Neighbors and their Damn Car Alarm

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

The next door neighbors have a white SUV that has a car alarm installed. Not the Viper type

… the other popular kind, the car-horn type that does this:

So for the last three days in a row, it’s started going off.

The first time, after 5-10 minutes of honk! honk! honk! honk! I get up and go outside — initially to track down where it was coming from. To my surprise, there was someone sitting in the driver’s seat and the vehicle was running, car hood up in the air. The driver would back the car a couple feet down the driveway, then pull that same couple feet back towards the garage, all the while it keeps going honk! honk! honk! honk!

… and I’m thinking to myself “Oh shit, they can’t figure out how to turn the damn thing off! I wonder if I should offer to help them disconnect the battery, that should make it reset…” but then the sound cuts off.

Next day, same thing: I go out after it’s been honking for nearly 10 uninterrupted minutes and as I approach the car from their driveway, the sound again cuts off.

I think the driver saw me approaching (and not looking very happy) and stopped doing whatever they were doing, realizing it was irritating their neighbor. But what the fuck were they doing?

Does one have to calibrate their sensitivity somehow?

Can you think of any reason someone would set off their own car alarm then repeatedly pull forward and backward in their driveway while the alarm runs?

2

Been on the other end of this. I live near the airport, and in addition to all the loud takeoffs have not one but two neighbors with loud aftermarket exhausts, one of which always comes in and parks at 11:20 at night, on the button. So my car alarm kept going off 2-3 times a day (seemed to get worse than it was when I first got it, tho). Eventually I had to bring it into the installer and have him tone it down (something I couldn’t figure out to do on my own), which he did, no more false alarms since then.

Twice now the off button has failed to work to shut it up, but quickly figured out that I just needed to remove and reinsert the battery, problem solved.

One of the loud exhaust people often takes a LONG time parking and turning his engine off, note.

3

I had to replace the fob on the aftermarket remote start dealie in my previous car and doing so was a undoubtedly very obnoxious for my neighbors in earshot. The previous owner had installed the system and the pairing instructions for the fob were different depending on the other alarm components hidden in the car. But it had to do with button presses and starting the car in a certain sequence and triggers the blaring siren if you get it wrong. I probably had to mess with it for 30 minutes. I specifically remember bringing my laptop to the car since the manual was hard to read on my phone and then struggling with the wifi.