Car's panic alarm as intruder alert

Jennifer passed along this tip, sent to her by her dad:

Start keeping your car keys next to your bed on the nightstand when you go to bed. If you think someone is trying to get into your house, or if you hear a noise outside your house, just press the panic alarm on your car key fob. Test it. It will go off from most everywhere inside your house and will keep honking until your battery runs down or until you reset it with the button on the key fob chain.

If your car alarm goes off when someone is trying to break in your house, odds are the burglar won't stick around...after a few seconds all the neighbors will be looking out their windows to see who is out there and sure enough the criminal won't want that. Try yours to make sure it works before you rely on it. Just know that you must press the alarm button again to turn it off.

And remember to carry your keys while walking to your car in a parking lot. The alarm can work the same way there...

Comments

[Ed]

"Snopes" is not so impressed by this idea.

http://www.snopes.com/crime/prevent/caralarm.asp

[wintermute]

I can't imagine this working for an instant. People just don't rush outside when they hear a car alarm; at best they phone you up and shout at you for waking them up, but the most likely effect is that they just ignore it.

And burglars know this,

[oddharmonic]

One of my apartment complex neighbors has a hair-trigger car alarm that went off FIFTEEN times during an hour-long thundestorm in the wee hours of the morning a few weeks ago. After the ninth time I figured out which car was theirs and left them a note asking them to please synchronize it to 6:30 AM weekdays.

I'm much more likely to go check on a neighbor if they're blaring their stereo or sound like they're staging a rodeo in the middle of the night.