Why Obnoxiously Loud Car Alarms Aren't As Common Today- Cheddar Explains

I would say 87% of you probably hate [Applause] [Music] cars are the worst like the actual worst [Music] they come in at number 5 on times top 10 list of most annoying sounds of all time but you might have noticed that you don't hear them as often as you once did why is that to understand why car alarms evolved into an ineffective annoyance we first need some context for how they came to be in the first place and why we thought sound instead of any other method was the best way to prevent car theft this probably seems like an obvious example of necessity being the mother of invention and it was look at these early cars there were no doors and therefore no locks anybody could just jump in and drive away at any moment so pretty early on people began thinking of ways to protect their automobiles the earliest known attempts to create a car alarm is by an unnamed mechanician surly time in a Denver jail Popular Mechanics covered story in its April 1913 issue citing that the device would emit siren like calls for help filling the thief with terror the sound being novel and only used in a few cars in those early days would draw attention hopefully deterring the thief however the first patent for an automobile alarm system wasn't issued until a few years later to st. George Evans and EP Birkin Byul their device required the driver to enter a three-digit code to enable an alarm and to the code after parking and that set electricity to divert from the battery to the horn answer it again when you get back in and that would release the panes diverting the electricity back to starting the car this number ad would be hidden somewhere only the driver would know to look for it would be concealed in hopes that a thief wouldn't see it that way when they jumped in to steal it like it were any other car starting it without entering the code the horn would blare its loud siren alerting you or any nearby do-gooders of a thief on the loose the horn would continue blaring until stopped by the owner of the car or the battery died whichever happened first in the best of circumstances the loud noise would send chills down the thieves spine because most criminals work in silence and this outs them completely they'd be deterred and run away though car alarms have improved from a technical standpoint the idea behind them has stayed mostly the same the biggest difference comes in how modern cars detect that they're being thieved instead of recognizing an improper code newer car alarms are set to activate whenever they detect movement or jostling when the car doors are locked if you think in like the 60s and 70s that was more of a widespread issue at that we kind of use a screwdriver you know to go in and open doors and start a car Hotwire them they were they're really simple back then and so I think that as technology started a more pervasive you know the late 70s and the 80s that's when to start this be these you know digital technology based car alarms these smart systems were not very intelligent the thing with these automated devices is that they're often set to be extremely sensitive which is great in case the thief is really precise even the slightest touch will make a collage but also even the slightest touch will make it go off they'd have normally forceful gust of wind trigger suddenly loud music with deep bass vibrations that rattle the car triggered somebody accidentally touching it after falling off a building when their spider-man powers don't work triggered there's definitely an era over sensitivity and this sensitivity was the first problem with car alarms since the slightest provocation sets them off they go off virtually all the time a study by the New York legislature and a few other experts estimated that 95 to 99% of all par alarms in the city were set off by vibrations of passing trucks or glitches a car's electrical system not beeps the over sensitivity of car alarms has resulted in an unexpected consequence our desensitization to them and that spells trouble instead of helping avoid car jackings and theft the sound of sirens actually gave carjackers auditory coverage to commit more crimes according to a New York Magazine article all about noise pollution there have been cases of people intentionally setting off car alarms to mask the sound of smashing the window of the car allowing them to break in but let's rewind and take a closer look at that scene from spider-man 2 because it reveals something surprising after a Peter Parker realizes he made a terrible mistake he falls in smashes into not one but two cars and yet no alarms go off then as he gets up and walks away he just leans on one slightly for support and that causes the alarm to go off well this was probably done for a comedic effect it also highlights the hidden truth that not all cars have car alarms in fact car alarms or any anti-theft precautions aren't a federally required component of any car a spokesperson from Toyota told the Atlantic that alarms aren't standard in their vehicles many alarms are installed aftermarket in the eighties I think it was more so the space of you know the stereo shop is aftermarket shops that would like to windows and put in the subwoofer if you're gonna put in a high-end audio system right you obviously want to have a good alarm so that it was kind of all folded in together but there just wasn't really that intelligence or the logic beyond just making a racket throughout the 80s and 90s as vehicle technology improved anger towards alarms was Greek to a fever pitch but then a solution appeared so onboard diagnostic