I have a car old enough to have an actual slot in the door handle you can put a key in to unlock it. I went to a real hardware store (not an orange or blue big box) & got a $5 key made; no electronics so it won’t start the car but it will un/lock the doors (& work the accessory switch in the ignition so I can raise/lower the windows) but it’s lightweight, doesn’t have any electronics (so it can get wet/muddy) & I can tie it into the shoelaces on my running shoe while I lock the key/fob into the car, hidden away out of sight.
I don’t know about the newer ones but a friend had an older Ford Explorer, & a bike on a hitch mount. If he had the bike mounted & put it into reverse, “EEEEEEEEE” as it thought you were imminently about to hit something. How about disable the alarm if the hitch is in use?
That would only work if you’re awake, near your phone (I don’t carry it in my house), somewhere you can take action to your car if it is a real incident, & somewhere where you’re car can ping you (won’t work in an underground parking garage)
You know how knives come with a little safety protector so you don’t accidentally cut yourself taking it out of the packaging? I bought a machete, it had one of those too. Scroll over the picture in this random seller’s ebay listing to enlarge it & see how little of the blade that safety tip covers
NJ has mandatory full-serve & is cheaper than PA or NY due to lower state taxes
I’ll grant you that the question of transmission from underground parking garage location is a difficult issue but your other objections are the problem of the car owner. Really, the vast majority of the times that car alarms are triggered is just creating noise pollution.
For at least some older BMW models / years, the sound came out of the speakers at whichever corner(s) were at risk. So although the tones were the same in all 4 corners, you could tell where the danger was.
I’m embarrassed at how long it took me to figure that feature out. Before that I was fuming just as you were. “Why are they so stupid as to be warning me about the wall in front of me while I’m in reverse. Damned overcautious Germans! Mutter, bitch, moan, etc.” Of course they picked a staccato beep that was very difficult for humans to direction-find. A continuous tone works much better for that. So I guess muttering and moaning were still at least a little bit appropriate.
Also, when backing out of a space in a parking lot, there are three risks: cars passing behind you, and you turning prematurely while in reverse and whacking your front fender on the adjacent garage roof support post or adjacent car. The worse your neighbors parked the bigger that last risk. So monitoring the front of the car while in reverse is not totally valueless.
My refrigerator doesn’t have touch controls. But the cool setting is still electronic. And it does not retain its setting. What makes this bad is that it defaults to the least cold option! So, every time the power goes out, I have to remember to reset it back so the food stays properly cold.
The weird thing is, the freezer has a mechanical dial, so it works just fine. It’s just the fridge. And that seems particularly odd since, as I understand it, the temperature adjustment for the fridge is entirely mechanical in operation–it just partially opens or closes a vent from the freezer. So it’s actually having to physically move something to go back the the lowest setting.
But, even if they had to reset it, surely people would rather their food get too cold than too hot. Plus having the cold air come in faster after a power outage would make sense.
In fact, that number of false alarms creates a sort of Boy Who Cried Wolf effect, where whenever I hear a car alarm I just assume it’s a false alarm.
Years ago I was riding my bike home from work, and I passed a parked car with the alarm going off and a guy messing with the wiring under the dash. My first thought wasn’t “That guy’s trying to steal that car”, it was “That guy’s probably doing some DIY repair on his car, and he accidentally set off the alarm in the process.”
I’m still annoyed by my refrigerator, where the temperature setting is a dial with numbers from 1 to 9. Which end is which? It’s helpfully labeled “9 = max”, but that still doesn’t answer the question. Does that mean that 9 is the highest temperature, or the greatest amount of cooling?
Don’t tell me which end of the scale is “max”; tell me which end is cold!
Oh heck, even if i think someone is stealing a car, i can’t be arsed to do anything to help the antisocial bastard who left his alarm armed so it keeps me and all my neighbors awake at night.
I don’t hate them so much now that I’ve moved out of NYC. But you know, your car actually ISN’T worth more than 1000 of your neighbors getting some sleep.
Their SmartPrint, or whatever the crap is called, is what caused our company to stop buy HP. If I remember correctly, you can print a few “courtesy” pages before the HP account requirement pops up. Fuck off!
We finally got a couple of cheap refrigerator temperature gauges ( red zones for danger!) since we started having more power outages. And that’s about all I care about.
I always buckle my seatbelt, but my car complains about my unbuckled “passenger” whenever I have groceries or my laundry bag or whatever on the passenger seat. I’ve circumvented it by just always keeping that seat belt buckled.
I was just going to post the same thing. Whenever I put a heavy backpack, or groceries, or whatever on the passenger seat, my car incessantly tries to warn me about the unbuckled “passenger’s” seat belt. I need to figure out how to disable that.
Good grief. I thought that was a) illegal and b) therefore made next to impossible to do. If there are instructions about that in the manual, too, I’ll be very happy.
I always wear my seatbelt – when I’m actually out on the road. I feel so weird without one in a moving car by now that there’s no way I’m going to forget it. But I live on a dead-end road, and sometimes want to move the car around in the driveway. And even when I’m headed out, I dislike being yelled at if I want to start the car first and put my belt on second.
Apple iPhone. In particular, attempting to access voicemail.
I have a work iPhone 13. I only use it to make/receive phone calls and the very rare text message. I use no other apps. Never. Ever. (I moved from telework to remote work so the phone is only used the same way as a landline phone, with the addition of text messages.)
It’s a pain in the ass attempting to access voicemail without accidentally dialing the number. Since the bulk of my voicemail is SPAM messages, all too often I end up dialing a spam number and must immediately disconnect.
I’ve got my car rigged to display the seat belt warning on the display but make no noises. It’s not like I’d ever forget the belt, but like you I often put it on after starting, backing out of the space, and beginning to pull forward. I can move about to see behind me much better before my ass is cemented to the seat pan. Further, I absolutely refuse to be harassed by a machine. They work for me on my schedule, not vice versa.
