Why are car alarms legal?

[Tim_T-Bonham.net]

@Shot_From_Guns

Imagine if the police department was alerted and required to respond every time a car alarm went off!

That’s the solution – every time the car alarm goes off in your neighborhood, call the police at 911 and report it, giving the license plate number. Even if the alarm has shut off by the time they arrive, it will be logged. Enough reports, and the police will do something about it.

@blondebear

Calls to the police don’t work because the alarm resets before they show up. They won’t ticket a vehicle unless the alarm is going off in the presence of an officer, and they won’t contact the owner on the basis of a neighbor’s complaint.

Sounds like your police are not doing their job. Complain to their superiors, or your elected City Council members, who can get the police to respond.

Or meet the officers at the car when they arrive, and demand that they at least run the license plate so YOU can contact the owner to complain. (And while you are waiting by the car, if you happen to bump against it as you see the police car turn the corner, setting off the alarm again …)

[Oakminster]

@Shot_From_Guns

If the idea is to alert the owner of the car, why don’t the alarms instead involve transmitters that play a screechingly loud sound inside the owner’s home, or from their keychain? (Gee, 'cause then people would actually have to be bothered by their own alarms at all hours instead of bothering everyone else.)

So simple, yet so elegant.

[Napier]

Car alarms are generally not illegal because car companies have way too much goddam money. Doesn’t anybody here watch television? It’s pretty obvious.

[BigT]

Exactly why are car alarms so sensitive? What do they think you could do without coming in physical contact with the car. Set the whole thing up to work like home security, except you do not have as much time to keep the alarm from going off: that would be on the fob.

[eulalia]

@Shot_From_Guns

.

If the idea is to alert the owner of the car, why don’t the alarms instead involve transmitters that play a screechingly loud sound inside the owner’s home, or from their keychain? (Gee, 'cause then people would actually have to be bothered by their own alarms at all hours instead of bothering everyone else.)

I would love it if my car alarm would do that. When I hear one going off in my neighborhood at night I have to get up and throw some clothes on and go out to see if it’s my car, and by the time I get out it’s usually stopped so it was probably someone else’s, maybe set off by accident. Sounds echo around here so I can’t tell what direction it’s coming from till I get outside. The only time I’ve ever heard mine for sure was when I replaced the battery.

[Fair_Rarity]

Last year, my neighbor’s car alarm would go off every day within half an hour of 4pm.

I never figured out why. No one would be out there, nothing happened in the area at that time.

It would go off for 10 minutes sometimes and they were home. It would INFURIATE me because didn’t occur to them it was going off daily? And that maybe you carry your clicker so when it does bleat, you can just click-click it off?

It stopped just as suddenly as it started.

My other neighbor’s car literally went off one day as I walked past it on the sidewalk.

I think that car alarms are almost ineffective because so many of us have alarm fatigue. I don’t even bother to look out my window when I hear one going off because in all my years of existence, I’ve never heard an alarm go off for a reason that would require my observation.