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THE WEEK OF JULY 10, 2003
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Every resident of New York City has his or her own particular urban torture stories.
It could be traffic congestion or the daily ritual of riding overcrowded subways, or being forced to endure the idiotic abuse of walkie-talkie cell phones in public places.
But all Gothamites seem to agree that the torment of car alarms rises to the top spot of applied agony.
How many people are awakened by the senseless beeping, screeching and blaring of car alarms that seem designed to grate nerves and make one’s teeth hurt?
How often has an individual seen a police car rushing to the scene of a clamoring alarm in the hopes of apprehending a car-theft criminal? Let’s face facts, that’s a rare sight in any borough and if witnessed, should immediately be sent to the Guinness Book of Records.
These noisemakers were designed to thwart grand larceny auto, but the only thing they do is disturb the peace. Some are so sensitive, they can be triggered by a passing truck, a plane flying overhead or those fools who drive around with music cranking at the highest decibel rate.
It’s not as if technology precludes silent alarms and other quiet devices to protect automobiles. There are, for example, personal pagers that alert a car’s owner rather than the entire neighborhood. There are also brake locks and steering wheel locks that can do the job just as well.
The NYPD’s Quality-of-Life Hotline reported that last year 83 percent of the 97,000 calls received were noise complaints, with car alarms consistently near the top of the list.
Proponents of car alarms—mostly those who install the devices and those who manufacture them—claim that a car is stolen every 15 minutes in New York City. Obviously, car alarms are not the deterrent that they claim to be. Of the 34,680 thefts reported last year, there were many whose alarm systems were bypassed in a few seconds by professional thieves.
Not long ago, insurance companies offered better rates for autos that were equipped with alarms. Today, many companies no longer extend this benefit and those that do allow a meager $19-a-year average discount.
The City Council is once again considering legislation to ban the sale and installation of car alarms, and as soon as this item is put on the agenda, the companies that make the devices gear up and lobby politicians until the proposed law is put back in mothballs.
However, if these ear-splitting mechanisms are eliminated, car owners would be forced into switching to security systems that actually work—without the deafening shrills that increase noise pollution in every community.
Muffle the noise, soft-pedal the racket and let people get a good night’s sleep instead of being thrown out of bed by these useless instruments of mass anguish.