it's not even super complicated to make a semi-original or even customizable honk, zero innovation is happening, the free market fucking sucks dawg. yeah im totally going to get up at 2am cause some generic ass sounding alarm is going off again in the neighborhood. what a useless fucking thing that has somehow kept a veneer of security for decades lol.
I've truly always wondered this. It conveys 0 information
yeah unless you're the type to look out your window every time you hear a big enough sound, car alarms fuckin blow. especially living in a city where they happen often enough you just tune it out after being mildly annoyed by the sound and then hearing dogs barking
The idea is exactly that: draw enough attention because the sound is annoying as fuck. Getting even one pair of eyeballs could be enough for the police to go on.
Of course, the only ones the cops catch are joyriding teens. Alarms are useless against smash and grabs and professional car thieves.
i don't think you gotta hand it to cops that much, i don't honestly think they even catch joyriders. i get what you're saying though, alarms are just a false sense of security that actually does nothing when every alarm sounds exactly the same
From the (CIA)wikipedia page for "Car alarm":
"Although inexpensive to acquire and install, the effectiveness of such devices in deterring vehicle burglary or theft when their only effect is to emit sound appears to be negligible.
...
Although car alarms of some kind have been available since the beginning of the automobile era, the dramatic increase in their installation in the 1980s and 1990s coupled with the fact that nearly all types of car alarms are easily triggered accidentally (frequently because of high sensitivity settings) means that people who hear them often ignore them. In 1994, the New York City Police Department claimed that car alarms may actually be making car theft and break-in crimes more frequent. There is one account in 1992 of a thief in New York City rocking a car to deliberately trigger its alarm in order to help conceal the sound of a breaking window.
Because of the large number of false alarms with car alarms, many vehicle manufacturers no longer factory-fit simple noise-making alarms, instead offering silent immobilizers. Alternatively, an aftermarket vehicle tracking system can easily trace stolen vehicles. Most police tracking systems require the user to pay a recurring fee, whereas factory immobilizers are included in the purchase price of the vehicle. GPS locating systems enable the owner of the vehicle to lock and unlock, track, and disable the starter of the vehicle online."
I wonder if part of their creation was as part of crime propaganda to make people think lots of crime is happening around them i.e. hearing car alarms go off in the night. It's like "hearing constant gunshots" but for places where nobody has a gun and there isn't actually any violence.
the libertarians love this shit