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Comment by sammalloy | Hacker News Reader

The entire car alarm industry is a scam, promoted by Republican congressman Darrell Issa. It has seriously disrupted our lives in every way imaginable and has drowned out the beauty of nature. I can’t think of a single car that has been protected by a car alarm since they were invented. They are useless and should be banned for the health and safety of mitigating noise pollution.

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> It has seriously disrupted our lives in every way imaginable

I assume this is one of those things that changes dramatically based on where you live—for me (western US), this statement seems almost comically exaggerated.

Yeah, I can't remember the last time I heard a car alarm.

Visit a city

I live in one with more than 2 million people and it's something that I have to think hard about to remember the last time I heard one go off.

Longer if I have to think of one that went off and wasn't some form of 'oh shit oh shit oh shit, wrong button' reaction from the person trying who accidentally turned it on.

All it takes is one neighbor to move in with a finicky alarm and a street parking situation to ruin the peace and quite of this amazingly rare statistical anomaly you reside in.

> Longer if I have to think of one that went off and wasn't some form of 'oh shit oh shit oh shit, wrong button' reaction from the person trying who accidentally turned it on.

I think this is what makes it such a scam. The amount of false positive alarms makes more people desensitized to them.

I am jealous, I hear atleast one everyday. I live in an apartment complex in a suburb. I get woken up by them sometimes too

> I can’t think of a single car that has been protected by a car alarm since they were invented.

Many insurance companies offer lower premiums if you install a car alarm. So I guess they work at least a little, otherwise they wouldn't lower their premiums.

It may not actually stop a thief, but it may get a thief to chose a car that doesn't have an alarm, or maybe it is just a correlation, but there is at least something.

Still, I think they should be made illegal, they are a nuisance, there are already laws against making excessive noise and car alarms should be included. And if they create an arms race, by getting thieves to prefer cars without alarms, that's even more reason to ban them.

>Many insurance companies offer lower premiums if you install a car alarm. So I guess they work at least a little, otherwise they wouldn't lower their premiums.

I can think of another reason.

They run their computations- and say the insurance can be priced at $100. But hey what if we just increase to $105, and then offer a $5 discount to people who have car alarms? We get extra money (average of >100) and people think they are saving money. Who knows, might even be getting some type of kick back from the car alarm industry for promoting them.

Maybe I'm making shit up- but I've grown to hate insurance companies so much that it also makes perfect sense.

if you believe insurance companies have miscalculated their risk models, perhaps there is a massive business opportunity to undercut them then.

Only for the not so lucrative market of car owners without car alarms. Since all new cars are outfitted with one I would guess this would be the n% least willing to spend on their cars.

A better business case:

Insurance: $105, with alarm: $100

‘And here is a discount code for use with company X’.

And every referral get a kickback. Profit.

If you change the requirements for an insurance policy you attract a different risk pool. Just like health insurance companies offering gym membership to find healthier customers.

This was true in the early 1990's but I rarely hear a car alarm these days.

There was one particularly annoying car alarm that was popular in the 1990's that had a sequence of "police/ambulance siren" sounds.

Bieww Bieww Bieww Bieww, oooo eeee oooo eeee, rrr rrr rrr rrr, ee oo ee oo, booooooooup booooooooup booooooooup booooooooup, oooooooo eeeeeeee oooooooo eeeeeeee <repeat>

Or something like that.

For poor people whose ability to live depends on having a car, car alarms must be at least sort of useful to know if your car is being stolen at night. I’m sure they’re just a noisy inconvenience to the wealthy though.

Does the alarm ever prevent theft?

If I’m living in an area where they don’t go off often (like right now) and a car alarm woke me up, I would definitely check.

And I imagine if I triggered a car alarm, I would back off.

Hard to prove empirically either way, I think. Even if they do, it's then arguable if this is worth the noise pollution etc. Probably depends on the circumstances in any case, so any empirical result would be too specific to be of any use. Science!

A thief can disable your blaring car alarm in like 30 seconds. Enough time for anyone listening to go "wow someone must have hit the panic button in their pocket" and move on with their life.

Car alarms are not useful for bystanders, they are useful for the owner of the car (who would know their alarm shouldn't be going off).

That said, this makes them near-useless in most public settings.

"That couldn't have been mine, someone already shut it off" They will think, as the thief disconnects their battery and loads the car on a flatbed.

Usually when they are going off in my neighborhood the car is streetparked and that's how they end up getting triggered (sometimes a loud motorcycle can even do it). So the owner could be like well over a 10 minute walk away and out of earshot anyhow. As a result most of the time when I hear a car alarm it rings until the thing shuts itself off automatically to save the car battery.

When I hear a car alarm, I look away and hope the annoying car gets stolen as fast as possible.

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