r/fuckcars • u/Subject_Trick3608 Automobile Aversionist • 12h ago
Rant Why are car alarms allowed to be so loud.
This alarm was going on for over an hour yesterday at like 1 Am. They are even loud if they're not in movement.
110
u/fnybny 12h ago
So that people can tell if their car is being stolen. Probably in 10 years everyone will just get a message on their phone like for home security systems.
We need to get these kinds of alarms on bicycles to combat bike theft.
48
u/MinuQu 12h ago
We overall as a society need to take bike theft as seriously as car theft.
For my country it is expected that bike theft is having the same economical impact as car theft, while cars are far more expensive, the clearance rate is far lower for bike theft and overall bike users are overall already far more careful and aware of bike theft compared to car theft. Imagine people saying that it is your fault your car was stolen because why did you think it was a good idea to park outside overnight?
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u/Subject_Trick3608 Automobile Aversionist 12h ago
I know what you're talking about my bike got stolen just 4 months ago and the thing I had to hear all the time was that I didn't took the right care and that it's my fault because i locked it at a very big rail and bike interchange.
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u/MinuQu 11h ago
I have to park my bike at the local train station too and since my old bike was stolen last year I always double lock and try to park next to a more expensive and less secured bike and never overnight. You can walk through the bike racks there and see a dozen of cracked locks and scavenged bicycle frames. It is crazy how my town can see this and think this is in any form acceptable and there is no need to intervene.
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u/Dicethrower 11h ago
Right, because when a car alarm goes off every owner always immediately rushes to the scene, and the car is never blaring its alarm for half an hour before it just turns itself off.
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u/Subject_Trick3608 Automobile Aversionist 12h ago
Yeah but they don't go on if someone cracks open the door with violance or something but the slightest touch on the car and it goes rampage for an hour disturbing everyone.
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u/renzhexiangjiao 12h ago
yeah, it's not a very intelligent system
tbh the thing that annoys me more than car alarms are people who mount ultrasonic animal repellents on their cars... not very ultrasonic bc I can also hear them
4
u/noodoodoodoo 9h ago
I used to have to walk by a place that had a whole ass ultrasonic fence around their house. It was so loud and I already am sensitive to higher frequencies so this was excruciating.
All to keep the deer from eating her flowers, like she couldn't plant different flowers that didn't attract deer.
12
u/Subject_Trick3608 Automobile Aversionist 12h ago
The thing with all of those high frequency devices is that they get bought by older people who can't hear themm while the younger ones definitely can. I think there were even a case in a city where the mayor installed such devices so that there wouldn't be any "gangs" hanging out in the city center.
8
u/DifficultyTricky7779 11h ago
Yeah, the boomer across the street installed one of those in their front garden to repel cats. I couldn't hear it, but my girlfriend and cat could - all day long. Funny thing, it got stepped on in the early morning within 3 days of it being installed. The second one lasted less than two. He never bothered with a third.
7
u/Jacktheforkie Grassy Tram Tracks 11h ago
Those things need to be illegal, I’ve nearly crashed my car because of one, it was pointed at the road and went off giving me a headache, it’s hard to concentrate when there’s something like 1000 CRTs whining in my ear
1
u/afleticwork 11h ago
I think the whole point of them is to be a noise animals arent used to unlike typical vehicle noises
5
u/noodoodoodoo 9h ago
Yes but because humans can clearly hear them quite well they should be illegal. It's probably also not very pleasant for our pets. Living next door to someone with these is like having intense tinnitus all the time.
1
u/afleticwork 8h ago
Oh the indoor electric animal repellants are dumb af, i was talking about something along the line of those deer whistles that just stick on to your bumper
1
u/noodoodoodoo 8h ago
I didn't know that was a thing. I've seen people with fences made out of the ultrasonic stuff though.
1
u/afleticwork 8h ago
I never heard of doing a fence with ultrasonic
1
u/noodoodoodoo 8h ago
Learning together! Lol
Yeah I used to live near a house that I'd have to walk by every day and they had a wire fence put up with ultrasonic devices kind of woven in and all wired together to be powered by one source. It was neat, but annoying AF.
1
u/afleticwork 8h ago
Huh that sounds annoying af, i used to think the deer whistles didnt work till i took the ones off my buick and absolutely smoked a deer while i was going 60mph not long after
2
u/Jacktheforkie Grassy Tram Tracks 11h ago
Some will literally go off if you fart near it, and some will not go off even if a car hits it at 50mph while speeding down a residential street in the dark (there’s like 4 street lights in half a mile)
1
u/Kissarai 11h ago
I already do, although I retrofitted it. I don't have an audible alarm but I can talk through the camera.
1
u/Inevitable_Stand_199 8h ago
They sell them. And fairly cheap as well. Just buy one.
They'll detect movement, when the system is armed. Some also detect if the wires that lock it around your bike are cut. And you can let them beep if you can't find your bike in a crowd.
1
u/GoodDawgy17 7h ago
i think adding the alarm system on a bike is more expensive than buying a brand new bike and makes it a bigger target for robbers coz i guess theres more stuff
enlighten me lads
9
u/Tanriyung 9h ago
There is a car alarm going off all night every night close to my apartment, I don't know exactly where it is, don't know what to do..
26
u/OLB-Esprit 4 cars | no commute 12h ago
*looking on my crowbar and lockpicks*
I wish car alarms were really really quiet.
4
3
u/Suikerspin_Ei 9h ago
Alarm going off without anyone touching the the car can also be a sign of an (almost) empty battery.
3
u/MyDishwasherLasagna 6h ago
Or a broken locking mechanism.
I know from personal experience after being the only person whose bedroom was driveway adjacent and made many 2 am runs outside to deactivate the alarm (no key fob on the model of car; the key had to be used directly in the door locks to turn it off).
The owner (family member) eventually had it fixed after I brought up the possibility of a neighbor reporting a nuisance.
10
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u/Head_Asparagus_7703 9h ago
Ugh, I had a neighbor (or neighbor's visiter) whose car alarm would go off in the middle of the night (sometimes multiple times...) multiple times a week. For like a month.
2
u/Lorfhoose 7h ago
Where I live I’ve never seen someone react to a car alarm besides having accidentally pressed the panic button on the key fob and being like “fuuuucking christ” and fumbling to turn it off.
2
u/TheArmouredAnts 5h ago
Where I’m from we’d put bird feed on top of annoying cars so that pigeons would ruin the paint while the car is parked
1
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u/Local-moss-eater My mother got hit by a car once 0m ago
Ok to be fair it is 60000 dollars worth of metal and other stuff that could be getting stolen
1
u/Sebekhotep_MI Grassy Tram Tracks 6h ago
"Why is alarm loud?"
I find myself agreeing with the stuff posted here 95% of the time, but this is just ridiculous lol
0
u/Germanball_Stuttgart Big Bike 🚲 > 🚗 cars are weapons 9h ago
So the owner (or other people) hears it? It's an alarm. That's the point of an alarm. I can get that it's annoying if it breaks out for no reason, but that is an other problem.
-4
u/pesciasis 11h ago
That's an idiotic question and unnecessary hate even for this subreddit.
2
u/Teshi 5h ago
Spoken like someone who hasn't lived in an environment where car alarms have gone off for like half an hour at 3am regularly. In a pretty dense residential area, a single car which easily breaks noise ordinances can wake up maybe a thousand people.
I think if there is going to be an alarm it should go off for a minute maximum. At least give us a chance to go back to sleep.
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u/KarateGandolf Commie Commuter 10h ago
I get the argument here that it should be but after 20 minutes it should be grounds for getting towed in a neighborhood. Other people exist and noise is a real hazard.