A recently revived zombie thread reminded me of something I’ve often wondered: Are there some types/models of car out there where it’s actually impossible to lock the car without the horn honking sound?
I can lock my Hyundai by pressing the key fob lock button once. When I press it a second time the horn chirps to signify the alarm is enabled. Well, that’s what the sales guy told me at the time.
ETA: I just read the first few posts in the linked thread that support my comment, so maybe I don’t understand what you’re getting at.
I can set mine to honk, not honk, headlights stay on for x number of seconds (I forget), headlights not on, interior light on for x number of seconds, interior light off.
I set it so It doesn’t honk, the headlights stay off and the interior light goes out.
I think all fobs are different. Most that I’ve seen are press once to lock the driver door, no honk, press twice to lock all the doors, and it honks. On some, the second press sets the car alarm. I have never actually owned a car with a key fob, but I have a fair amount of experience with them from renting cars for work.
Surely there’s few or none that sound the horn when you lock the car by inserting the key in its slot and turning. Yes?
On some cars these days, the keyhole in the driver’s door isn’t actually mechanically linked to anything. It’s just connected to a couple of switches that have the exact same effect as hitting the lock or unlock button on the fob. I only have a key with no fob for my family members’ Audi and if you want to unlock all the doors you have to turn the key twice, just like tapping the unlock button. If you lock it with the keyhole, it gives the same polite little honk from the central locking unit it would if you used the fob. I think that’s basically the same with all VW group cars. (Cool fringe benefit to this-- if you turn the key in the lock and hold it you can roll the windows up and down from the outside!)
My car has a small dial under the dash to let you dial up or down the volume of the lock chirp.
Are you sure, cause that doesn’t really make sense. You press them once to **unlock **just the driver’s door and twice to unlock all the others. Locking only the driver’s door would not make any sense so why would any system be made to do that?
I have an older vehicle, a 2004 Nissan Pathfinder, and the only time the horn won’t beep when you lock it via the keyless remote is if there’s a door that isn’t completely closed (I assume it doesn’t beep to alert you to this). I don’t know if it still arms the security system anyway, I’ve never tested that…
I have a Kia Sportage and, should I dare to honk my horn, it will activate my anti-theft system such that the car will honk whenever I lock OR unlock it by any means at all. Key, keyless entry, by hand from inside the car. And it will do this until I raise the hood, disconnect the battery, step on the brake, reconnect the battery, and then reset all my radio stations and the dashboard clock.
Okay, the antitheft thing has nothing to do with the radio stations and dashboard clock. My point here is that this is what I have to do whenever I honk the damn horn. So I don’t.
On my car (2004 Mazda3), it’s once to lock, a second time within 5 seconds to confirm. The confirmation gives a beep and a flash of the hazards. If one of the doors is not properly closed (say, the seatbelt wasn’t properly retracted and is stuck between the door and the frame), it will not give a beep. I almost always click twice to confirm that all my doors are properly locked.
Makes note not to buy car which cannot behave in polite society…
For all those whose cars MUST make noise:
Please move into condo towers and park only in the underground spaces. Do not park them on the street or in apartment complex lots surrounded by people trying to sleep. Not even city streets in residential areas.
Thank you.
Interesting. I’m someone who is immensely bothered by sounds, especially when sleeping. There’s one car in the neighborhood that has some kind of alarm warning that emits 5 short, rapid beeps and it makes me see red and want to HULK!! SMASH!!! all the car’s windows with my hammer. And strangle the owner.
But that one, single little ‘mep’ from cars signalling they’re locked or the alarm’s set? Never bothers me. Weird.
Oh, I need to know the answer to this one, because I am about to send a Strongly Worded Letter to the yoga studio across the street from my daughter’s house, and I want to be accurate when I say “I understand that it is possible to lock any car these days without making a noise that makes our dog bark and wakes up the newborn and the two-year-old.”!
