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Comment by btrettel | Hacker News Reader

Whoever decided to make cars beep when you lock or unlock them did humanity a disservice in my view. I don't think the small benefit of helping the driver locate their vehicle outweighs the shear number of times that has woken people up.

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I don't usually find the lock beeping to be noticeable, certainly not louder than people's cars starting or that one asshole with the "loud and proud" engine that likes to idle it for heat in the morning.

What gets me are the people that have car alarms. I've never seen one do anything useful and people still get them. One in particular goes off weekly to the point I'm amazed it hasn't gone off due to someone putting a crowbar through the windshield. I just can't imagine having one of these go off weekly and 1) not disable it after the third time 2) not have "this must drive everyone bonkers" come across my mind.

Who has a car without an alarm? Almost everything manufactured in at least the past 2 decades has one installed from the factory, at least in the US.

Not my 2005 Jeep Wrangler, and I don’t recall my 2012 Civic having one, but I didn’t have it very long so that may be a flawed recollection.

The Civic doesn't have an alarm and does not beep when you lock it. German cars and appliances do. Like our coffee filter. We make "achtung! alarm!" jokes about it all the time.

Car alarms come standard in most cars, and you generally can't disable them (that's the point). Even my 20 year old VW has a car alarm, and there's no simple way to disable it, short of never locking my car door or disconnecting the horns (which are also activated by pressing on the steering wheel). I wish I could disable it, because this specific model has faulty door-open sensors that sometimes detect an open door when it's shut, triggering the alarm.

My immediate thought is: find the speaker and cut the damned wire. Is it protected deep inside the car or something?

It's the horn. If you cut the cord, you can't honk anymore.

Not always, and I was imagining one that wasn't, but you're right: that's the common case. Which is rather frustrating.

Is this an American thing?

In Europe I never ever hear cars beep when locked/unlocked, just the mechanical sound of the central locking and flashing the hazard lights once when unlocked, double when locked successful and tripple when lock failed(door not closed properly).

Having your car make a loud sound for lock/unlock just creates more noise in the neighborhood.

Maybe. But it’s also slightly more nuanced. Honda for example works like this. One press of the remote, locks all the doors. The second press will beep the horn if all the doors are successfully locked. If you left one of the doors open, the horn won’t beep on the second press. So it’s a away of getting confirmation that all doors are closed and locked. It seems useful, but when my neighbor comes home in the middle of the night and locks her car and the horn wakes up my kid who starts crying, it seems a lot less useful.

What gets me are the number of people who will put their keys in their pocket and just beat the ever loving hell out of the "lock" button as they walk away. So it's all "beep," "beep beep," "beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep" until they finally get out of range.

I'm sure those are the same people who, if or when they are pedestrians, stand at the corner and repeatedly slam the crosswalk request button.

Haha this is some kind of ocd thing

Seems like a much better UX would be for the remote to ding or vibrate instead of having the car make a sound. But then that would cost a few more dollars I suppose.

Most cars only beep on lock. Some only do it with a double-press on the button, the first being a silent lock. My (older) Jeep has no beep, you only hear the mechanical sounds, which I quite prefer.

I bought a second hand Ford Transit that beeps when locked and I thought it must indicate some failure mode! I still struggle to comprehend that someone would design it like that.

I simply removed the horn fuse. Which is a horrid solution because the horn is legally required to function in NZ (so I might not be insured).

I guess I could wire the horn to the +12V bus that's only live when the vehicle is running, but that takes extra work.

Many years ago, a my landlord’s son had a car alarm that talked. When he locked the car, it would say “System armed”. (The first time I heard that, I nearly freaked out.) And when unlocked, it would say “Alarm deactivated”. Whoever invented this, may have thought it really cool at the time. Fortunately, I never found out what it would say if the alarm went off.

My apartment is bordered by around 100 housing units, and a large number of car parking spaces. Very few of the cars beep anymore, but a large number honk their horns whenever (loosely) anyone gets in or out of the vehicle.

To those of us with especially poorly-placed apartments, this gratuitous honking throughout the early morning, day, and night is always annoying, often jolting, and sometimes awakening.

I understand that this can be disabled by the user, if they realize it's a noise pollution problem, and know that they can disable theirs, and how.

One thing I don't understand is why the automakers would ever think this was a good idea.

Another thing I don't understand is why safety regulatory authorities would permit car horns (i.e., urgent emergency signaling devices) to be misused in this new manner.

My Tesla honks when it locks and I'd prefer it did not. But if it were silent, I wouldn't know when it fails to lock because someone didn't fully close their door. I wish they'd do a Subaru beep instead. Or just send me a push notification on my phone. Having it honk in my garage every time I walk away gets a bit irritating.

That's the default on VWs as well. You can have that changed so it flashes the lights instead. I wonder if Tesla's have that option?

Or just make the remote chirp or vibrate would be even better.

My car (most cars?) just flashes all the turn signals. One long flash on lock, two short ones on unlock.

I had use of a Nissan Leaf for three months summer before last. Due to the lack of engine noise, it beeped loudly when in reverse as a safety feature for anyone who might be standing nearby. At 5am when I'd leave for work, I knew it had to be annoying the neighbors. I was able to replace it with a non electric car by the end of the summer but still feel guilty about the beeping the neighbors had been treated to for those three months.

The whole idea of a private car is to be as convenient as possible for the owner without any regard for others. Considering how deadly they are to pedestrians and how damaging they are to the environment, noise polution due to alarms is just a drop in the ocean.

I love you humor... this sort of logic could be expanded to basically everything mankind invented since we climbed down from the trees ;-) ...Shoes! Consider how deadly the are to ants! ... Soap! Consider how deadly it is to microbes! ... Nah, seriously: It's a matter of design. Cars don't need to harm the environment and they don't need to be noisy or overly dangerous. The problem is inconsiderate pea-brained idiots that don't think of others - and noise regulations that lag behind what's known in the scientific community by decades.

Most cars have the ability to disable the beep/honk when locking. I was really stoked when I found this feature in my manual. Too bad it's not the default and most people probably won't know it's possible.

My last car (a W177 Mercedes A Class) had an option to disable the acoustic locking verification sound in the infotainment system. I turned it off straight away.

The beep is unnecessary since the lights also flash when locking/unlocking.

No beep is my preference as well, except as a workaround to another poor design choice: key fobs with a single button for both lock and unlock. My car has this, and it's extremely annoying without a beep. Often difficult to tell whether it registered a lock, especially in bright sun when it's easier to miss the signal lights flashing.

You're woken up easily. Makes me wonder if my Subaru with loud pipes wakes people up.

It does. As a courtesy to my neighbours with my loud subaru I cut the engine and roll down the street when I come home late at night.

Wow that’s very kind. I wish I had neighbors like you!

You're talking to someone using text on the internet and you somehow know a sound of some kind with no information on loudness or distance can claim that it wakes someone "easily".

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