“I am firmly of the opinion that people who install car alarms do so totally with form in mind, not function. That is, they like having another goofy, electronic gadget that blinks and beeps more than they fear their car will be stolen.”

Well, I am firmly of the opinion that you didn’t think before you posted. There are two good reasons to have car alarms other than being gadget-happy.

  1. The alarm doesn’t just make noise, it locks out the ignition, which can be a significant delay to the non-professional car thief.

  2. Many insurance companies offer a discount on your policy if the insured car has an alarm, and a lot of people can’t afford to pass up a discount.

I am not gadget-crazy with my car, which I consider a tool for transportation and not some sort of ego-trip extension or reflection of myself. But I got an alarm with my car for the reasons mentioned above.

20

The “secure” underground parking in my apartment building is occasionally broken into. In one 2-day period, 8 cars (out of about 20 total) were broken into (stereos stolen, and the cars vandalized). Not one had an alarm or immobilizer. Alarmed cars close to the exits were not broken into, unalarmed cars further out of the way (like mine) were. They went out of their way to hit cars without alarms.

Granted, the police figured they were high-school student on their Spring Break looking for quick cash, not professional thieves, but the alarms were almost certainly a deterrent in this case.

The insurance company wrote off my car due to the excessive damage. The first thing I did when I got a new car was install an alarm & immobilizer. The building has had break-ins since, and my car hasn’t been touched. I firmly believe alarms are effective. My insurance company agrees and offers a discount.