Car alarms

What is the point of car alarms? Seriously.

When one goes off (because a leaf falls on the car), no-one comes running because their precious piece of metal is in imminent danger. The police don’t suddenly appear in order to arrest the cat that accidentally brushed a wheel arch with its whiskers. It just goes on and on and on annoying anyone within earshot.

I quote part of a frantic question from a chap who lives in Leeds:

My car alarm has suddenly started going off for no reason…The only way I can figure out how to stop it going off is to leave it unlocked. As you’ll understand, that’s not entirely satisfactory. I live in the middle of Leeds and leaving it unlocked really isn’t an option overnight.

His concern was for his neighbours, which is rather generous of him…though not quite so much as his concern for his car.

How on earth would anyone know his car was unlocked overnight? Does that happen in Leeds? Do great hordes of roving car thieves just walk along every street, trying the door handles of every parked car until they find one left unlocked because the alarm keeps going off?

Here’s another quote from a man whose alarm suddenly started going off on a new car:

Paranoid as we don’t have a great deal of luck with car alarms! Previous 2 cars both developed problems and had to have a lock on one of the doors replaced. 3rd time unlucky?!

Third time unlucky? Third time proves you’re an idiot, if you ask me. How hard is it to buy a car without a car alarm? I’m probably being incredibly naive. Probably car insurance companies won’t give you cover if your car doesn’t have an alarm because car insurance companies just love pissing off people without hearing problems.

And it’s not just me. This was posted on a forum by a woman back in 2010 (it’s her grammar and spelling):

is there anything i can do about a car alarm that keeps going off all hours of the night? i read somewhere that the police can be called & the car towed if the alarm’s been going off for more than 45 minutes, but what if the damn thing goes off for less than a minute but several times thoughout the night? the stupid car is parked right outside my window & it’s either sleep in my sweatbox studio or crack the window open & be woken up at random times during the night. augh! i’m starting to think of mean ideas after having to deal with this for a few months now.

Advice from subsequent posters ranged from decorating one of the headlights of the offending car with a cream cheese bagel to pouring a box of bird seed over the car to smashing a side window, popping the bonnet and pulling one of the leads off the battery (though I’ve also read that car alarms have their own power source so that last one won’t work). Oh, and the police won’t tow the car unless it’s reported stolen. Actually, that could be another way of stopping the alarm. Write down the rego and report it stolen.

And while I was made annoyed by an alarm which kept going off down the road from the flat, I am silenced when I read something like this, contained in a report from the Ukraine, yesterday.

There is a large military presence still here in Kramatorsk. There is a military jet that buzzes low overhead, making a ton of noise and setting off car alarms every couple of minutes.

Now that would REALLY be annoying!

I should add that I really like the bird seed idea…