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Why do they still make car alarms? (2015)

popularmechanics.com

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Re: Why do they still make car alarms? (2015)

#21

Post by dont__panic »

nexuist wrote: post #18
josefresco wrote: post #2

I'd rather see a tracking system attached to several parts of the vehicle. This would allow law enforcement to track the vehicle, and/or the parts if the vehicle is broken down and sold. In the United States we have "LoJack" but it's not a standard feature rather a dealer upsell.

Tesla probably has the best solution to this so far; they have cameras around the car that record movement and send it to the cloud. A tracking system would work only until thieves figure out how to disable it; at which point it just becomes another part to sell. The Tesla solution is nice because it live streams the carjacking to the owner, enabling them to pick out details about the thief that could be useful to ar…

Wait, so parked Teslas always record videos of me when I walk by?

That does not sound legal in quite a few places.

Re: Why do they still make car alarms? (2015)

#22

Post by switch007 »

psmithsfhn wrote: post #20

better, why do they still make car horns?

To alert other people about your presence.

What would you do if a car was reversing and it looked highly probably they are going to hit you? Or when driving round blind bends on single track roads?

It has very valid use cases, it just happens to be abused by idiots quite often

Re: Why do they still make car alarms? (2015)

#23

Post by burntoutfire »

ryanmercer wrote: post #3

If you have your car at the mall or are in a big city parking garge, sure it doesn't do much. If you live in the rest of the United States, which is spread out and some quite rural, a car alarm can quickly notify you someone is messing with your car. My town has a population a little over 300 people, we have one resident that is... not well... that rides his bicycle around even int he dead of winter and pounds on peo…

> Several years later I had someone crawl under my truck, cut the fuel line, and after taking all the gas they could get using a piece of tape to try and hold it back in place (I actually had this in my Facebook memories yesterday), a car alarm may have alerted me to that.

Holy cow, US really is a bizzare place. With your level of wages and your low prices of gas, the value of the gas stolen was an equivalent of 2-4 hours of minimum wage labor? And yet someone went through this trouble and risked jail for it.

Re: Why do they still make car alarms? (2015)

#24

Post by aronpye »

dont__panic wrote: post #21
nexuist wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla probably has the best solution to this so far; they have cameras around the car that record movement and send it to the cloud. A tracking system would work only until thieves figure out how to disable it; at which point it just becomes another part to sell. The Tesla solution is nice because it live streams the carjacking to the owner, enabling them to pick out details about the thief that could be useful to ar…

Wait, so parked Teslas always record videos of me when I walk by? That does not sound legal in quite a few places.

You’re in a public place, have no reasonable expectation to privacy, and the recording is not intrusive, so perfectly legal.

Re: Why do they still make car alarms? (2015)

#25

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

dont__panic wrote: post #21
nexuist wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla probably has the best solution to this so far; they have cameras around the car that record movement and send it to the cloud. A tracking system would work only until thieves figure out how to disable it; at which point it just becomes another part to sell. The Tesla solution is nice because it live streams the carjacking to the owner, enabling them to pick out details about the thief that could be useful to ar…

Wait, so parked Teslas always record videos of me when I walk by? That does not sound legal in quite a few places.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dos8fRzBH24

Re: Why do they still make car alarms? (2015)

#26

Post by moistbar »

tomchuk wrote: post #15
hedora wrote: post #4

I really wish there was a way to disable the panic button on my key fob. It has a hair trigger and only requires one click to activate. I regularly trigger it by bending over with my keys in my pocket.

Depending on the make, this could be something you could disable via app/ODB dongle. I use the Carista app/BT dongle and have used it to disable the panic button on my last two Toyoyas.

> this could be something you could disable via app/ODB dongle

Ol' Dirty Bastard sure knows his way around cars, I tell ya.

Re: Why do they still make car alarms? (2015)

#27

Post by moistbar »

nexuist wrote: post #18
josefresco wrote: post #2

I'd rather see a tracking system attached to several parts of the vehicle. This would allow law enforcement to track the vehicle, and/or the parts if the vehicle is broken down and sold. In the United States we have "LoJack" but it's not a standard feature rather a dealer upsell.

Tesla probably has the best solution to this so far; they have cameras around the car that record movement and send it to the cloud. A tracking system would work only until thieves figure out how to disable it; at which point it just becomes another part to sell. The Tesla solution is nice because it live streams the carjacking to the owner, enabling them to pick out details about the thief that could be useful to ar…

You can't stream video from the car to the app, not yet at least. It's rumored to be coming in a future update, but it's not here yet.

Re: Why do they still make car alarms? (2015)

#28

Post by lights0123 »

aronpye wrote: post #24
dont__panic wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so parked Teslas always record videos of me when I walk by? That does not sound legal in quite a few places.

You’re in a public place, have no reasonable expectation to privacy, and the recording is not intrusive, so perfectly legal.

"quite a few places" can mean "not the US".

Re: Why do they still make car alarms? (2015)

#29

Post by harperlee »

aronpye wrote: post #24
dont__panic wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so parked Teslas always record videos of me when I walk by? That does not sound legal in quite a few places.

You’re in a public place, have no reasonable expectation to privacy, and the recording is not intrusive, so perfectly legal.

At least in Spain* it does not work like that, there are very stringent limitations on what you can record on the street, e.g. through dashcams or tesla sentinel mode:

https://www.aepd.es/sites/default/files/2019-09/informe-juri...

For example, you can't use dashcam recordings of an accident in trial.

* And I don't want to spend a bunch of time reading law but quite sure this is very tied in with GDPR, so I'd say that most probably in all Europe everything you record on the street is still subject to the privacy rights of whomever you record.

Re: Why do they still make car alarms? (2015)

#30

Post by neuralRiot »

josefresco wrote: post #2

I'd rather see a tracking system attached to several parts of the vehicle. This would allow law enforcement to track the vehicle, and/or the parts if the vehicle is broken down and sold. In the United States we have "LoJack" but it's not a standard feature rather a dealer upsell.

It seems to me that the author of the article writes about something he has no idea, newer car alarms add real time tracking, silent alarms, geofencing, speed warnings, remote start and more. Some cars have those features as an option but sometimes you buy an used car and retrofitting them is impossible or costs half what you paid for the vehicle.
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