Car alarms done right

Last night I was woken up at 4:05am by some silenced vehicle roaring at high speed down our street running every stop sign there is. If that wasn't enough it set off car alarms in its wake and we had to listen to the one right across the street blaring away for two minutes.

To the Porsche Boxter owner across the street - we hate your car alarm. You set it off almost daily and if someone was stealing it no one would notice or probably give a damn because at this point we'd probably rather your car was in a ditch somewhere than setting its alarm off all the time on our street. Dude you have a garage space - park it there.

The only thing we hate more than your car alarm is your house alarm the bleeps at 100 db every time you open your bleeping door which is about 20 times a day as you go for smoke breaks. It is audible outside over a block away and a half block away inside - no one, and I mean no one, needs to hear that.

So as you can tell I'm down on audible alarm systems - the technology to make them redundant has been there for years and the only person who needs to hear them is the owner. Get one that rings your phone or sounds an alarm in your house or pocket wirelessly. Better still get a new fangled OnStar remote car disabler as featured today on Engadget

The only thing wrong with the OnStar system that I can see is that they will be too popular - I hope that OnStar have done some deal with a third party to track down these vehicles when they are being remotely disabled. Cops in our City don't have time to be wasting on mere property crimes - murders, shootings and the like come first. Insurance companies, car companies and owners should be subsidizing the recovery efforts, not the city police departments. Of course I forget, how silly of me, it is good for the economy for vehicles to be stolen, wrecked and written off because of all the new car sales it generates, all the insurance jobs it creates, and all the inflated body shop dollars it pumps into the system.