Got A Car Alarm? Get Rid Of It
They’re idiotic, selfish forms of noise pollution that do nothing to deter crime
I recently brought my car — a 2010 Hyundai Elantra — into the shop to have the air conditioner repaired.
“While you’re at it,” I told them, “please disconnect the car alarm.”
My car alarm had, I’d discovered, begun malfunctioning and going off for no reason. Here in Brooklyn where I live, I have neither a driveway nor pay for a parking garage, so I just park in the street. I’d parked near my house and realized, one afternoon, that the alarm started going beep beep beep for no reason.
It wasn’t even like a truck had rolled by and the vibrations had accidentally triggered it. Nor had a cyclist bumped it, or another car nudged it.
No, the damn thing was going off for literally no reason at all. Maybe rats had chewed the wiring to the point where stray electrons were triggering it, who the hell knows? I was horrified at the idea that my car alarm might go off in the middle of the night and wake up one of my neighbors.
So when I realized I had a bunch of repairs that needing doing (like the A/C), I decided to have the car-alarm disconnected too.