started being required sometime in the mid 90s which that allowed all the engine components in various all the sensors and you know processors in the vehicle that were starting to become more common at that time in the mid 90s it allowed them to talk to each other in 1997 Ford installed the first RFID ignition immobilizer in their Mustangs this meant that the key had an RFID chip which sent out to signal to the car when it was in the ignition that allowed it to start up without the key the car either wouldn't start or wouldn't activate the fuel pump you have a handshake to start the car but all the different systems inside the car could talk to each other to say okay well there's unauthorized access so I'm not gonna start the engine and you know and so on and so forth this meant that you couldn't seal the car if you hot-wired it or even if you made a copy of the key the car was effectively a mobile unless you had a key with the corresponding RFID chip this technology is quieter and far more effective than using an alarm because it actually immobilizes the car instead of just emitting siren like calls for help as cars have continued to evolve RFID immobilizers have become the standard of course that doesn't mean that the car can't be stolen carjacking still happen but the process is more sophisticated and involves hacking the internal computer of the car even so car jackings dropped 96% when comparing 1990 to 2013 according to the New York Times the mobilizers don't stop people from smashing your window and stealing stuff out of your car though there are solutions for that like anti shatter film but you don't really relate to alarm so we're not going to discuss them in this video but immobilizers are just part of the equation the decrease in alarms has more to do with well people just getting fed up and I do remember you know reading and hearing about I think there was a number of consumer advocacy groups that worked towards suing some of these aftermarket alarm manufacturers for trying to prevent some of the false alarms because it was becoming such a nuisance in that time when they were taking off due to this outrage manufacturers became increasingly worried and tides have turned so car alarm manufacturer has changed the way alarms were made making them less sensitive nowadays you can shake the car all you want play music near it and have the loudest trucks in the world drive by it and most cars wouldn't make a sound the only way most car alarms go off now is if the doors are locked and somebody tries to open it from the inside the thought is that if somebody were trying to steal the car or steal something from the car they'd probably smash the window and try to open it up from the inside so alarms haven't gone away they've just changed shape to become less noticeable thanks to backlash from advocacy groups and the evolution of technology that has created better lines of defense against car theft you have these layers right and the first layer was sound and that was the annoying layer right but sometimes still required the second layer is the logic within the car the local ability of the car to allow itself to be activated if the customers starting it and then the third layer is the connectivity now with connected cars right which is my area within Hyundai you can get notifications you know almost unlike any parameter of the vehicle so there's all these layers of intelligence now that are in place that are just so much beyond you know just a loud siren sound that it's just changed the game in that way so if anything like alarms are here you know and they're better than they ever were in the past they're just maybe less noticeable because they're just so much smarter and part of alarm is becoming smarter also means shifting the perspective of what the purpose of a car alarm can be you still will hear false alarms but most likely it's for a good reason we also have something called rear occupancy alert which it tracks the rear door opening and closing and so if at the beginning of your journey you opened your rear door assumably to put the child in the back and at the end of your journey you lock the vehicle and walk away without opening or closing the rear door again and then the motion sensor detects motion in the vehicle the alarm will go off so that's just you know another example of what could trigger an alarm but for a very good reason right and so I think as moving to the future there's gonna be more and more of these use cases where you know your car is trying to tell you something it may not be that it's trying to get stolen but that there's another good reason that it's you know yelling at you for whatever the case may be in this case you know a very good one to make sure your child is is not stuck in the vehicle do you think car alarms will ever be phased out for good sound off in the comments below did you find the story alarming don't forget to Like and subscribe and talking about alarms don't forget to hit that notification valve so you can be notified for any of our future videos

Channel: Cheddar

Views: 490,788

Rating: 4.8699007 out of 5

Keywords: Cheddar, cheddar explains, explainer, car alarms, alarms, car alarm, alarm, car alarm sound, cars, alarm system, car theft, grand theft auto, automotive, security, security system, avoid car theft, largest number of car thefts, crime, break in, burglarly, robbery, car alarm annoying, most hated car alarm

Id: HKZUkrJFrjA

Length: 11min 58sec (718 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 11 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/cellis12]

They're good to have, I just hate listening to them.