Car alarms are a debatably common tool on most cars today. Their effect, while good at heart, has questionable results in the real world. Something that occured last night, while in the midst of a deep and comfortable sleep, leads me to believe that car alarms have a couple of fatal flaws.

Aside from their dubious effect on actually detering a criminal, they have a couple of important tendencies that, while good at heart, have caused me to, essentially, want to destroy every single one ever made.

Negligible Effect

Car alarms are intended to alert the owner and anyone else nearby that their car is under some form of duress, whether it be from a criminal intruder, a violent force, or a combination thereof.  Most cars built now-a-days have these installed as a stock feature on the car to accompany electronic door locks, windows… everything.

Of course, if you have ever actually encountered one, you will know that they seem to randomly go off for no reason what-so-ever and, at that point, become more of a nuisance than a help, not much unlike that kid who is supposed to cut your lawn but leaves whole patches of uncut grass(sure, he is trying, but he seems to be falling short of the goal).

This is, ultimately, the source of their downfall (and the source of my pain). People have become so simultaneously used to hearing a car alarm and so annoyed by it, that when you hear it, the last thing you think is that someone might actually be stealing from a car. In fact, you chuckle that some poor basterd’s car alarm is going off and they aren’t around to click it.

What this translates to is that car theifs simply don’t care if alarms are there or not because no one is rushing to the rescue of Joe-Blow’s Honda Accord with the $250 head unit they are about to take.

Extended Siren

Designers of car alarms learned that alarms go off for no reason some times. This is why they have, apparently, added a feature to prevent the car from making noises for extended amounts of time – a matter of perspective in my opinion.

At the heart of the story: last night a thunderstorm set off a car alarm right outside my window. The alarm went off at full power for some amount of time. It then switched into a mode that leads me to believe that everyone who designs these alarms has never actually considered that a car might be near buildings.

This particular alarm’s secondary mode involved a two minute birage of alternating warning sounds. It would then switch to a “Silence for 5 seconds – beep – repeat” mode. This mode also lasted for about two minutes. Then it would remain quiet for about one minute. Finally, it would repeat that whole process again.

Total clocked time in the secondary mode: too damn long. This went on for about thirty minutes, at which point the alarm finally shut itself off. Silence was finally had, and I resumed sleeping.

The person that owned the car? Likely asleep in a portion of the building where he couldn’t hear it. Thus, he could not turn it off or even know that it had gone off at some point – save that I nearly hurled something heavy and rigged onto his hood… but I was worried it would start the whole torrent of noises again.

Poor Design

So, given that they are ineffective against criminals, no one responds to the sound of one except in laughter and anger, and they piss off people who might actually be living in builds around them – why do we still design them in the most annoying fashion? Must they be ridiculously loud and go on for 45 minutes? Must they beep at every burp, fart, or dirty face that comes at them? Something tells me, no.