As for needing confirmation that none of the other doors have failed to close securely, that’s all well and good if you have the whole family in the car and piling out of all the doors. But in my situation, it is one person driving alone in a car. If the other doors had been improperly closed the sensors would have alerted them as they were driving. And the noise situation is made worse by the retaining wall that runs alongside the parking lot, causing any noise to echo a bit.
Those that are bothered by a little chirp probably live in an area with a high population density.
See how that works?
It sounds like it’s your dog’s bark that is the problem, not the horn, as the horn is not disturbing any person (that you have stated). And that is the issue here - No person is being disturbed by the horn, and 2 are being disturbed by your dog’s barking. It’s easier to blame someone else, then to blame your own pet.
But it’s easier to fix the issue with your own pet then to fix the problem with society and car horns beeping will always happen, even if you can get this one person to comply. Perhaps you can look in to getting your dog trained not to bark from hearing a car horn - this would be the best solution of all, and money well spent for the peace it would bring. I would say a polite letter asking if they can help may go further then a strongly worded letter may even get a reply that your dog’s barking is disturbing them.
I do believe some cars will beep if you have the security system on, as I had a friend who had one of them. You can place the car in valet mode or off, but it’s not something commonly done, not for a everyday parking situation, and I think when you go into that mode it chirps/beeps to confirm, then again beeps/chirps when it is reset back, many people don’t know how to either, and when they accidentally switch it have to look into how to get it back to normal. So it is not practical for most, though perhaps possible, and some people may be willing to go to quite mode as the norm. More cars seem to be going to the more polite chirp, so time is on your side.
You may have some more sway if it is a employee/owner’s car as opposed to a customer’s.
I usually drive alone - but not always, and have been alerted many times about a improperly closed door. I do place things in the passenger’s seat and use that door to get them, I also sometimes have the driver’s door not closed right. In my case my car will chirp 5 times to let me know, but again what you want is possible but usually not practical. Certainly not practical for me to change it back and forth depending on if I use the passenger door.
My VW can be programmed to disable the beep, but it requires a software package that costs a couple hundred bucks. Newer models have kindly added this option to the dashboard menus, but not mine. Ugh.
I USED to be able to program my car (04 Pathfinder) to not honk. It won’t do it any more. Always honks when I lock it. :mad:
The combination lock/alarm/immobilizer system on lower end Hyundais can’t be disabled without also disabling the horn. It’s tres annoying.
One of the first things I did when I got my new car was to disable the lock beep. It just feels like I’m being rude and annoying if I allow it to beep, because it’s kinda loud. It still flashes the lights and you can still hear the “click” of the locks, and that’s plenty of feedback for me.
My '98 Saturns could be unlocked with a key in the slot and turning, but then the alarm would go off and you couldn’t turn the ignition on for 15 minutes. Using the keyfob (BEEP!BEEP!) was mandatory to lock or unlock the car with a (BEEP!BEEP!) instead of the entire alarm going off. Theoretically there was a way to stop this and disable the alarm system so the keyfob (BEEP!BEEP!) would just unlock/lock the car. The manual mentioned this was possible, but wouldn’t reveal the secret and not a single mechanic I took them to knew how to do it, including at the Saturn dealership (back when there were Saturn dealerships.) I even started a thread here once trying to solve this problem, and while I got some answers and link, the instructions did not work in either car.
And if you didn’t lock the car, the alarm system would activate itself within a few minutes. They called it “passive arming,” or something like that. So even if you hadn’t locked it, you had to use the keyfob (BEEP!BEEP!) to signal to the UNLOCKED car that you weren’t stealing it
Tres fun while camping, I assure you. Mostly we just left a car door open all the time, but inevitably some well meaning individual would notice it and shut it for us, arming the alarm and necessitating a keyfob (BEEP!BEEP!) to open it, or, if you opened the passenger side door not noticing a Good Samaritan had closed the driver’s side door you left open, the entire damn alarm sequence would start.
These days, maybe. But older used cars, maybe not.